N64 ???

[Kyosys]

Just saying that the OS startig with u, or k, is more likely to consume 33% of ram than 33% of CPU under a very particular situation. I'm not saying this is how it will be installed on the Pandora. You don't need to defend ubuntu here, I'm not attacking it.

what about x?

No seriously, the linux will, as how the developers promised, almost not be noticable from the percentages it takes away.

 

[paddy]

btw ,to the guy talking about the psp deadalus and how it is rubbish, plays two games very slowly
and all that - fuck you pal ,you have no idea how hard it is to develop an n64 emulator and you also
havent got a clue about psp obviously.

the current R12 revision of deadalus can play many n64 roms directly and those games run
at around 15-25-35 fps,games include golden eye-15fps lylatwars/starwing64 -20fps and other
games that run are mariokart64-45 fps pilotwings64 super smash bros ,mario64 and others.

the psp is a superb handheld and what has been coded for psp is pretty dam good in any book
the pandora would make this emulator the best thing out there,i hate the psp haters on here
and those who havent really got a clue.

btw - the psp has been running 333 for ages basicly since it was hacked,a long time and not
222 from when sony decided to release the 333 firmware update.


get it sorted out i wand strmn nrmn on the pandora team ,tho with comments like
some here ,i wouldnt blame him for saying no thanks.

 

[Mithrildor]

Indeed , some people really don't know that it's hard to make emulators. But it took developers years to build the real console and even needed to make a lot of updates to get the console working , so why should it be easy to make a emulator? Come on people , a N64 emulator will be made sometime , but don't expect one which works at the release.

 

[gruso]

get it sorted out i wand strmn nrmn on the pandora team

I understand where you were coming from with your post, but this comment in particular isn't how things get done in this community.

 

[smr]

Judging from my calculations, it could run as good as the xbox n64 emulator or the wii n64 emulator since the specs seem rather similar (more MHZ and RAM then both). That of course is a rough guess because theres so many factors involved including:

The Xbox, the Wii and the Pandora cannot be compared with an apples-to-apples clock speed comparison. The Xbox is running an Intel Celeron at 733 Mhz[1], the Wii a IBM PowerPC processor at 730 Mhz[2], and finally the Pandora with its 600-900 Mhz A8. Though they all run at about the same clock speed, the amount of work they can get done per clock is completely different. The Pandora has been compared with a 233 Mhz Pentium2 (couldn't find the source of this; I read it on the old forum). That's crazy powerful by handheld standards, but no comparison to current non-portable hardware.

Ultra HLE's minimum specs were reportedly a 233 Mhz P2 with 32 megs of ram and an original Voodoo card[3]. I wager that we will have an emulator capable of emulating some N64 games at a playable speed.

 

[smr]

First off, any self respecting emulator will not run with full linux in the background, it will run directly on the hardware.

Why not? I would say that any self-respecting developer would insist on using an operating system in the background and I don't know how you could run only part of the linux kernel without running the whole thing. Anyone who attempts at writing an emulator, or any software for that matter, without using an OS would have to essentially write their own OS. I promise that person would never finish enough of the OS to even get started on writing their intended application, be it a N64 emulator or tic-tac-toe.

 

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

I totally agree with paddy here, strmnnrmn definitely needs to be on the pandora team.
he´s done a terrific job with dynarec and is sure to make a perfect n64 emu on the pandora
and you really have no idea how it plays on the psp, its pretty good already. just search at youtube for some of the videos of the newest release of the emulator to know whats it about. I´m comfortably playing my favorite n64 game mario 64 again on the psp and enjoying it a lot, and play some random mario kart matches
of course it doesnt play all the games with good speed, that is expected when you know how emulation works, but if you do so, you already know what can be made for the psp is already beeing made

but be sure there are other developers that are well familiar with n64 emulation here in our forum, and they know the pandora hardware is more than capable of playing a n64 emulator if it´s well-done.
here´s hope for them to support the pandora and make a nice n64 emulator that I know he is capable of we truly appreciate your work, despite the flames here and there, this is a good and supportive community ^_^

 

[MDave]

