Designing The Gp2x's Successor - Hardware Selection Poll

[Yono]

It is unlikely that you will meet someone in person who also owns a GP2X to connect with them. However, as DaveC stated previously, putting in 2 SD card slots and getting SDIO working would allow for multiplayer gp3x gaming over the internet.

 

[rei_yano]

It is unlikely that you will meet someone in person who also owns a GP2X to connect with them. However, as DaveC stated previously, putting in 2 SD card slots and getting SDIO working would allow for multiplayer gp3x gaming over the internet.

that would be overwhelmingly awesome!!! though I have a friend that I can convince to buy one as well

 

[JaqMs]

Ok, it looks like you guys are stuck in the present . Here are my future predictions in 5 years:

- SD cards will become obsolete by a cheaper, higher capacity alternative. Or possibly SD cards will have hard drive sized capacity at the same prices the 1 or 2 GB SD cards are today. Therefore, having two SD card slots is like having a GP2X with two SMC slots.

- Unless there is some kind of breakthrough in AA batteries, some power source far superior to li-ion batteries will take over.

- Every device will be thin and sleek. Having a massive battery pack on a handheld would be inexcusable.

- High resolution screens will come in a cheaper price. Think how it would be if the GP32 had a Gameboy-sized screen.

- RAM will be cheap. 512 MB will be the price of 64 MB today.

- Touchscreens also get cheaper.

- Wifi is a must. In 5 years, entire cities, regions, possibly everywhere, will have access to it.

So I conclude that the GP2X successor should either have the specs you guys want at a little over half the price of what the GP2X is right now, or twice as powerful as the GP2X with technology we can barely even imagine. Just think, my old computer that I got in 1998, just 3 years earlier of when the GP32 was released, had 64 MB of RAM. If the GP2X came out then, I would just be like 'WTF!!'.

 

[Shikaku]

Ok, it looks like you guys are stuck in the present . Here are my future predictions in 5 years:

- SD cards will become obsolete by a cheaper, higher capacity alternative. Or possibly SD cards will have hard drive sized capacity at the same prices the 1 or 2 GB SD cards are today. Therefore, having two SD card slots is like having a GP2X with two SMC slots.

- Unless there is some kind of breakthrough in AA batteries, some power source far superior to li-ion batteries will take over.

- Every device will be thin and sleek. Having a massive battery pack on a handheld would be inexcusable.

- High resolution screens will come in a cheaper price. Think how it would be if the GP32 had a Gameboy-sized screen.

- RAM will be cheap. 512 MB will be the price of 64 MB today.

- Touchscreens also get cheaper.

- Wifi is a must. In 5 years, entire cities, regions, possibly everywhere, will have access to it.

So I conclude that the GP2X successor should either have the specs you guys want at a little over half the price of what the GP2X is right now, or twice as powerful as the GP2X with technology we can barely even imagine. Just think, my old computer that I got in 1998, just 3 years earlier of when the GP32 was released, had 64 MB of RAM. If the GP2X came out then, I would just be like 'WTF!!'.

Practicing your crystal ball skills again?

You can't predict technology, or for that matter, any advancement, especially in the AESTHETIC department.

Also wifi? Who gives a shit, if I want internet I will go use a browser on my computer...

 

[JaqMs]

Well, it's just my thoughts. I was going by the trends from 2001 to 2006. Why wouldn't new technology become the price of technology today and the technology of today wouldn't get cheaper? [sarcasm]I'm sure that for some reason, Wifi chips, RAM, storage, etc, in 5 years will cost the same as it is today. I'm sure the PSP 2 will have a 400 mhz processor with a slightly better 3D chip. And I'm sure that 4 ghz computers will be $1000+.[/sarcasm]

Just think about it. You are obviously stuck in the past due to emulators. I can imagine you thinking "I don't care about touchscreen, wifi, 3D accelerators, or that new, cheap perpetual energy battery pack. As long as I can play my NES."

Edit: oh and I'm going to brace myself for this, but the GP2X successor should at least be able to have a Dreamcast or PS2 POC (proof of concept).

 

[Shikaku]

Just think about it. You are obviously stuck in the past due to emulators. I can imagine you thinking "I don't care about touchscreen, wifi, 3D accelerators, or that new, cheap perpetual energy battery pack. As long as I can play my NES."

Being "stuck in the past" and putting things that would eat battery life and push production cost for something that can easily be made optional and very cheap is something I'd rather not do.

I hate PDAs. I hate cell phones. I hate laptops. I hate portable MP3/movie players. Why? Because they all limit you in what you can do.

However, I just said wifi, and you attack me on all fronts? I want a 3D accelerator for the homebrew that requires a FPU/OpenGL/whatever. Better battery life by new technology = fine as long as I can ALWAYS buy a new pack in common stores whether online or off. Touchscreen = fine if it doesn't push cost. Wifi = actually fine if it's OPTIONAL and not part of the damn thing, eating battery life for no reason and pushing costs... meaning any USB thing or an official add-on would work, with working drivers.

Edit: oh and I'm going to brace myself for this, but the GP2X successor should at least be able to have a Dreamcast or PS2 POC (proof of concept).

And probably the only reason the Windows Dreamcast works as well as it does is because there is either an API translation or probably illegal source code in it.

And PS2 is currently impossible by CURRENT HIGH END COMPUTERS TODAY. It requires a super fast dual core CPU do even be considered playable, at about PSX4GP2X levels without sound!

 

[JaqMs]

I'm not sure but the wifi chip doesn't have to be running all the time..

Ok yeah, I remembered that PS2 can't even run well on some high-end computers. But Dreamcast at least. Otherwise it would be too early to release a successor.

 

[Shikaku]

I'm not sure but the wifi chip doesn't have to be running all the time..

More about cost, not battery life!

