GCW Zero - Open Source Gaming Handheld

[vampire8bit]

What will be the cost of the Standard Edition?

 

[jutleys]

About $110

 

[vampire8bit]

Could the native Dingoo A320 emu's be ported over easily as some are really good, or will that not be possible?

 

[gcw]

I'm sure it would be possible but not so sure how hard will have to talk to the Dingoonity team that made the better tool chain most native apps were built on. That being Harteex and Flatmush will keep you posted on that one.


Also working towards a port of GL Basic for the console...

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Shipping options will be USPS as standard and FEDEX/UPS for anyone who wants them but those cost considerably more but through USPS about $12.00 to $16.00 Internationally and no more then $10.00 in the USA.


As for new tidbits have a couple different speaker configurations we are looking at to replace the current speakers.


As to why micro over SDHC easier to source and at least it is a standard versus MiniSD was not

Better speakers nice.The more the merrier.

 

[Nintendo]

Cool, this is getting better and better!

 

[jutleys]

@GCW another incentive would be a memory card bundled with ltd edition with exclusive emulators and launch packs all ready to go either 4gb or 8gb card as they are so cheap now this would really tempt as it would be as simple as switch on and play.

 

[Nintendo]

32GB cards are extremely cheap as well.

 

[jutleys]

Are there going to be a black and white versions of ltd editions cause I want to order another one if there is?@GCW

 

[quartercast]

I herd there will b a jutleys 007 edition with a built-in cloaking device and also a limited SONY black lingerie edition which comes w/ a silky embroidered case

 

[erico]

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

gcwz.Net appears to be the domain name

 

[gcw]

Not even close to proper url http://game-consoles-worldwide.com


It's basic word-press model right now until commercial site is completed dunno why it is delayed probably because of animation etc being done....


@ Wrath of Khan BTW thats a public education website...

 

[Nintendo]

I herd there will b a jutleys 007 edition with a built-in cloaking device and also a limited SONY black lingerie edition which comes w/ a silky embroidered case

Lol, don't make me post that bra pic again!!! :lol:

 

[Orion4874]

How many sold are we up to now? I am broke as hell right now and it's killing me to not be able to preorder. Probably next week but I'm worried the 100 limited editions will be gone by then.

 

[gcw]

We hit 66 sold

 

[Exophase]

Any GPU should be able to do automatic hardware scaling, like the Pandora's OMAP. Render a scene at 320x240 and it is displayed to the 640x480 screen (or 800x480 in the Pandora's case) at no extra cost. Well, a little extra battery cost since it ultimately needs to power 4 times as many pixels, but that's a fairly minor cost compared to everything else in a system.

Ideally it might be, and on some platforms where you can get direct low level access to the GPU (like PSP) it can be close to free. But on most platforms where you have to go through stuff like OpenGL ES you get a big performance penalty because the API model isn't very friendly with constantly uploading textures. On top of that, GPUs will often only support swizzled textures so there's at least some overhead in converting things.


On Pandora the GPU (SGX530) isn't used, instead the display controller handles the scaling. This is great where it's available but not every SoC has it, for instance the Pollux on Wiz/Caanoo doesn't..

 

[Nintendo]

We hit 66 sold

Congrats, only another 34 to go then.

 

[Exophase]

I would like to hear from exophase on that one... that doesn't sound right based off what I have been reading

Ingenic JZ4770 is supposed to deliver 2.5 DMIPS per mhz @ 1ghz, basically putting it at the same level as a cortex a9... vs a cortex a8 that delivers 2.0 DMIPS per mhz


so at least on paper it's actually faster, and not using the "oh they both have 1ghz so they must be the same" meme either.. If it comes stock underclocked at 800mhz it should be the same DMIPS as a cortex a8 @ 1ghz


http://en.ingenic.cn/product.aspx


(65nm process)


http://en.ingenic.cn...duct.aspx?ID=78


I have no idea about the Vivante GC860 GPU @500mhz though, I dont' know how that stacks up agianst a SGX 530, and I don't know how you even benchmark a mobile's gpu, but I'm sure exo would.


EDIT: only thing I've been able to pull up so far....


http://www.vivanteco..._mvr.html#GC800


question, is "gflops" about the same as DMIPS for a gpu? if so... the SGX530's 1.6 gflops @200mhz vs vivante GC800 series 6.0 gflops @ 500mhz


http://www.vivanteco...oduct_Brief.pdf


http://en.wikipedia....owerVR#Series_5


/edit


Now I've seen this before with the JXD S601 that uses the AML8726M3 cortex a9 @ 800mhz, on paper it's faster, but they use half the L2 cache iirc, and a older 65nm process which isn't accounted for on the arm data sheets so... it looks comparably faster and more power efficent, but it's not... it preforms pretty good... just not *as* good.


Still... really good for 1/4 - 1/6th the price @ $120


EDIT: 1000'th post =D

All of Ingenic's MIPS processors, including the 1GHz JZ4770, are scalar (single issue) and in-order. It says this much on their product page, and I've seen in their presentations where they confirm this. The cores are all pretty much the same, and roughly ARM11 level. You can tell from the page you linked that they've been using the same microarchitecture since way back when they made the Dingoo. And you can see how that performs vs its peers like Wiz - now compare that level of performance to Pandora's at a similar clock speed. It's no competition. (Their 90mW @ 1GHz on 65nm claim also sounds like bullshit)


Issue rate refers to the maximum number of instructions that can be executed simultaneously. The two processors aren't running the same instruction set, so it's not the same metric really, but I wouldn't argue that MIPS32 tends to beat ARMv7a in average performance per instruction. There are pros and cons to both ISAs.


Don't know how they claim 2.5DMIPS/MHz for all their processors but they're probably full of it. Dhrystone is a terrible benchmark anyway, and doesn't actually refer to real instructions per second. That it aligns with 2/clock on Cortex-A8, which is also its issue rate, is a coincidence.


We're just talking core CPU speed here. Memory hierarchy plays a large role and Ingenic's addition of 256KB of L2 cache probably helps their performance a lot, possibly more than a wider CPU would have. But without knowing how the cache (and main memory) actually performance (latency, bandwidth, etc) we can't make a very good estimation at its performance. But judging on their recent generation chips I doubt they have an edge over ARM and TI.


The GPU is probably at least somewhat faster than SGX530. And no "GFLOPS" are not the same as DMIPS. Companies promote GFLOPS by taking the absolute number of floating point multiply-adds the thing can perform at the same time (each one counts as 2 FLOPS). There's a ton of other work that goes into 3D graphics that could be a bottleneck, and even if you want to single out shading arithmetic computational power there's way more to it than peak FLOPS. Especially for handheld software. DMIPS is at least the result of a benchmark, albeit a very poor one.

 

[gcw]

Thanks for the break down Exophase as I said before there is no reason to compare the Pandora or Yinlips or JXD to the GCW-Zero they all have diffferent compnents/processors etc and different purposes/OS.