Do You Think Pandora's Power Will Lead To Relatively Lazy/sloppy/i

[JerryG20]

I was just wondering if anybody else was fearing that the Pandora's power would lead to relatively lazy/sloppy/inefficient coding? Considering all the extra power we have, does anybody else fear that coders may not feel it necessary to optimize things to such great extents anymore since they may think the only reason to optimize now is battery life (which people do want, but if someone coded something it's running more than full speed at default clock speed, will they feel it necessary to spend hours upon hours optimizing and streamlining the code even more)?

 

[magicman5421]

I'm not too worried, the developers who've pledged pandora support have a reputation for good code. it had to be good to run on the gp2x well. so there i'm not worried. what i'm a little bit worried about is newcomers (like myself maybe) who won't know how to optimize...guess i'll learn.

 

[craigix]

The good news is the emulators/ports will come from excellent well optimised stock - the GP32 and GP2X.

But for the later systems, 32bit emulators or more recent ports, I don't know. I hope the tradition of trying to get every last drop of speed will change to trying to get every app running at the lowest possible CPU speed

 

[yaustar]

Yes, I think it will happen but I don't 'fear' it. This should lead to faster development cycles as less time is spent on optimising to playable speeds. 'Get it working, then get it working faster'. The latter is less important if the former is playable at stock speeds.

 

[verm71]

I was just wondering if anybody else was fearing that the Pandora's power would lead to relatively lazy/sloppy/inefficient coding? Considering all the extra power we have, does anybody else fear that coders may not feel it necessary to optimize things to such great extents anymore since they may think the only reason to optimize now is battery life (which people do want, but if someone coded something it's running more than full speed at default clock speed, will they feel it necessary to spend hours upon hours optimizing and streamlining the code even more)?

You mean like Windoze?

But seriously, where there's a need, there's a way. Whether that need is to reduce power consumption, CPU cycle economy or even financially-driven. If we had a CPU that ran 4000 times the speed of the CPU you're emulating, and batteries that lasted tens of hours, would it make sense to spend time optimizing code if you could deliver earlier and make money faster?

I think that's how the Windoze generation thinks. It eventually snowballs, catches up and backfires on you. It doesn't apply to open source but long term costs of code maintenance is important. But perhaps it does apply to the open source community if a long-lived piece of code is so well written that it is praised, and ported over many generations of different processors.

 

[anexanhume]

Some have informally said that the competition in coding will be how LOW people can clock the CPU for their emulators, let's hope that is the case.

However, what craig said brings up a good point. If we have a history of ARM architectures to build upon, every ARM generation is going to have an emulator it can just barely run, necessitating the need to optimize. Then, when the next gen ARM core appears, the optimized emulator is ported easily, and optimization is built in. The only way to really improve upon that formula would also have the architecture improvements optimized to as well.

Hopefully that would mean that a nicely optimized PSX, N64 etc. emu will arise out of this generation for future ARM cores.

 

[ljones]

Some programs will be better written than others. Plus one thing I Thought of - nobody outside of the developers really know how well (or otherwise) the pandora would run already existing programs (e.g. firefox). For example, I read that firefox on pandora needs to be optimised. Does that mean that pandora is actually more on the slower end of the scale? If so, optimisation will be very important. Pandora runs at 500Mhz, will that mean everything should be optimised or if it isn't would running more than 2 or 3 programs lead to a sluggish system? I know x86 and ARM CPUs cannot be compared solely on clock speeds, but will pandora "feel" (in terms of speed and smoothness of apps running) more akin to a 500Mhz intel system, or a 486 DX2 66? Noone can say.

I guess this is one thing we'll find out once we all have a pandora.

ljones

 

[verm71]

If we have a history of ARM architectures to build upon, every ARM generation is going to have an emulator it can just barely run, necessitating the need to optimize.

I retract my previous comment. There will ALWAYS be a more powerful CPU to emulate hence the need for optimization. But what about for ancient CPUs, like a 1MHz MOS 6502? Is optimization as critical in that case?

