Has The Pandora Got 2 Processors?


FrEaKMaN

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I was just wondering whether the Pandora has 2 Processors as on wikipeida (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)) it says that the pandora has a:

Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor at 600MHz (can be overclocked to 900MHz[5]) AND
ARM Cortex-A8 superscalar microprocessor core

Also would the Dual Core GP2X be more powerful as the speed of the processor on the website is only 430 whereas if you were to have a dual core 240MHz (GP2X) that would clocked at around 480MHz

Thanks

Sorry im a n00b
 
The 3530 contains the Cortex A8, the DSP, and the Graphics core. The cortex A8 is clocked at 600 MHZ, and is the brains. The DSP can be used for some tasks, and the graphics core is obvious.

When considering dual core options, you can't simply add the frequencies together. They are too many things that muck it up like stalls and limited code parallelism.
 
Anothing thing to think of

if you had 1 ghz processor, and lets say it could process x in 5 nano seconds

if you had a 1ghz dual core processor, you couldnt get x done in 2.5 nanoseconds, more like 3.

Reason being is the two cores need to interact and overlap,

anyways those numbers are silly, and rather off topic.

the actual asked question has been answered.
 
FrEaKMaN said:
Also would the Dual Core GP2X be more powerful as the speed of the processor on the website is only 430 whereas if you were to have a dual core 240MHz (GP2X) that would clocked at around 480MHz
anexanhume said:
When considering dual core options, you can't simply add the frequencies together. They are too many things that muck it up like stalls and limited code parallelism.
The GP2X doesn't have "dual core". It has two cores, but one of them is lame and Linux can't use it in the normal "dual processor" way to make everything faster that has code parallelism.

It has seen limited use as an audio engine for a couple emulators, and the native video player from GPH/MagicEyes uses it to do the video decoding.



FrEaKMaN said:
Thanks

Sorry im a n00b
No problem, you don't know until you ask :)
 
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Theone said:
Anothing thing to think of

if you had 1 ghz processor, and lets say it could process x in 5 nano seconds

if you had a 1ghz dual core processor, you couldnt get x done in 2.5 nanoseconds, more like 3.

Reason being is the two cores need to interact and overlap,

anyways those numbers are silly, and rather off topic.

the actual asked question has been answered.
If you can do X in 5 nano seconds, and X is just one thing, then it doesn't matter if it's single core or dual core: it will take the same length of time.
If X can be broken into 2 (or more) different parts, each one able to run independent of each other, then you'll see a benefit from running dual core.
The only way to get a real benefit from a dual core system is if the program was properly developed from the beginning to make full use of the two cores.
Interprocess communication and thread switching is actually really fast these days. There's no need for the +.5 due to interaction as you mention.

The reason it will take more than 2.5 nanoseconds is that it is almost impossible to break a single task (or list of tasks) into perfectly even parts: if X takes 5 nanoseconds, when broken into two parts one might take 2 nanoseconds and the other might take 3 nanoseconds. On a single core processor, it needs to run one task and then the other, for the total of 5 nanoseconds, but in a well built dual core setup it will run both at the same time, and the total time will be the larger of the two: 3 nanoseconds.
 
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WizardStan said:
Theone said:
Anothing thing to think of

if you had 1 ghz processor, and lets say it could process x in 5 nano seconds

if you had a 1ghz dual core processor, you couldnt get x done in 2.5 nanoseconds, more like 3.

Reason being is the two cores need to interact and overlap,

anyways those numbers are silly, and rather off topic.

the actual asked question has been answered.
If you can do X in 5 nano seconds, and X is just one thing, then it doesn't matter if it's single core or dual core: it will take the same length of time.
If X can be broken into 2 (or more) different parts, each one able to run independent of each other, then you'll see a benefit from running dual core.
The only way to get a real benefit from a dual core system is if the program was properly developed from the beginning to make full use of the two cores.
Interprocess communication and thread switching is actually really fast these days. There's no need for the +.5 due to interaction as you mention.

The reason it will take more than 2.5 nanoseconds is that it is almost impossible to break a single task (or list of tasks) into perfectly even parts: if X takes 5 nanoseconds, when broken into two parts one might take 2 nanoseconds and the other might take 3 nanoseconds. On a single core processor, it needs to run one task and then the other, for the total of 5 nanoseconds, but in a well built dual core setup it will run both at the same time, and the total time will be the larger of the two: 3 nanoseconds.


thanks for expanding upon, and correcting my minor mistakes ^^.
 
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I came up with a description years ago that I think is pretty good, if not entirely accurate:

Dual core is like a two lane road.

If you drive one car on it, its not going any faster. It just lets you get more cars on the road, but for every extra car, they better cooperate!

(insert commentary about two cars not going any faster since they do different things; if they go the same place, they crash, and etc and so on :p)

jeff
 
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