Is This Something To Be Concerned About?

[ljones]

Am I right in saying the beagleboard uses the same CPU as pandora? If so, here's a quote from the beagleboard FAQ regarding its CPU and clock speeds;

QUOTE

# ARM processor at BeagleBoard currently uses 500MHz
# 500MHz is the default used because it is a balance of performance and longevity
# For OMAP35x 600MHz is max recommended
# At 600MHz OMAP35x is considered to be 'overdrive' and it does not have the same life expectancy
# Higher than 600MHz is out of spec and no guarantee it will work at all (or not damage itself)



Does that mean then if the pandora will be ~600 Mhz it could potentially damage the pandora (and in turn cause *lots* of trouble?).

(Handy link: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard )

ljones

 

[xafier]

There could be all manner of reasons for why they say that... one of which may be because they're getting chips that are "binned" lower than what the Pandora will get... from what I'd heard the chips in the Pandora in theory could reach up to nearly 1Ghz... though its unlikely many will?

 

[Chip]

Does that mean then if the pandora will be ~600 Mhz it could potentially damage the pandora (and in turn cause *lots* of trouble?).

Nope. It's not worth worrying about.

 

[trooper]

Does that mean then if the pandora will be ~600 Mhz it could potentially damage the pandora (and in turn cause *lots* of trouble?).

No, ARM cpu`s are pretty resilient to overclocking, Absolutely loads of people who own or have owned a GP32 or a GP2x (or any other ARM device for that matter) regularly overclock to get a bit more speed when needed, With no detrimental effects other than the device crashing or hard resetting. Turn the device back on, And you can continue using it as if nothing had happened. Basically ARM cpu`s don`t produce a lot of heat (well, Not enough to fry itself anyway), Unlike standard "PC" cpu`s of the intel and AMD variety, Which usually need some kind of thermal cooling such as a heatsink, Fan or both, Because they generate a huge amount of heat compared to an ARM cpu`s.

Trooper

 

[Squidge]

Pandora is likely to be 500Mhz, considering how everything at the moment runs fast enough (too fast?) at that clock speed. It'll be overclockable to 900Mhz. Yes, you will decrease the life of the OMAP at 900Mhz, but it's unlikely you'll still be using the Pandora at that time (as you will not use it at 900Mhz constantly, only when required, and at the moment, it's not required for anything).

 

[Sphinxter]

Pandora is likely to be 500Mhz, considering how everything at the moment runs fast enough (too fast?) at that clock speed. It'll be overclockable to 900Mhz. Yes, you will decrease the life of the OMAP at 900Mhz, but it's unlikely you'll still be using the Pandora at that time (as you will not use it at 900Mhz constantly, only when required, and at the moment, it's not required for anything).

Any daemon or mechanism that scales on demand?

 

[javaJake]

Pandora is likely to be 500Mhz, considering how everything at the moment runs fast enough (too fast?) at that clock speed.

:lol: That's awesome. That just makes the wait for it seem all the longer.

 

[Squidge]

Any daemon or mechanism that scales on demand?

Yes, you can specify the maximum amount of power management, and the OS will do all it can to reduce battery load/increase battery life. It's not fully implemented yet though.

 

[gibberish]

Pandora is likely to be 500Mhz, considering how everything at the moment runs fast enough (too fast?) at that clock speed.

only the old consoles run too fast at 500mhz. there are plenty of other reasons why someone would want 900mhz out of it. for example if anyone ports an n64 emulator then itll probably need every bit of juice it can get. audio apps like trackers, graphics programs similar to gimp, the list could go on.

so im going to ask, if we somehow end up bricking our pandora's because theyre overclocked to 800 or 900 or even 600mhz are we screwed warranty wise?

it has always been stated that the chip will be running at 600mhz, and nobody ever mentioned any risk in getting as much out of it as possible. if it turns out that they are shipped @500mhz and we overclock at out own risk then thats a big disadvantage for me :/

 

[daemonaholic]

Pandora is likely to be 500Mhz, considering how everything at the moment runs fast enough (too fast?) at that clock speed.

