How Much Will Arm Be A Handicap To The Pandora?


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mazza558

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We have a whole host of software almost guaranteed to work out of the box on the Pandora (have a look at Debian's and Angstrom's ARM repos), but do you think the Pandora's ARM architecture will be the true Achilles heel of the device?

Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format. Of course, we'd see Wine working straight away, which would already open up the usage of loads of Windows software. However, in this situation, what Windows games would be possible? I can't imagine much would run at a usable speed anyway.

What I'm wondering about most is the ease of porting things over from Debian. As it seems Angstrom won't use Deb files (right?), will this complicate things? What would be cool would be to see popular big-name Linux programs working on the Pandora within a few days after release. I'm talking gnome and kde apps like banshee/amarok/pidgin etc.

Can I just look around the Debian ARM repos and pick any program (with low resource usage), being almost guaranteed it'll work essentially out of the box, or is it more complicated than that?
 
I don't see the ARM as anything but a strength - certainly not a weakness. TI likely picked the ARM core for it's price/performance/efficiency which is generally better on all counts than the venerable x86.

Not sure about your porting questions specifically, but I don't expect them to be an issue.
 
The Pandora wouldn't even exist, if there wasn't this great SoC.

QUOTE
Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format

Reference?
 
x86 would have been a huge disadvantage, here, in my humble view. One of the main reasons I'm buying the device, personally, is because it's not x86 (but that's because it offers me no benefits, whilst using way too much power and generating too much heat for my liking - I'm actually planning a complete move over to ARM for whatever my main box is, in the future, as nothing I use requires x86 at all). I don't see the use of ARM being any sort of a handicap at all. :p

Enough of my ramble, though - that's just my own personal view, and not really worth much. :lol:

I'd say that it's probably a reasonable guess that anything that's in the Debian armel repository could be compiled and work on the Pandora with little to no issue. (I can't and won't comment on whether those .debs will work, though, as I don't know. :p)
 
The ARM makes the pandora as powerful as it is!
The ARM architecture is used alot today and this gives it a big number of working software titles. Its also having a good instruction set, good documentation etc
We should ask this way: How much will the x86 be a handicap to the desktop PCs today?
 
mazza558 said:
do you think the Pandora's ARM architecture will be the true Achilles heel of the device?

No.
Click to expand...




You wanted more? Cool running. Run time. Power/Price ratio.
 
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Prometheus said:
I'd say that it's probably a reasonable guess that anything that's in the Debian armel repository could be compiled and work on the Pandora with little to no issue. (I can't and won't comment on whether those .debs will work, though, as I don't know. :p)
One exception though: OpenGL vs. OpenGL ES - that will require some extra porting for games.
Click to expand...
 
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With an x86 you essentially have an OQO. Good for PC compatibility, but horrible for battery life and price.
 
agree with prometheus. arm is better for a handheld. why do you think the psp, ds and pocketpc's dont use x86. price/performance/efficiency pretty much covers it.
 
x86 is utter rubbish, its only still used because of backwards compatibility.
ARM is a more modern efficient design, it still has a few quirks but on the whole its far far better than x86 as a platform.
The same features that make lots of x86 cores fast (superscalar, register renaming, deep-pipelining, etc.) could also be applied to ARM cores if they wanted to set fire to every device they were put into.

Back to the point rather though, I think ARM is growing as a platform and while we would have more software for x86, I think we'd regret it in the long run. Even now lots of embedded applications are developed for arm not x86.
 
Proper OpenGL will probably eventually make it to the omap, but it will most likely take a year or two.

Besides backwards compatibility with x86, ARM cpus really have no drawback.
 
mazza558 said:
We have a whole host of software almost guaranteed to work out of the box on the Pandora (have a look at Debian's and Angstrom's ARM repos), but do you think the Pandora's ARM architecture will be the true Achilles heel of the device?

Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format. Of course, we'd see Wine working straight away, which would already open up the usage of loads of Windows software. However, in this situation, what Windows games would be possible? I can't imagine much would run at a usable speed anyway.

What I'm wondering about most is the ease of porting things over from Debian. As it seems Angstrom won't use Deb files (right?), will this complicate things? What would be cool would be to see popular big-name Linux programs working on the Pandora within a few days after release. I'm talking gnome and kde apps like banshee/amarok/pidgin etc.
Click to expand...
the Pandora is hardly fast enough to run KDE as it is... with a bulky sluggish x86 powersucker under the hood you can bet anything you like it won't be powerful enough to run Amarok.

banshee and pidgin: good examples. but did you forget that they're open source? usage on Pandora or pretty much any powerful enough device running linux is just a recompile away, provided needed libs are present (which they will be - they're also open source.)

QUOTE
Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format.


a similiarly powered x86 chip would be much bigger, reducing other Pandora features (mobility, GPU/RAM etc) but also cut battery life in half and emit much, much more heat. i personally don't like that mental image ^_^
 
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cosurgi said:
Prometheus said:
I'd say that it's probably a reasonable guess that anything that's in the Debian armel repository could be compiled and work on the Pandora with little to no issue. (I can't and won't comment on whether those .debs will work, though, as I don't know. :p)
One exception though: OpenGL vs. OpenGL ES - that will require some extra porting for games.

