F100. F200. F800? Yup, A New Gph Model In The Works.

[earx]

Moore's law states that the complexity of computer chips increases about factor 1.6 each year (don't kill me if i got that number slightly wrong). that still holds after quite a while. so, actually, the rate at which things become obsolete stays the same. i think the GP32X scene has some good years left

i indeed wonder if the F800 could be using the MMSP3, but i would reckon it'd be more like the MMSP2+, disappointing in terms of CPU (only twice as fast) but of course having 3D hardware is still a dream come true. then again, it could be a totally different SoC. maybe some other samsung (like the iphone's).

 

[sam fisher]

In theory there must be a theoretical threshold limit in some cases. I.E when transistors are just so small that you cannot subdivide them to any smaller size.

 

[A_SN]

Hmmm...I wonder how this will effect the Craiginator

Probably very little. I don't expect the F800 to be available less than 6 months after the Craiginator, and by then the Craiginator will have sold quite a lot and have a strong following and the F800 will be by far less good etc etc.. I think people in 2009 will care about the F800 about as much as we care about the XGP now.

The increasing rate of new technology will show that any piece of hardware will become obsolete in less and less time, as time goes on...

There's no increasing rate, it's rather steady, and actually, we're going through a slow-down in desktop/laptop PC frequencies, in case you haven't noticed, it's been for about 5 years that everybody and their mama's around 2 GHz. They try to make up for it and follow the Moore law with multi-cores, but it's still kind of not making up for it.

 

[Tobriand]

Assuming, of course, that the Craiginator lives up to it's promise...

Which, I hasten to add, I have full confidence that it will

 

[pupnik]

I've been hearing some chatter about a new model from GPH called the F800 due by the end of 2008. It seems too little too late already imho, but for more info refer to my blog post at:

http://zodttd.com/index.php?/archives/17-R...k-Holdings.html

Well I may be getting an early start for an official F800 speculation thread. Details are pretty slim.

My best guess on the SoC is they are sticking to MagicEyes still.



If they basically just make it a GP2X with 4x the CPU clock, except that it's incompatible with GP2X binaries, and that it comes out in 2009, they've already lost. I guess..

By the way, does anyone know what's the maximum clock speed for the OMAP 3430?


as i mentioned in chat, 550mhz is the only number i've seen quoted anywhere on the web. Just because the Cortex A8 *design* can be implemented in versions up to ~1000mhz doesn't mean any particular implementation will clock that high. The OMAPs are also SOCs designed to handle media-intensive work in portable/embedded devices, so emphasis is on a 'well rounded' performance with emphasis on offloading cpu-hungy media tasks to dsp. Driving up clockrates increases voltage and current requirements well past what is appropriate for portable-sized li-ion battery packs and SOC packaging constraints.

So will OMAP3430 in craigulator ship at 800-1000mhz? Not on your life. Will it be overclockable to 1ghz like you've been spouting in IRC? Fat fuckin chance, funboi.

Hard to say what the competition will looklike near the end of 2008. A lot of PDA-like devices will have the horsepower to run 8/16-bit emus (unoptimized), but their controls will suck. So what kind of portable will give people enough additional value to purchase one year from now? My feeling is that by then most people will expect to emulate the early 3D consoles well, and doing them well with only software 3D will be challenging, (yes, i know psx4all could run fine).

So what remains for the F800? Without the licensed game franchise of a Sony/Nintendo it looks to me like they are basically offering no-skip 8/16 bit emulation and hoping for some hardcore community hacking to bring 3D to life.

Whatever the odds, I'll be rooting for them. Anybody serving up an open platform + linux deserves our support.

 

[Exophase]

Will it be overclockable to 1ghz like you've been spouting in IRC? Fat fuckin chance, funboi.

TI has demonstrated an OMAP3430 clocked at 1GHz. It's entirely possible. This shouldn't be very surprising. I'm sure it draws a lot of power at this clock, but that's what overclocking is about.

Whatever the odds, I'll be rooting for them. Anybody serving up an open platform + linux deserves our support.

Using Linux is easy when it's available for your hardware and your platform isn't going to attract commercial developers (that would bring in substantial royalties at least). Not using Linux would make very little sense for a company like GPH if it's an option for their SoC.

I don't think being open is a deliberate selling point as much as it is the only real option.

 

[A_SN]

Will it be overclockable to 1ghz like you've been spouting in IRC? Fat fuckin chance, funboi.

TI has demonstrated an OMAP3430 clocked at 1GHz. It's entirely possible. This shouldn't be very surprising. I'm sure it draws a lot of power at this clock, but that's what overclocking is about.

Whatever the odds, I'll be rooting for them. Anybody serving up an open platform + linux deserves our support.

Using Linux is easy when it's available for your hardware and your platform isn't going to attract commercial developers (that would bring in substantial royalties at least). Not using Linux would make very little sense for a company like GPH if it's an option for their SoC.

I don't think being open is a deliberate selling point as much as it is the only real option.


Hallelujah! Glad to hear someone who knows what he's talking about (no offense pupnik, feel free to take offense OMars)

Someone might want to add that to the wiki. By the way, just out of curiosity Exophase, where did you learn about that?

 

[OMars]

Hallelujah! Glad to hear someone who knows what he's talking about (no offense pupnik, feel free to take offense OMars)

Someone might want to add that to the wiki. By the way, just out of curiosity Exophase, where did you learn about that?

