Next Generation Pandora

[darkblu]

EDIT: found more info wonder how this matches up to the current pandora power consumption
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-Pineview-Processor-Family-Detailed-113874.shtml

..while the average power consumption will drop from 4W to 2W. The reduced power consumption is largely due to the redesign of Intel's platform, which has been reduced from a 3-chip setup to a 2-chip setup, with the memory controller and the graphics processor placed on the same die as the CPU. As a result, upcoming designs will implement a fan-less cooling solution, enabling a quieter computing experience.

i realize 'fan-less' must be a huge step for intel (i can hear the champagne pops coming from intel's general direction), but call me when they get 'sink-less'..


on a different note, here's a brief follow-up on the zii, now that i've had some time to get to know it.

as i said, the device is a really interesting piece of hw. not yet consumer-ready (at least not in its non-android form), but interesting from a dev's POV nevertheless. regardless, i still cannot provide any solid benchmark numbers, and that's not because i don't want to. there's a serious obstacle to that, which obstacle may turn out permanent, or may be removed later, i'm not sure yet. i'm talking of a constantly-throttling power management (apparently trying to maximise the battery life); even in my rudimentary primer app, at one moment the fps may be 60, the next - 30, then it may jitter to sub-30, just to return to 60 a few moments later - as you understand, rather hard to measure anything under these conditions. on a positive note, though, the pesky throttling seems to be curbed when the device outputs to HDMI (yes, i can run my handheld code on my living-room TV in 720p - neat), so we'll see about that.

the platform's good sides:

* plaszma os is a rather accessible linux distro - throw in an sshd to it (nobody stops you from doing that) and voila - you're root on your own device - explore, tinker, fix.
* the proprietary SDK is really well designed for the most part (you can tell it comes from people with a huge background in media and graphics) - slim, yet functional. i wish it was more complete, too.
* with the newer fw revisions the device's features start to come to life one by one - now almost everything is functional, except for the bluetooth stack.
* the media-processor array in there is something that i, for one, belive, will be what future generations of handhelds will be orienting towards - i.e. no more specialized accelerators. or at least, not in today's configuration.

the bad sides:

* it appears the same future-looking tech in the zii is at the same time its achilles heel. judgeing by the overly-aggressive power-management, it seems that the device's power comes at a price, and the power draw is still not in its prime time. that's my guess, anyway; maybe i'm wrong, and it's all from the early stage of the product lifecycle (pre-market) - we'll see.
* no direct access to the media-processing array for now - that's the offical word from creative. if devs want something, creative will consider implementing the libs for that, but that's that. as you understand, that means no way to run custom code on the media array until GL ES 2.x comes to the device (not clear when, though signs point at a rather-sooner-than-later appearance), and maybe OCL in the long run (fingers crossed).
* the device has one of its two ARM cores and some 64MB (out of 256) dedicated currently to its 'core functions' - ie. the linux does not manage those, and neither do your apps. the positive aspect of that is that the media array does seem to be a totally autonomous engine from the POV of your code.
* no FPU on the ARM can be generally a hurdle, but so far the fp emulation has held up sufficient for most tasks, given one does not try to brute-force their way, but puts some thought in what they do.

all that said, i'm not seeing the zii as a pandora substitute, and i'm still looking toward the latter with the same enthusiasm i had on the day i ordered it.

 

[Tensuke]

It was mentioned in detail in an earlier thread, but it should use somewhere between 1-2W afaik, possibly less with certain things turned off and with different power saving options.

 

[AireTamStorm]

The Atom doesn't use much power. Th chipset that comes with Atom does. Even if they slimmed the power consumption of the chip down, unless the chipset slims down with it you will not see much battery benefit. Our "overkill" battery of 4200mAh would turn into "bare minimum" with an architecture change.

Beyond the power usage even, x86 is overrated. The "huge" library it has is made up by most of the relevant software being open source (on Linux anyway). Most x86 software doesn't end up as highly optimized as the usual ARM ports...because nothing is needed to be done to get the software running on the architecture. There are exceptions of course...

 

[SNESFAN]

The Atom doesn't use much power. Th chipset that comes with Atom does. Even if they slimmed the power consumption of the chip down, unless the chipset slims down with it you will not see much battery benefit. Our "overkill" battery of 4200mAh would turn into "bare minimum" with an architecture change.

