My Thoughts on the Pyra

[Orz]

Now I don't want to insult anyone but...

I very mixed feelings about the current state of the pyra's hardware. On the one hand I love the fact that the pyra is continuing to use almost exactly the same design the pandora had. I love the pandora's design and I can't envision a more perfect design for a handheld device. Also, I actually like the fact that the pyra is being forced to use a 720p screen, as 1080p puts way to much stress on the gpu for the image quality increase it provides on that size of screen.

I understand that ED is trying as hard as he can, and the reason we're getting an OMAP was because absolutely no one else would even talk to him. That said, the pyra's cpu is very weak by today's standards, and will be completely obsolete by the time the pyra comes out. The pyra's website advertises that it "has a state-of-the-art mobile CPU." Seriously? That's a bald-faced lie! Even most one year old smartphones have better cpu's than the OMAP that the pyra is going to be using. If we look at the pyra's closest competitor (not that that's very close), the nvidia shield, it has cpu that is twice as powerful as the pyra's cpu despite being almost a year old! Also, the shield has double the ram. However, my biggest disappointment was learning that there is an exactly 0% chance of there ever being an x86 version of the pyra simply because intel doesn't even offer atoms as socs. An x86 pyra would, in my eyes, be infinitely superior to an ARM version, even if the battery life would be much shorter. Almost all games I would want to play on the pyra are closed source and x86. Even if the pyra could easily change cpus to a better ARM chip later because of the daughter-board, is feasible to actually do so because of the software side of things? And remember the outrage that just the suggestion of a 1 ghz model of the pandora caused? Also, is there any reason why we can't have 4 gb of RAM?

Also, I would like to see a trackball as either a replacement for the right nub or as an external sort of thing that attaches to the side. Face it, any sort of analogue nub or joystick will always be inferior to the precise input of mice and trackballs. There's a reason console games always have ridiculous auto-aim. While the touchscreen has the desktop covered, it can't be used for any first or third person games. I use a thumb trackball instead of mouse normally, and for me it would be awesome to have one on the pyra too. 

 

[rygD]

As I have said before, I would love more RAM.

 

[TrashyMG]

All I can say Is the Pyra will be much like the Pandora, but a bit of an upgrade. While the OMAP5 isn't quite as fast as the latest and greatest it's a substantial speed increase over the Pandora and a much welcome upgrade.
 

Almost all games I would want to play on the pyra are closed source and x86.

Closed source really isn't in the spirit of this community.. 
 

And remember the outrage that just the suggestion of a 1 ghz model of the pandora caused?

I don't really think there was a huge amount of outrage. 
 

Also, is there any reason why we can't have 4 gb of RAM?

The exact amount of ram hasn't really been decided yet, it's most likely will be chosen closer to the production date. In an light weight ARM environment  I rarely peak over 256MBs of ram let alone 2GBs on the OMAP5 devboard. 

I can see you point of view on the hardware, but many here see the benefit of an open hardware / software platform even if it's not the latest and greatest..

 

[_wb_]

The Pyra is going to get the most advanced SoC that fits the size and power requirements and that you can get in low quantities. Everyone always wants something faster and better, but if it's not available, it's not going to happen. If a SoC manufacturer does not want to sell to you, what can you do?

Closed-source x86 games would probably not run natively even on a x86 cpu (there are more hurdles than just the cpu instruction set), and even if you can get them to run, they will not be adapted to a small screen and to the particular controls of the Pyra -- they will most likely assume a PC keyboard + mouse and a 17-23 inch monitor.

An external mouse or trackball is of course not a problem -- plenty of USB ports for that. Replacing the right nub with a trackball: I don't see how there would be room for that, unless you are talking about a ball with a tiny radius.

4GB or 2GB of RAM: more is always better, but it's also more expensive and it consumes more power. On my Pandora (512MB of RAM), I don't have the feeling that memory is a problem. I can multitask between writing a book in LibreOffice, editing some image in Gimp, web browsing, and a bunch of terminal tabs, without running out of memory. I think 2GB should be enough for the Pyra.

 

[Kiga]

The only thing I have to complain about is the 3G while we are in 4G era and could get it.

 

[_wb_]

The only thing I have to complain about is the 3G while we are in 4G era and could get it.

How much are you prepared to pay for an upgrade from 3G to 4G though?

 

[DaMummy]

can i dislike a post? because original post gets all my downvotes/dislikes

 

[Kiga]

How much are you prepared to pay for an upgrade from 3G to 4G though?

Maybe 100€ but probably a long time after I bought my 3G Pyra unless I get rich but I assume it will be more because ED didn't denied that we will have to buy a full pcb (without cpu).

Actually I don't even know if I will take 3G, I am in an akward situation since we don'it know if the 4G pcb will came out soon or never.

Still 4G is way better than 3G...

 

[sebt3]

can i dislike a post? because original post gets all my downvotes/dislikes

I like your disliking

 

[EvilDragon]

The CPU itself is state-of-the-art. It's currently the fastest ARM CPU being used out there right now. Big.LITTLE don't have faster CPUs, just more of them in their SoC.


The shield has A9 CPUs, doesn't it? So the CPU is inferior.


About the RAM:


I ran KDE4, GIMP, FireFox, two PSX Emulators and a GameBoy emulator at the same time - and had about 600MB RAM left on the devboard with 2GB RAM. More RAM needs more power and is more expensive - so I wonder: what would you need 4GB for?