only the old consoles run too fast at 500mhz. there are plenty of other reasons why someone would want 900mhz out of it. for example if anyone ports an n64 emulator then itll probably need every bit of juice it can get. audio apps like trackers, graphics programs similar to gimp, the list could go on.

so im going to ask, if we somehow end up bricking our pandora's because theyre overclocked to 800 or 900 or even 600mhz are we screwed warranty wise?

it has always been stated that the chip will be running at 600mhz, and nobody ever mentioned any risk in getting as much out of it as possible. if it turns out that they are shipped @500mhz and we overclock at out own risk then thats a big disadvantage for me :/


I'm assuming that if you overclock the CPU to extreme levels for pretty much whenever you use it, that you're pretty SoL when it comes to a warranty (although if the CPU's dying within whatever short period the warranty may cover is, no matter the clockspeed, it may just be a faulty chip ). I mean, come on, seriously? This is the greatest CPU in any handheld gaming device at the moment so 600mhz should be just fine most of the time...FFS, atleast you can overclock it to 900+mhz when needed (unlike MOST CPUs/CPU architectures). Not to mention that ARM and TI have made it clear that the CPU can run upwards of 1ghz fine. All you're really risking is lifetime of the CPU...it's up to you to judge whether you'd prefer to only have your Pandora for 5 years and running at 900mhz or 10 years (?) and running at 600mhz.

As for the applications you mentioned...I have no idea why 900mhz vs 600mhz would make a difference for a tracker...the DS has nitrotracker and that runs perfectly acceptable with the crappy little arm9 they have. IRC, FastTracker ran on DOS back in the 33mhz days (a 600mhz armv7 based cpu is muuuuuch more advanced than a 33mhz 386 or 66mhz 486) and madtracker and soundtracker don't require much either.

In regards to gimp...you'll probably only need to OC for the filters...the actual editing should work fine at 600mhz (I ran GIMP on my old 400mhz P2 quite comfortably). If anything, the memory and memory bandwidth will be a bigger hindrence than the CPU.

Also keep in mind that I don't represent the Pandora team in any way, so they might actually consider this warranty concern.

 

[danboid]

And of course tracking originated on the Amiga which only had a 16-bit, 7Mhz cpu. OK, the Amiga had a dedicated sound chip to handle the samples (8-bit Paula) but still, tracking isn't going to push the Pandora at all.

I frequently used to overclock my Zaurus to 624Mhz when compiling stuff. Under some distros it would cause the screen refresh to change, sometimes causing slight flicker but apart from that it still works perfectly.

 

[Squidge]

so im going to ask, if we somehow end up bricking our pandora's because theyre overclocked to 800 or 900 or even 600mhz are we screwed warranty wise?

Your unlikely to brick a Pandora within 12 months (assumed length of warranty) by overclocking to 600Mhz, but if you manage to kill the chip by overclocking to extremes (800+Mhz), then it's doubtful the warranty will cover it, as that will be clearly out of spec.

However, the same applies to the Gp2X, and how many of those do you see bricked due to cpu frequency being too high for too long a time?

 

[gibberish]

maybe tracking apps were a bad example, but there are still going to a myriad of applications which will benefit greatly from overclocking to 900mhz. info on this has been a bit misleading so far. ok fair enough a lot of people on here are savvy with the risks of doing such a thing but all weve heard until this thread was that some chips overlcock to 900mhz 'with no problems', which leads people like myself to assume that overclocking the cpu is going to be standard procedure once the pandora arrives. even craigix stated in another thread that over clocking 'may' reduce lifespan but itll still last beyond any length of time that you'd want to use it for.

 

[quadomatic]

maybe tracking apps were a bad example, but there are still going to a myriad of applications which will benefit greatly from overclocking to 900mhz. info on this has been a bit misleading so far. ok fair enough a lot of people on here are savvy with the risks of doing such a thing but all weve heard until this thread was that some chips overlcock to 900mhz 'with no problems', which leads people like myself to assume that overclocking the cpu is going to be standard procedure once the pandora arrives. even craigix stated in another thread that over clocking 'may' reduce lifespan but itll still last beyond any length of time that you'd want to use it for.

