Gpu Question

[KRH]

Will that Pandora GPU have its own Video RAM or will it share with the rest of the system?
Also, If the GPU does have it's own RAM how much would it have?

 

[javaJake]

It's pretty much expected to share RAM, since the "GPU" isn't really a separate component, or even a GPU, necessarily. It's all really part of the same SoC deal.

And I'm sure we all know that that's enough RAM to go around.

 

[gametaku]

I've been looking at the specs of this for a while, but going just off of numbers the Pandora would be between a Gamecube and a Wii in graphical capabilities right?

Shouldn't the OS for Pandora be quicker and more capable than putting DSL or Ubuntu on an average Pentium III pc?

 

[Julius]

Check out the video of a regular Unbuntu running on the Beagleboard at a higher resolution than the pandora screen, and you will get an idea just how fast it is (perfectly usable, including stuff like Firefox3 and GIMP, as shown in the vid).

 

[Tensuke]

Err I don't think it's above the GC. A little bit under, but close to, afaik.

 

[benjiro]

Shouldn't the OS for Pandora be quicker and more capable than putting DSL or Ubuntu on an average Pentium III pc?

I've looked up the specs of the A8 Cortex @ 600Mhz, and from what i can tell, it seems to be even to a Celeron M @ 600Mhz ( ofcourse, thats just based on the known figures from the manufacture, and then compared to the Celeron M's ). So, at 900Mhz, it will be in the range of a Celeron M @ 900Mhz. Performance / watt the Cortex A8, is miles ahead of the Celeron M & Atom.

You are also comparing a old x86 design vs a Risc cpu. And the Pentium III has a limited SSE instruction set, vs the Cortex A8 NEON instruction set ( designed to accelerate multimedia tasks ).

So, yes, by all accounts, it needs to perform closer to a Celeron M ( whats is being used on several UMPC's ), but with a lower power drain ( and more advanced instruction sets ).

Its more limiting factor ( for multitasking ) will be the memory size i fear ( and the need to offload the memory to SD when a emulator requests the entire memory base ).

Edit:

Here is the video that Julius mention about the Beagleboard with the OMAP3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i9cWOK1spw

 

[Exophase]

I've been looking at the specs of this for a while, but going just off of numbers the Pandora would be between a Gamecube and a Wii in graphical capabilities right?

Graphical capabilities will be better than Dreamcast (on paper, somewhere between 2-3x), where that puts it compared to Gamecube I don't know but I strongly doubt it'll be competitive with it, much less Wii.

You are also comparing a old x86 design vs a Risc cpu. And the Pentium III has a limited SSE instruction set, vs the Cortex A8 NEON instruction set ( designed to accelerate multimedia tasks ).

And you are comparing an out of order, speculative execution CPU that can decode 3 ops per cycle and execute up to 6, and has pipelined general purpose FPU, with an in-order strictly dual issue CPU whose general purpose FPU is slow. Celeron M's also have 2x the L1 cache, 4-8x the L2 cache... unfortunately I could not find how many load/store ports the L1 dcache has but it seems to be only 1, which is the same as Cortex-A8. It's a little disappointing because the original Pentium could do two per cycle, and I assume the Atom can too. This is partially mitigated by load multiple instructions on a 64bit wide dcache bus.

True I'd take ARMv7a over x86 + SSE3 any day but instruction set isn't everything.

 

[AireTamStorm]

So, at 900Mhz, it will be in the range of a Celeron M @ 900Ghz.
Lets see here....
NO!

Bad End.

 

[waffles]

So, at 900Mhz, it will be in the range of a Celeron M @ 900Ghz.
Lets see here....
NO!

Bad End.

so is it slower or faster than a x86 CPU of comparable speed?

 

[benjiro]

so is it slower or faster than a x86 CPU of comparable speed?

Don't bother with AireTamStorm's confusing answer because of a typo that people read over anyway. Looks like somebody with a obsession for answering offtopic with overly large fonts. Way to go bro. Go got me. A typo, o man, what will i do without you.... My life is so empty now. In other words, learn to use the PM function. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...

waffles: The Cortex A8 at 600Mhz does 1200 MIPS, while a 900Mhz Celeron M, does 1800 MIPS. In other words, a Cortex A8 has a efficiency of 2 MIPS / Mhz, the same as a Celeron M. Ofcourse, other factors also come in to play. Comparing different architectures will always result in debate.

 

[AireTamStorm]

Don't bother with AireTamStorm's confusing answer because of a typo that people read over anyway.
My first PC had an 8 MHz CPU, if I told myself back then that I'm sitting on a quad core 2.6GHz rig, I'd have freaked back then. When a forum member casually says 900GHz... no difference. :lol: "Yeah, I'm running on a 900GHz Intel® Lava® 8."

waffles: The Cortex A8 at 600Mhz does 1200 MIPS, while a 900Mhz Celeron M, does 1800 MIPS. In other words, a Cortex A8 has a efficiency of 2 MIPS / Mhz, the same as a Celeron M. Ofcourse, other factors also come in to play. Comparing different architectures will always result in debate.
Yeah, comparing two CPUs by peak theoretical each is alright as long as you're in the same line of CPUs, but cross architecture, anything could happen. What is surprising, and somewhat exciting in this industry, is that the ARM chip is catching up in performance far faster than the x86 chip is catching up in power consumption. It is part of what makes the Cortex such a promising line of ARM CPUs.

 

[Exophase]

DMIPS are not MIPS.

I hope people can avoid making this mistake :\

Very roughly speaking, Cortex-A8 is capable of doing two instructions per cycle. Celeron-M is capable of doing 6, but will average out to no more than 3. But 3 is better than 2.

But ARM instructions are also often more powerful than x86 ones.

 

[cb88]

900GHz? thats old hat man... http://www.gry-online.pl/s043.asp?ID=7004734

"http://www.atvn.pl -> Akademicka Telewizja Naukowa
Intel Core Cinque 8.0 Thz , GeForce 29900 Power , Asus Destroyer Platinium, 200TB RAM 900ghz Fourfold Channel Joystick taken from F16 - PC adapted. "

 

[icurafu]

Also (DMIPS != (10 * MIPS))

as I discovered last year...

 

[ljones]

Well I hope pandora's CPU won't be too slow! Though I guess really noone can tell until they become avaliable.

From memory though older ARM CPUs could "feel" slow (though a lot faster than their contempories of the same era, such as the amiga and atari ST). I have an old Acorn A7000 and an Acorn Risc PC here (Though the Risc PC has long since packed up). Both are ARM based devices. The A7000 runs at ~32Mhz. The Risc PC was at 233Mhz. But the Risc PC never felt *that* much faster than the A7000.

Another second hand system, a really *old* A3020 works fine !

I know I can't really use that as a comparison to the pandora even though they are both RISC systems (the acorn systems above are based on very slow chipsets by todays standards). I just hope stuff like firefox and everything else dosen't need to be optomised because of the pandora's possible slow speed.

Though I think pandora *will* be fast enough to handle most things. It is a case of "wait and see" I guess!

ljones

 

[AireTamStorm]

I just hope stuff like firefox and everything else dosen't need to be optomised because of the pandora's possible slow speed.
It outspecs every other handheld currently on the market, and you're worried about it being slow? :blink:

 

[icurafu]

ljones, should be fine for all kinds fo desktop stuff, unless you're talking about flash videos, which we'll wait for drivers to find out.