 

[greendots]

with an 8.5 hr battery life at 500mhz I'm not worried. Even at 900 its probably 3.5hrs or something. The majority of the things that I will be doing with it wont be stressing the cpu much. (browsing, music, nes, snes)

btw while craig is here ... what exactly was the conditions for the battery life test? Just the cpu at 500mhz and screen on? What about wifi, bluetooth, gpu, dsp , 2 SD cards, tv out and usb? Im just interested in a general answer to what the minimum battery life since we already know the max

 

[anexanhume]

If we have a history of ARM architectures to build upon, every ARM generation is going to have an emulator it can just barely run, necessitating the need to optimize.

I retract my previous comment. There will ALWAYS be a more powerful CPU to emulate hence the need for optimization. But what about for ancient CPUs, like a 1MHz MOS 6502? Is optimization as critical in that case?

That's kinda the complement of what I was getting at. There's a CPU for every generation that will push target CPU to its limits in emulation. Complementary, you'll always have new CPU architectures arising to emulate that will challenge the next generation of target cores for emulation.

 

[elinscheid]

From my little experience with the GP32, Zodiac, GP2X and now the Pandora, I can't really think of any "lazy" coders. When I think of all the amazing emulators they've worked on in the passed, I would believe that if anything we will see things that blow us away. Now, I'm not demanding solid gold from people who are hobbyists doing this in their spare time. But in my opinion they keep giving us gold time after time. Even when we bitch and complain.

 

[craigix]

Some programs will be better written than others. Plus one thing I Thought of - nobody outside of the developers really know how well (or otherwise) the pandora would run already existing programs (e.g. firefox). For example, I read that firefox on pandora needs to be optimised. Does that mean that pandora is actually more on the slower end of the scale? If so, optimisation will be very important.

ljones

Firefox works so well you would never know it was on the OMAP3 and not a full PC. I think there are vids on youtube of it. We have commented on that a few times. TI have had firefox going since like Feb'08

 

[Falcon Delta]

It's nice to hear from both ED and Craig that FireFox is running so well. About the worries with optimization, as Magicman stated I would only worry about the newbie coders (I also plan to be one). From the looks of it, all the experienced coders squeezed every last ounce of power they could from the '2X and I expect them to do the same with the Pandora.

 

[Blah]

Yes, if I'm coding for it :lol:

 

[Pleng]

will pandora "feel" (in terms of speed and smoothness of apps running) more akin to a 500Mhz intel system, or a 486 DX2 66? Noone can say.

My DX2 66 with Windows 3.1 felt a lot, lot smother than my Pentium 500 running Windows 98...

 

[White Demon]

My DX2 66 with Windows 3.1 felt a lot, lot smother than my Pentium 500 running Windows 98...

Maybe, but try running Windows 98 (or even 95) on your DX2....

 

[Pleng]

My DX2 66 with Windows 3.1 felt a lot, lot smother than my Pentium 500 running Windows 98...

Maybe, but try running Windows 98 (or even 95) on your DX2....


Ahhh but then you would have missed my point!

 

[Parkydr]

I'm a lazy programmer, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Optimisation can make the code harder to understand and maintain so there's no point doing it unless there are performance problems.

 

[kanzlr]

so, what Parkydr just said basically meant: he will port GravityForce2X to the pandora!

just joking. and wishful thinking

btw. "lazy".... you are no programmer yourself, are you?
programs that are not optimized for performance or whatever are not really the result of "lazy" programming. as Parkydr pointed out, an app can be beautifully crafted, with nice, object oriented code, elegant structures, etc. but not be optimized. thats not lazy, it is just about different priorities.

oh, and calling someone that develops a nice emulator for the "masses", although not fully optimized, lazy, is a bit...rude

I never developed for the GP2x and am mainly a java developer during daytime, but I have some experience with OpenGL on desktop linux. I am also reading up on SDL currently and it sounds like a fun and easy way to do a lot of things.

So expect some lazy coding from me

 

[Yannick]

My DX2 66 with Windows 3.1 felt a lot, lot smother than my Pentium 500 running Windows 98...

Maybe, but try running Windows 98 (or even 95) on your DX2....


**seriously off topic
I installed windows XP on a DX2 66 once. (I was 17 at the time and bored )
It takes 9 hours to install
15 hours to boot with auto-login
and the start menu pop-up animation takes 15 minutes to complete

but once you load paint or notepad, you can work at your most productive speeds, no hangups or crashes