All I'll say is that the only experience I've had with linux is when I installed it on my old computer, it worked for one day, and the computer never worked again. I didn't get that into it, so that is where my "noobishness" with linux comes from.

 

[A_SN]

All I'll say is that the only experience I've had with linux is when I installed it on my old computer, it worked for one day, and the computer never worked again. I didn't get that into it, so that is where my "noobishness" with linux comes from.

I kind of figured, knowing this if I had been you I would have put less confidence in my posts and listened earlier on to people who have obviously more experience

 

[Exophase]

Hallelujah! Glad to hear someone who knows what he's talking about (no offense pupnik, feel free to take offense OMars)

Someone might want to add that to the wiki. By the way, just out of curiosity Exophase, where did you learn about that?

Credit to retroDude for finding this, he posted the link in the Our New Machine thread. http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...55&st=2670#

 

[StealthBagel]

So what remains for the F800? Without the licensed game franchise of a Sony/Nintendo it looks to me like they are basically offering no-skip 8/16 bit emulation and hoping for some hardcore community hacking to bring 3D to life.

Whatever the odds, I'll be rooting for them. Anybody serving up an open platform + linux deserves our support.

The problem is GPH never wanted to make an open source game handheld from day 1. even with "Game" in their name they made gp2x as a video player and that's what they thought everyone was using it for all this time until fairly recently when they met the distributors at that show in Germany. til then they had no clue people used gp2x to play games at all. They sell it to companies in Korea to teach English in classrooms etc, and even though it's about the 2nd-worst media player I've ever seen (obtuse worthless gui, crashes and can't read the majority of popular formats) I highly doubt GPH ever conceived F200 or F800 for games.

The way I see it GPH just made F200 because they ran out of the screens for F100 and they got cheap touchscreens to replace them, and they've been dreaming about repainting the gp2x crazy panda colors for ages and never released a thing, because they are probably bankrupt again. Why else are they doing preorders again? like when they had everybody preorder mk1, because they had no money! F800 just looks like a complete flight of fancy and they're just throwing random crap at the wall and seeing what sticks. And no matter what anyone tells them is a shitty idea they'll just do it anyway like gp2x, so my patience with them is really at an end.

In fact GPH never picked linux for "open source reasons"......when they bought such a small # of MMSP2 chips from magiceyes they locked GPH into a contract to have Dignsys (their sister co.) make the firmware, and it was based on linux. Probably because linux is free. Until GPH was called out for flagrant GPL violations in front of the entire internet on slashdot/etc. they didn't release a bit of course either.

The whole calling homebrew-friendly handhelds "open source" is lunacy anyway; open source OS'es and the ability to run unsigned code are 2 completely different things to begin with..... I'd rather see how this new handheld comes out than give GPH another dime after how bad they fucked up so far. Good software is what made the gp2x something interesting and not anything GPH ever did, so I want to see what people who are actually familiar with the homebrew community can cook up.

 

[tim0391]

hmm a new gph console on the horizon (if it is actually true) but i think i might just give this one a miss and go for the craiginator is that how you spell it? . what has been released as fact from the designers has really impressed me and i for one cant wait to see the final product

 

[cowai]

Why do we want something from GPH when Craig is making one on his own?

 

[sam fisher]

The only good thing about the GPH was Craig

 

[tim0391]

Why do we want something from GPH when Craig is making one on his own?

exactly and they know what people want in a handheld

 

[krosfyah]

There might be a lot of existing owners out there that aren't as jaded by GPH as us lot.

 

[PeterM]

Or non GP2X owners who are thinking about getting into it?

 

[Tobriand]

Will it be overclockable to 1ghz like you've been spouting in IRC? Fat fuckin chance, funboi.

TI has demonstrated an OMAP3430 clocked at 1GHz. It's entirely possible. This shouldn't be very surprising. I'm sure it draws a lot of power at this clock, but that's what overclocking is about.


Hope it does go up to 1ghz. Not sure it will though - we don't know the details of the deal yet, so it's quite possible we may get chips "only" certified up to a certain speed (i.e. the ones that flunked at 1GHz, but passed a bit lower). Ti may well be willing to deal with Craig purely because they have a significant number of chips that don't go quite as fast as they'd like them to, and this is a low-profile project that could take advantage of them...

I conjecture.

 

[Esn]

There might be a lot of existing owners out there that aren't as jaded by GPH as us lot.

Ok... since I haven't been here for over a year (in fact, it seems that you joined this forum 6 months after I left), what has GPH done in the intervening period to get so much hate, and how come GamePark never got nearly as much hate? (at least so it seems)

You can just point me to another thread that answers that if you don't want to do it here... h34r:

 

[Tobriand]

I think GPH have just got a lot of little things wrong. People are annoyed about faults in the 2x's design (e.g. no ram for the second processor, bad joystick), the design of the BoB (need two power cables to use one effectively, hard to have everything plugged into it when in use).

GPL violations, sorted out though that is annoyed a few people quite a lot. Oh, and general lack of communication after the 2x came out.

GP had similar issues with people here when GPH arrived on the scene. Particularly annoying were the unused Capcom licenses, the various screen switches to make later GP32s incompatible (BLU+), and, once more, lack of any decent sort of communication.

Those are the ones I remember at least...