I'm done arguing...

But Dreamcast at least. Otherwise it would be too early to release a successor.

It's like WINE/Xbox emuators, just an API translation!! It's too powerful/stupid to be emulated otherwise in Windows machines!

 

[rei_yano]

- Unless there is some kind of breakthrough in AA batteries, some power source far superior to li-ion batteries will take over.

ummm double As have been making some good progress. I mean we are almost at 3000mah in a single double A. thats pretty damn good. I dont know about lithium ion. In 5 years lithium ion could be replaced by something else even better. I mean double As could have like a revolution in the future. some kind of new double A standard where we are getting 5000mah per AA or something. You really never know. lithium ion is a bad idea. I imagine the lithium ion going into the history books due to its non standard battery shapes. all these machines like the ipod in 10 - 15 years will never work again. at least the old models will not. they have to discontinue them eventually. whats the point of continued production of a battery that was for a machine that is already 10 - 15 years old? I want my old school gp2x to continue to work for 50 damn years! (if I buy one =P )

 

[JaqMs]

<_< Umm, you do know that everything you said agrees with the statement you quoted, right? Or were you agreeing with me?

 

[rei_yano]

<_< Umm, you do know that everything you said agrees with the statement you quoted, right? Or were you agreeing with me?

oh shit. I misread that. sorry lol :wacko:

yeah pretty much agreeing with you absolutely!

 

[Paradox]

i would pay extra for a gp3x with WiFi.

 

[abigsmurf]

Mostly, this is just a question. Is it time to connsider x86?

I think the answer in the previous thread was a resounding no!!

The Geode NX is the thing that really gets me going, it is basically a low-voltage Athlon, it is even Socket A/462 drop-in compatible. Now with the ATI merger will we see ultra-low power Athlon 64 based cores at 0.8 volts (and less) and integrated xpress200 solutions on the die?? We can only hope.

As far as an open-source low-cost handheld is concerned the people writing the programs much prefer the ARM architecture to the x86. And the hardware people in the know are correct that ARM has them beat for power consumption; forget the ballpark, x86 isn't even in the same league.

I mention the goforce 5500 because it is a fully functional and useful device, its sheet reads like any good media-center bound SoC, except it is without a processor. And the technology is already proven in phones that are out there in large numbers (the goforce4800 in the slivr and razr mobile phones).

The 90nm process and the low-power modes, coupled with the TV-Out make it a no-brainer when adding an accelerator. 2d, mpeg4, 3d and more are just icing on the cake.

The question is whether there are single ARM cores interfaceable with it that run at high enough clocks (300-400mhz) to make it worthwhile.

Screw the whole idea if it is too complicated, just do a SoC with a ARM core sporting a FPU and a decent clock and I guess we could all be happy. I just wanted decent 2D acceleration and the option of 3D.

The AMD Geode platform has one significant thing going for it: The OLPC. It'll have a huuuge coding scene and porting to another linux system would be trivial . I've not actually seen a product which uses it yet but I've read reports the model in the OLPC will have the performance of a 800mhz P4 with a 1.4W power usage which is extremely impressive.

Given its inclusion in the OLPC program I would assume that it's a very cheap processor to use too

 

[vampire8bit]

Could perfect/near perfect amiga emulation be possible with the option 1 configuration?

Also with the same option, how well would high end arcade games run?

 

[Epicenter]

From my talks with Vobbo I get the impression an enormous percentage of the system load created by high-end arcade emulation (let's say, late-90's M68000-based shooters like Dodonpachi/Esp.Ra.De ..) is from emulation of the graphics subsystem and drawing all of that image data to the display. That's, of course, in addition to your usual M68000/Z80/YM26xx set to emulate and more.. the 2D acceleration would be a big benefit there. You could probably pull off scaling and rotation tasks in hardware .. maybe, if floating point code is used, the AFP9 could be exploited for an emulation task as well. The faster ARM9 at 266 Mhz (plus the overclocking potential) would make it much faster.

But honestly emulation of those games should get quite good, if not full speed, on the GP2X too. Even better on more advanced hardware like 'Option 1' though.

As for Amiga emulation, it probably would be a lot snappier, but I get the impression a lot of the problems with Amiga emulation is that the emualtors are just not complete; the graphics subsystem is very complex and hard to emulate, the CPU cores aren't even ASM yet .. a lot of work to be done.

 

[gunblade]

why not one of these:

ARM11 v6 ARM1136J(F)-S SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU ?? @ 532-665MHz (i.MX31 SoC) Omap2 Nokia N93(?)
v6T2 ARM1156T2(F)-S SIMD, Thumb-2, (VFP) variable, MPU
v6KZ ARM1176JZ(F)-S SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU+TrustZone
v6K ARM11 MPCore 1-4 core SMP, SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

take the via epia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-itx) with 1 ghz ...

gp3XL(arge)

 

[gunblade]

hey i've read somewhere that micro$ will use http://www.transmeta.com/efficeon/features.html to make some xbox360portable or something like this

 

[MWeston]

Probably not. Those processors start at 5W of power and go up!

 

[Epicenter]

why not one of these:

ARM11 v6 ARM1136J(F)-S SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU ?? @ 532-665MHz (i.MX31 SoC) Omap2 Nokia N93(?)
v6T2 ARM1156T2(F)-S SIMD, Thumb-2, (VFP) variable, MPU
v6KZ ARM1176JZ(F)-S SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU+TrustZone
v6K ARM11 MPCore 1-4 core SMP, SIMD, Jazelle DBX, (VFP) variable, MMU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

take the via epia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-itx) with 1 ghz ...

gp3XL(arge)

ARM11-based SoCs are very expensive..

 

[MWeston]

Yeah, a bit more than your run of the mill Magic Eyes processor, but worth it!