I suppose overclocking won't be as necessary as it was on the GP2X simply because Pandora has so much more power, but overclocking wouldn't be a problem. There was an example in the other thread where it was like, maybe if the processor had a lifespan of 15 years, you'll get 10 years out of it. That's not bad, and you probably wouldn't be using the Pandora in 10 years. Hell, GP2X came out in November of 2005. 3 years later we're getting a replacement!

 

[gibberish]

There was an example in the other thread where it was like, maybe if the processor had a lifespan of 15 years, you'll get 10 years out of it.

but thats what im talking about - is that really the case?

because thats not what the beagleboard people have said at all, theyve said that anything above 600mhz really isnt recommended because you could damage it.

and i wonder why pandora has been touted as 600mhz all this time but now all the devs are testing their emulators 'underclocked' at 500mhz. and now there is even a hint that pandora's will ship at 500mhz to start with, as if to say that 600mhz might not be advisable. i mean, i cant think of any disadvantage of shipping at 600mhz unless there is a slight risk of failures at this speed. why would you ship at 500mhz instead of 600?

 

[parag0n]

increased default battery life.

 

[TaG]

I suppose overclocking won't be as necessary as it was on the GP2X simply because Pandora has so much more power
Do you not think that even with more power that just pushes the goals further forward? Then something else becomes reachable if only you overclock it a little. A little more. Almost there, just a bit more. Then, oh look there's new hardware available lets try that. Not quite. Maybe if we overclock it just a little. There is no end.

There was an example in the other thread where it was like, maybe if the processor had a lifespan of 15 years, you'll get 10 years out of it.

but thats what im talking about - is that really the case?

because thats not what the beagleboard people have said at all, theyve said that anything above 600mhz really isnt recommended because you could damage it.

and i wonder why pandora has been touted as 600mhz all this time but now all the devs are testing their emulators 'underclocked' at 500mhz. and now there is even a hint that pandora's will ship at 500mhz to start with, as if to say that 600mhz might not be advisable. i mean, i cant think of any disadvantage of shipping at 600mhz unless there is a slight risk of failures at this speed. why would you ship at 500mhz instead of 600?
As beagle isn't a portable device as it stands, they are probably concerned that people will want to use it like a desktop or whatever and will overclock to the full a lot of the time, to make it into something 'better'.

 

[Squidge]

because thats not what the beagleboard people have said at all, theyve said that anything above 600mhz really isnt recommended because you could damage it.

Yes, over time, it could damage it. Overclocking always works like that. Intel and AMD (as well as every other processor manufacturer) say the exact same thing.

why would you ship at 500mhz instead of 600?

I can think of a couple of reasons:

a) Most of the applications that ship with the device will be more than happy at 500Mhz.
b) Running at 500Mhz instead of 600Mhz will increase battery life.

 

[cb88]

sigh... doubleing your clock speed won't double the speed of your pandora.... ram bandwidth will be the same and probably the real limiting factor for the bigger projects IMO its better to run the pandora slower by default but for the fact that it makes it a goal for people to reach "i need to get my emulator running at default pandora speed" etc...

mostlikely noone will ever overclock unless they are runnning a beast of an emulator maybe N64 or saturn (if that even happens) or dreamcast so we can get 5 fps (heh yet again assuming we get that).... i doubt hardly any native stuff will need an overclock... i mean this hardware is very powerfull

 

[gibberish]

a) Most of the applications that ship with the device will be more than happy at 500Mhz.
b) Running at 500Mhz instead of 600Mhz will increase battery life.

a) but who is going to use the device solely with the applications it ships with? nobody. people will undoubtedly be pushing the pandora to its very limits in terms of software before too long and it will require all the juice it can get to accomplish this.
b) expected battery life was better than brilliant at 600mhz. if the machine runs safely at 600mhz then ship at 600mhz, dont underclock for the sake of an hour or 2 more on battery life.