The problem with x86 is that it's basically only a CPU, not a full SoC. You need to design the full hardware incl. BIOS around it - something we seriously can't do right now with our limited manpower / money.


Maybe sometime in the future...


The specs and connections of the CPU PCB will be fully released though - so if you like, you can organize a team that creates an x86 CPU Board. It doesn't have to be me who creates it.

 

[Askarus]

I ran KDE4, GIMP, FireFox, two PSX Emulators and a GameBoy emulator at the same time

It was Sega Mega Drive, not Gmaeboy .

 

[Bosbeetle]

The CPU is outdated argument was also made when the pandora was being produced, and I still have the feeling my pandora can do a lot more than a smart phone. In my opinion its about utilisation and not about speed.

 

[rohezal]

More RAM needs more power and is more expensive

How much more would 4GB cost and how much more power usage would it mean (in relation to 2GB and to the complete power usage of the Pyra)? I think 2GB are enough but maybe some "mega android games" could need 4GB in the future for HD textures.

 

[xiongxioi]

I think ED's absolutely right, android only need 2gb of ram is because android is inefficient. Apple's products never need that much ram even they come with the so called retina display.

Yes, all the so called next gen socs have 8 cores, but no people are going to use that in many years. Even big companies struggle with multicore optimization, I would assume Pyra's devs would not even bother with a quad core setup.

Pyra's as powerful as it needs to be if it's coming out next year. (cough, cough, I hope ED can push pyra out in 2015, not 2018)

 

[Natsu]

Without a 64 bit processor, 4GB is pointless. ~3GB would be nice.

The only thing I have to complain about is the 3G while we are in 4G era and could get it.

And we are moving to the 5G era.

 

[slaeshjag]

To my knowlegse, the OMAP5 does have a 40 bit physical address space, and a 32 bit logical address space. Which means the CPU can address 1 TB of RAM, but every process only have a 4 GB address space. How much of the logical address space is overhead for usermode processes, I don't know.

 

[_wb_]

More RAM needs more power and is more expensive

How much more would 4GB cost and how much more power usage would it mean (in relation to 2GB and to the complete power usage of the Pyra)? I think 2GB are enough but maybe some "mega android games" could need 4GB in the future for HD textures.

With sufficiently inefficient coding you can of course fill any amount of RAM even for just a trivial task, but imo something is wrong if you really need that much RAM to render your game. Even if you use 32 bits per pixel, 2GB is enough to store 250 FullHD framebuffers, or about 550 framebuffers at 720p. If you really have that many pixels worth of textures and stuff in your game, you may want to consider implementing something more clever than just keeping everything in memory.

I don't want to sacrifice battery life to lazy coders

RAM does not consume a lot of power in the bigger picture, but unlike the screen and the CPU, it needs to be powered all the time, even when idle, lid closed, or suspended to RAM. So it will mostly have an impact on standby time. And I would assume that 4GB needs about twice as much power as 2GB.

 

[fusion_power]

And 2GB RAM are cheaper than 4GB, don't forget. ^^

The choosen SoC seems to be fast enough for our needs, at the end it counts so or so if the Software is optimized for it or not. The fastest CPU is useless if you can use it properly, see how good Games onto the PS Vita or 3DS can look, and their Hardware is far inferior compared to the Pyra Hardware. The Pyra has more than enouh reserve to be a powerful Handheld over many years. First you have to take usage of that hardware to 100% and if this is enough, you can discuss about faster Hardware.

Oh, and don't forget, battery life is very important onto an Handheld Device and I doubt you can get the targeted 10+ houres battery life with more powerful SoC's.

 

[ekianjo]

An x86 pyra would, in my eyes, be infinitely superior to an ARM version, even if the battery life would be much shorter. Almost all games I would want to play on the pyra are closed source and x86.

If you like closed source stuff then you better get a vita or something. And enjoy it being obsolete when noone develops closed source software for it.

 

[WizardStan]

I think you may have fallen prey to Intel's "more Mhz == more power" marketing scam.

the nvidia shield, it has cpu that is twice as powerful as the pyra's cpu

How do you figure that? The Tegra4 packs A9 cores which get 2.5 instructions per clock. The OMAP5 contains A15s which get 3.5 instructions per clock. Combined with the fact that the OMAP5 runs at a higher clock than the Tegra4 in the Shield and we can prove that the shield will actually be much slower than the OMAP5 at single and dual threaded tasks. The only place the Shield may pick up is when you somehow manage to get 4 threads all running at 100%, and if that is your situation then I would question why you feel the need to do that.There are very few devices using A15s at the moment because it is, as the website states, state-of-the-art, brand spanking new.

has double the ram

That's surprising considering ED hasn't finalized any decisions on the RAM, for the Shield to have double NaN must make it a truly powerful machine indeed.

there is an exactly 0% chance of there ever being an x86 version of the pyra

ED said it was hard, not impossible.

An x86 pyra would, in my eyes, be infinitely superior to an ARM version, even if the battery life would be much shorter.

Then assemble a team and produce it. You wouldn't even have to do all the work, ED's going to release the specs for the CPU board, you just need to produce a dual layer PCB that follows the specifications. I'm serious here. ED's interests lie in ARM, he's not making a device for you, he's making a device for himself and the rest of us are just benefiting from that. Making an x86 CPU board would be hard but not THAT hard, find someone with serious interests in x86 the way the various developers here have interests in ARM and you should be able to come up with something. You could probably stand to make a lot of money, especially if you partnered with ED once it was finished.