Judging from my calculations, it could run as good as the xbox n64 emulator or the wii n64 emulator since the specs seem rather similar (more MHZ and RAM then both). That of course is a rough guess because theres so many factors involved including:

The Xbox, the Wii and the Pandora cannot be compared with an apples-to-apples clock speed comparison. The Xbox is running an Intel Celeron at 733 Mhz[1], the Wii a IBM PowerPC processor at 730 Mhz[2], and finally the Pandora with its 600-900 Mhz A8. Though they all run at about the same clock speed, the amount of work they can get done per clock is completely different. The Pandora has been compared with a 233 Mhz Pentium2 (couldn't find the source of this; I read it on the old forum). That's crazy powerful by handheld standards, but no comparison to current non-portable hardware.

Ultra HLE's minimum specs were reportedly a 233 Mhz P2 with 32 megs of ram and an original Voodoo card[3]. I wager that we will have an emulator capable of emulating some N64 games at a playable speed.

On the contrary, thats also about how fast it runs on the xbox with 1964 or project64's cores in Surreal. That could be down to lack of programming optimization, but there hasn't been an update in a long while for it. Don't forget that the custom 733 MHz Intel Pentium III-based Mobile Celeron in the Xbox isn't like its PC variant, its a stripped down version too. The Pandora's configurable L2 cache can go up to 1 MB which is a LOT more then the xbox's 128 KB.

Here's a good example of comparing both processor's:

Compare the Quake 2 pandora video's with the one on the Xbox. Both run in software rendering mode, so its all processor and little-to-no gpu rendering.

Pandora's Q2 port runs at 60fps it looks like, at 800 x 480? Unless its a scaled up 320 x 240 resolution.
Xbox's Q2 port runs at 60fps at 320 x 240, but when you increase the resolution up to 800 x 600, its starts hitting 20's. I know this because I have tested it out myself.

That right there says they have about the same amount of performance, if not more for the Pandora.

This thing is packing more power then you think it has

 

[smr]

That right there says they have about the same amount of performance, if not more for the Pandora.

This thing is packing more power then you think it has

Though I hope you're right, I'm not so convinced. If Quake 2's rendering is memory-bound, then yes, having a larger cache and faster memory would definitely improve performance. I don't think emulation is a memory-bound task though. Pandora's emulation performance is gonna come down to raw instruction-processing power. This is speculation, but I'm certain that the Celeron, clock-for-clock, is more powerful than the Pandora's A8. I can't find any benchmarks to prove one way or the other... Who's got a dev board out there who can provide some benchmarks?

EDIT:
The ARM site claims the A8 can acheive 2000 dhrystones: http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html

Here's a link listing some Dhrystone scores of PCs: http://freespace.virgin.net/roy.longbottom/dhrystone results.htm

If the scores can be compared apples-to-apples (I have some uncertainty as to whether you can compare RISC vs. CISC dhrystone scores) then our Pandoras could be nearly as fast at the Dhrystone benchmark as a PIII Tualatin at 1.2 Ghz... The Dhrystone benchmark does NOT measure floating point performance.

God I hope this is right. That would be friggin' awesome! I have my doubts...

 

[mali]

Judging from my calculations, it could run as good as the xbox n64 emulator or the wii n64 emulator since the specs seem rather similar (more MHZ and RAM then both). That of course is a rough guess because theres so many factors involved including:

The Xbox, the Wii and the Pandora cannot be compared with an apples-to-apples clock speed comparison. The Xbox is running an Intel Celeron at 733 Mhz[1], the Wii a IBM PowerPC processor at 730 Mhz[2], and finally the Pandora with its 600-900 Mhz A8. Though they all run at about the same clock speed, the amount of work they can get done per clock is completely different. The Pandora has been compared with a 233 Mhz Pentium2 (couldn't find the source of this; I read it on the old forum). That's crazy powerful by handheld standards, but no comparison to current non-portable hardware.

Ultra HLE's minimum specs were reportedly a 233 Mhz P2 with 32 megs of ram and an original Voodoo card[3]. I wager that we will have an emulator capable of emulating some N64 games at a playable speed.

