DSP Chip


doriath

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Oct 5, 2008
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I know the main point of the open source Pandora is that we probably wont have to buy any software but since I used to be an Archos fanboy and am really keen to now use my Pandora for all my portable video needs especially since I believe they both use the same Texas chip. Is there any chance of getting something that uses the dsp chip to play video etc? I'm guessing this would require official codecs so there would be some cost involved but Texas seem quite keen on the Pandora project so I'm sure you could get a good deal. I'm working on the assumption that 720p would hit battery life less if run on a processor designed for it and be smoother? I don't even know if 720 is possible directly from the core CPU. I know we have no way to output HD but it would be for convenient since I have a lot of HD content, mostly using the x264 codec with the mkv wrapper. I know this isn't the main purpose for the Pandora but it would be cool to offer a player more capabale than the Archos. As an aside would there ever be a way to output the Pandora in HD? usb to VGA or anything like that? Happy to hear comments form the forum but also keen to get feedback for someone like Craig or EvilDragon to see if they would concider the whole offical dsp player stuff....and how cheap they could do it. I've now ordered 2 Panodoras so really looking forward to it either way. :)
 
TI does have an HD h.264 codec available for the TMS320C64x+ DSP, and they are charging for it. That doesn't necessarily mean we have to pay for it, though. The DSP is not locked down on the Pandora, and there is plenty of literature available for it. It is entirely possible that someone could write an efficient h.264 codec that utilizes the DSP. Until that happens, the CPU is capable of decoding h.264 by itself. More info here.
 
It is entirely possible that someone could write an efficient h.264 codec that utilizes the DSP. Until that happens, the CPU is capable of decoding h.264 by itself

And even an inefficient one may be enough in the first instance as nothing else will need to use the DSP (and then the ARM can have some load taken off)
 
Chip said:
It is entirely possible that someone could write an efficient h.264 codec that utilizes the DSP. Until that happens, the CPU is capable of decoding h.264 by itself. More info here.

do you mean something like "you can use libx264 for now in your apps, some day someone will add it to be able to use the dsp for decoding and from then on your app will use it automatically"?
 
hede said:
Chip said:
It is entirely possible that someone could write an efficient h.264 codec that utilizes the DSP. Until that happens, the CPU is capable of decoding h.264 by itself. More info here.

do you mean something like "you can use libx264 for now in your apps, some day someone will add it to be able to use the dsp for decoding and from then on your app will use it automatically"?

Yep! I was talking to a beagle board dev who added rough NEON support to libavcodec - that should definitely help. He was interested in DSP support too.
 
hede said:
do you mean something like "you can use libx264 for now in your apps, some day someone will add it to be able to use the dsp for decoding and from then on your app will use it automatically"?
I simply meant that Squidge's MPlayer port got to within 15% of real time playback @ 600MHz. Bumping the CPU up to 800-900MHz should make up the difference. I don't know what codec MPlayer uses for h.264 playback, but Squidge did say his port was very quick and not optimized in any way. I would hope that eventually somebody would modify it to use the DSP efficiently. If somebody really has modified libavcodec (is that what MPlayer uses?) to use NEON, then we're already making progress :)

Since TI has an OMAP3 optimized h.264 codec that works quite well, we know the Pandora has the potential, it's just a matter of somebody putting in the (not inconsiderable) effort. Hopefully we can incorporate the work done by this gentleman from the Beagle Board project into whatever media player we end up using on the Pandora.
 
Or TI could look so kindly on Pandora that they let us have the codec just to show how awesome their SoC is. Well, we can hope.

I never do understand the logic of releasing a device and then keep the code that actually makes it do something closed and non-free.

Hopefully there are a number of things where Pandora and BeagleBoard devs can work or learn together or borrow from each other.
 
TaG said:
I never do understand the logic of releasing a device and then keep the code that actually makes it do something closed and non-free.

To make money, of course.
 
km2783 said:
TaG said:
I never do understand the logic of releasing a device and then keep the code that actually makes it do something closed and non-free.

To make money, of course.

Because they all believe their code uses non-obvious techniques that would give their competitors an advantage. Wishful thinking, if you ask me - especially if you look at how crappy the code quality is for most of these things.
 
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