I knew I was forgetting something, there. :lol: Thanks for the correction. I really should have said "most" or "many", eh? :p
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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mazza558 said:
We have a whole host of software almost guaranteed to work out of the box on the Pandora (have a look at Debian's and Angstrom's ARM repos), but do you think the Pandora's ARM architecture will be the true Achilles heel of the device?
Click to expand...
No.

QUOTE

Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format. Of course, we'd see Wine working straight away, which would already open up the usage of loads of Windows software. However, in this situation, what Windows games would be possible? I can't imagine much would run at a usable speed anyway.



A device of this class doing x86 would not perform very well. A comparable device to what you're asking for would be about like an eeePC in size and need 2-3 times the battery capacity to do 1/3-1/2 the operational lifespan on a charge.

X86 only has backwards compatibility with the old cruft going for it. Windows stuff is not terribly useful in a handheld (There's a reason why WinCE has been mostly a business failure for MS...) and all these MIDs with Windows are...unpleasant...to work with. What you're envisioning isn't there yet, nor will it be for a while. By then, heh, A9 SoC's will tape out and where we have the power and performance of the x86 MIDs with lower power consumption, we'll have close to a low-end Core Duo laptop in your palm. Seriously.

QUOTE

What I'm wondering about most is the ease of porting things over from Debian. As it seems Angstrom won't use Deb files (right?), will this complicate things? What would be cool would be to see popular big-name Linux programs working on the Pandora within a few days after release. I'm talking gnome and kde apps like banshee/amarok/pidgin etc.



Angstrom will use .ipk, .opk (new iteration of .ipk), and .deb files. Angstrom is the core of several embedded and handheld distributions. And you can't just willy-nilly grab just any x86 package and expect it to work. If you have been, you've been lucky. .so differences, etc. make it a fun prospect- and anything you grab has to either be made for a distribution specifically or made very, very generic like LGP's, or several other game studio's releases have been.

QUOTE

Can I just look around the Debian ARM repos and pick any program (with low resource usage), being almost guaranteed it'll work essentially out of the box, or is it more complicated than that?


Depends on whether they use the same general API's with .so versions. You'd have this nastiness with ANY OS (Windows calls that minefield DLL hell...we have it better, but not by as much as one would hope for...)- and to think you can glibly do this, you're mistaken.

It is VERY safe, though, to presume that one can GET a version for Pandora of a given package.


cosurgi said:
One exception though: OpenGL vs. OpenGL ES - that will require some extra porting for games.
Click to expand...
Heh... You're going to encounter this problem anyhow. ES is CLOSE to what 3.0 was going to be before they backed down from the position because of the CAD vendors who can't be moved to clean up their crufty old damn code even with an H-Bomb blast under their collective backsides. Moreover, it's the API for at least two consoles and the API for all the next gen handhelds (Of which Wiz and Pandora are the FIRST ones...).
 
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mazza558 said:
We have a whole host of software almost guaranteed to work out of the box on the Pandora (have a look at Debian's and Angstrom's ARM repos), but do you think the Pandora's ARM architecture will be the true Achilles heel of the device?
Click to expand...
I don't see it as a weakness for the reasons jdh stated. The power and heat savings alone are invaluable.

QUOTE

Imagine that Texas Instruments had made a similar mobile chip (in terms of power) but in x86 format. Of course, we'd see Wine working straight away, which would already open up the usage of loads of Windows software. However, in this situation, what Windows games would be possible? I can't imagine much would run at a usable speed anyway.



The restrictions we see for emulators might apply, although WINE doesn't put nearly as much stress on the system as emulating another processor or architecture does. There's plenty of speculation elsewhere in these threads on that topic, so I won't go into more detail. As it stands, the Pandora's still the most advanced device in its class even without WINE.

QUOTE

What I'm wondering about most is the ease of porting things over from Debian. As it seems Angstrom won't use Deb files (right?), will this complicate things? What would be cool would be to see popular big-name Linux programs working on the Pandora within a few days after release. I'm talking gnome and kde apps like banshee/amarok/pidgin etc.



There will probably be some apps ready out-of-the-box or just need to be compiled (cross-compiled or compiled directly on the Pandora) for ARM. We've already seen video of Firefox running on Ubuntu on a 1st-gen Pandora dev board. Others will have to be ported. Angstrom can use .deb files -- it's just a matter of compiling dpkg for ARM. Oh, and making sure the .deb file you're installing was created from binaries that were compiled for ARM. :D Of course, for the casual user, downloading .ZIP files with a PXML index will be a better option.

QUOTE

Can I just look around the Debian ARM repos and pick any program (with low resource usage), being almost guaranteed it'll work essentially out of the box, or is it more complicated than that?



Most programs will probably work ok, just make sure you're looking specifically for packages compiled for armv7a. Others may or may not work; I haven't dug into how much the instruction set differs from one ARM spec to the next. Even if the repos don't have the particular program you're looking for (or it doesn't work for some reason), if you install gcc and make, you should be able to download the source for the software you want and try the 'configure, make, make install' route. Some of the software you want may not need to be properly ported to run. :D

Plus, within a few weeks of the Pandoras shipping, you should start to see .zip files of most of the programs you'll want at the official archive.

Wow.. this thread's moving pretty fast. Going to go ahead and post, anyway. I think I've made a new point or two B)
 
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