On the contrary, thats also about how fast it runs on the xbox with 1964 or project64's cores in Surreal. That could be down to lack of programming optimization, but there hasn't been an update in a long while for it. Don't forget that the custom 733 MHz Intel Pentium III-based Mobile Celeron in the Xbox isn't like its PC variant, its a stripped down version too. The Pandora's configurable L2 cache can go up to 1 MB which is a LOT more then the xbox's 128 KB.

Here's a good example of comparing both processor's:

Compare the Quake 2 pandora video's with the one on the Xbox. Both run in software rendering mode, so its all processor and little-to-no gpu rendering.

Pandora's Q2 port runs at 60fps it looks like, at 800 x 480? Unless its a scaled up 320 x 240 resolution.
Xbox's Q2 port runs at 60fps at 320 x 240, but when you increase the resolution up to 800 x 600, its starts hitting 20's. I know this because I have tested it out myself.

That right there says they have about the same amount of performance, if not more for the Pandora.

This thing is packing more power then you think it has

I remember it being 320x240 in the vid, 800x480 at 60fps is unrealistic in software rendering.

 

[mali]

The most important factor expecially with ID titles ist floating point performance and memory performance. Dhrystones don't mean much in 3D games.

 

[smr]

The most important factor expecially with ID titles ist floating point performance and memory performance. Dhrystones don't mean much in 3D games.

Depends. If their software renderer uses fixed-point math, then the floating-point performance wouldn't make a big difference. During the Quake 2 era processors were much better at integer calculations than reals, so most software renders avoided floating point entirely. And because textures, models and the video surface were all stored in system memory, memory speed and cache size was a critical factor in rendering performance.

 

[mali]

The most important factor expecially with ID titles ist floating point performance and memory performance. Dhrystones don't mean much in 3D games.

Depends. If their software renderer uses fixed-point math, then the floating-point performance wouldn't make a big difference. During the Quake 2 era processors were much better at integer calculations than reals, so most software renders avoided floating point entirely. And because textures, models and the video surface were all stored in system memory, memory speed and cache size was a critical factor in rendering performance.

But Quake 2 uses floating point. So no if..then needed :wink:

 

[smr]

But Quake 2 uses floating point. So no if..then needed :wink:

I stand corrected :wink: . I posted a thread asking for real benchmarks. We'll see if we come up with anything.

 

[benjiro]

EDIT:
The ARM site claims the A8 can acheive 2000 dhrystones: http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html

Here's a link listing some Dhrystone scores of PCs: http://freespace.virgin.net/roy.longbottom/dhrystone results.htm

If the scores can be compared apples-to-apples (I have some uncertainty as to whether you can compare RISC vs. CISC dhrystone scores) then our Pandoras could be nearly as fast at the Dhrystone benchmark as a PIII Tualatin at 1.2 Ghz... The Dhrystone benchmark does NOT measure floating point performance.

Don't forget, that the 2000 'dhrystones' is when the core's at 1Ghz. The A8 has a 2 'dhrystones' / Mhz. Compare it with a Pentium M Celeron, what is also 2 dhrystones / Mhz ( aka, in theorie, a 600Mhz A8 is the same as a 600Mhz Pentium M Celeron ). Of course, this is comparing apple's with oranges. L1, L2 Cache, memory bandwidth, Floating point unit, instruction set etc all play a part in it...

The Xbox uses a modified Geforce 3 if i remember correctly. I think that the GPU power is simulate between both, but again. Grounds for much discussion. Same with the PSP's so called 33 million poly/sec discussions ;-)

Whats also more important is the DSP, and the GPU being used by the emulators. Here's a lot of untapped power.

I remember the Dell x50v. When Picard ( developer of beta player - A movie player ) started tapping into the dedicated 2700G GPU ( a small comparison, its about 1/10the of the Pandora's SGX capability ), the effect was rather amazing. Where you needed to OC the x50v to 700Mhz, with the 2700G's plugin, it allowed you to play the same movie, with 200Mhz core ( if i remember correctly, its been 4 years ... ), resulting in a longer battery life.

 

[mali]

I remember the Dell x50v. When Picard ( developer of beta player - A movie player ) started tapping into the dedicated 2700G GPU ( a small comparison, its about 1/10the of the Pandora's SGX capability ), the effect was rather amazing. Where you needed to OC the x50v to 700Mhz, with the 2700G's plugin, it allowed you to play the same movie, with 200Mhz core ( if i remember correctly, its been 4 years ... ), resulting in a longer battery life.

Ahh.. back in the days
Tho whole idea of the OMAP is efficiency. When the Pandora scene matures, I can see a lot of currently unthinkable achievements

 

[Kyosys]

I remember the Dell x50v. When Picard ( developer of beta player - A movie player ) started tapping into the dedicated 2700G GPU ( a small comparison, its about 1/10the of the Pandora's SGX capability ), the effect was rather amazing. Where you needed to OC the x50v to 700Mhz, with the 2700G's plugin, it allowed you to play the same movie, with 200Mhz core ( if i remember correctly, its been 4 years ... ), resulting in a longer battery life.

Ahh.. back in the days
Tho whole idea of the OMAP is efficiency. When the Pandora scene matures, I can see a lot of currently unthinkable achievements

It's funny. Back in the day everyone was writing small and fast software, trying to get it as small and fast as possible. These days it's all huge bloated inefficient software, because the hardware is readily available. The homebrew scene for handhelds is the only one where software is really being optimized anymore...

 

[andy_js]

im more intrested in trying to run a linux n64 emulator on it, see what the outcome is first, as i think it was said linux takes up 33% of cpu and firefox takes up another 33%, but dont quote me

Wa!~ Don't make up cr@p while saying not to be quoted. Maybe you are talking about one situation for RAM using a bloated linux OS starting with u.
Don't play the same game. The Os starting by u is not that bad.

Just saying that the OS startig with u, or k, is more likely to consume 33% of ram than 33% of CPU under a very particular situation. I'm not saying this is how it will be installed on the Pandora. You don't need to defend ubuntu here, I'm not attacking it.

I run debian with XFCE on my htc universal, and it easily uses up the 128mb RAM - so swap space is a requirement.

33% CPU? Bollocks does it! - 6% is more accurate.

If you really had to I guess you could kill X to free up some RAM, but AFAIK not many graphics drivers support OpenGL on FB.

Swap on SD has been pretty quick in my experiences.

But what do I know? I develop on the desktop.

 

[mali]

I remember the Dell x50v. When Picard ( developer of beta player - A movie player ) started tapping into the dedicated 2700G GPU ( a small comparison, its about 1/10the of the Pandora's SGX capability ), the effect was rather amazing. Where you needed to OC the x50v to 700Mhz, with the 2700G's plugin, it allowed you to play the same movie, with 200Mhz core ( if i remember correctly, its been 4 years ... ), resulting in a longer battery life.

Ahh.. back in the days
Tho whole idea of the OMAP is efficiency. When the Pandora scene matures, I can see a lot of currently unthinkable achievements

It's funny. Back in the day everyone was writing small and fast software, trying to get it as small and fast as possible. These days it's all huge bloated inefficient software, because the hardware is readily available. The homebrew scene for handhelds is the only one where software is really being optimized anymore...

Yes. And seeing how intel pushes its Atom into the market, may continue this tradition. They should have continued their xscale project instead. I really hope, that ARM will survive in the long run. Its a so much more 'sexy' technology because it feels like future with its efficiency.

 

[Nightwind0]

I remember the Dell x50v. When Picard ( developer of beta player - A movie player ) started tapping into the dedicated 2700G GPU ( a small comparison, its about 1/10the of the Pandora's SGX capability ), the effect was rather amazing. Where you needed to OC the x50v to 700Mhz, with the 2700G's plugin, it allowed you to play the same movie, with 200Mhz core ( if i remember correctly, its been 4 years ... ), resulting in a longer battery life.

Ahh.. back in the days
Tho whole idea of the OMAP is efficiency. When the Pandora scene matures, I can see a lot of currently unthinkable achievements

It's funny. Back in the day everyone was writing small and fast software, trying to get it as small and fast as possible. These days it's all huge bloated inefficient software, because the hardware is readily available. The homebrew scene for handhelds is the only one where software is really being optimized anymore...

Not true, embedded software is still like that. I'm a professional embedded software engineer... we still worry about making things small and fast.