Beyond the power usage even, x86 is overrated. The "huge" library it has is made up by most of the relevant software being open source (on Linux anyway). Most x86 software doesn't end up as highly optimized as the usual ARM ports...because nothing is needed to be done to get the software running on the architecture. There are exceptions of course...

noted that the chipset is the power hog, but the "Tiger Point" chipset is susposed to fix that and use as much or less power as the proc 7w TDP with average of 2w (check 3rd link in post 120)

I also disagree with your bare minimum and say it would decent just not overkill. Check post #76 in this thread as I noted another x86 handheld with 2400mah getting 3-6 hours on a charge. You'd be lying to yourself if 5-8 hours (guestimate with 4200 mAh on x86) is a bare minimum

now I apperciate your obvious love for ARM procs, as I do love alot of my gadgets that run on ARM procs, but there is still plenty of software for x86 that I would like see on a handheld with gaming controls... particularly some MMO games, MS Windows, and other stuff that's not open source and will never see the light of day on ARM or linux because the demographic just isn't there to support the development and support of that kind of platform from the producers standpoint.

I can play all my favorites wow, warcraft 3, starcraft, diablo 2, maple story, gunbound (lot of blizzard entertainment I know) on my Asus EEE pc 90x & my Acer one at an acceptable playable (IMO) fps as long as it's configured correctly. I think these are fun titles and none of them will see ARM support.

I do not now, nor would I ever suggest that they replace the pandora ARM support with x86 completely, I'm just saying if there was a x86 version available, even at twice the cost (or more) I would easily buy one. I just wish that those that have the proven ability to do something like this would. If anything I don't think it would be a horrible idea.

 

[Exophase]

I also disagree with your bare minimum and say it would decent just not overkill. Check post #76 in this thread as I noted another x86 handheld with 2400mah getting 3-6 hours on a charge. You'd be lying to yourself if 5-8 hours (guestimate with 4200 mAh on x86) is a bare minimum

Knowing the mAh rating of a battery is not enough. You need to know the voltage too. In AireTamStorm's post it's clear he's talking about Pandora's battery, which is single Lithium Ion cell and thus 3.7V. The UMID mbook M1 could be using multiple Lithium Ion cells, which would give it a higher effective voltage. For instance, the Lenovo Ideapad S10 I'm using right now is only 2600mAh, yet has an 11.1V nominal voltage, meaning it has three cells. So as long as the internal power supply circuitry is not terribly inefficient it'll have nearly 1.85 times effective capacity that Pandora has, despite having only 62% the mAh rating.

You've already been told this, I hope you understand now >_< Until you can find out the Wh rating of the battery then it's a void comparison. But I really doubt that it's single cell because that's totally inconsistent with the power draw reported for typical Atom platforms. Plus, I take all usage reports < 100% with a grain of salt, because they could be doing anything. So the 3.5 hour report is all that really matters to me.

The Pandora team would be out of their minds to make an "x86 version", which would have a completely different design with a completely different cost, software set, and battery life. You're not asking them to make a different version of the Pandora, you're asking them to make a totally different handheld targeting a pretty different market. I think they're taxed enough trying to get one handheld out the door without doing two at the same time.

 

[SNESFAN]

Knowing the mAh rating of a battery is not enough. You need to know the voltage too. In AireTamStorm's post it's clear he's talking about Pandora's battery, which is single Lithium Ion cell and thus 3.7V. The UMID mbook M1 could be using multiple Lithium Ion cells, which would give it a higher effective voltage. For instance, the Lenovo Ideapad S10 I'm using right now is only 2600mAh, yet has an 11.1V nominal voltage, meaning it has three cells. So as long as the internal power supply circuitry is not terribly inefficient it'll have nearly 1.85 times effective capacity that Pandora has, despite having only 62% the mAh rating.

You've already been told this, I hope you understand now >_< Until you can find out the Wh rating of the battery then it's a void comparison. But I really doubt that it's single cell because that's totally inconsistent with the power draw reported for typical Atom platforms. Plus, I take all usage reports < 100% with a grain of salt, because they could be doing anything. So the 3.5 hour report is all that really matters to me.

The Pandora team would be out of their minds to make an "x86 version", which would have a completely different design with a completely different cost, software set, and battery life. You're not asking them to make a different version of the Pandora, you're asking them to make a totally different handheld targeting a pretty different market. I think they're taxed enough trying to get one handheld out the door without doing two at the same time.

I can't dig up where I read it, but I'm certian it said 2 cell for the mbook and I did mention this in my 1st or 2nd post on this thread, and I admitted I wasn't a battery expert, and did the basic (incorrect apparently) math... but how does that equate out when compared to the pandora battery then if it's 2 cell or is more info still needed? I've searched around the web and can't find detail specs in reference to the battery it uses for the number of volts/amps/watts or else I would have posted it. I've constantly read where people bash x86 for ineffecintcy of power consumption as opposed to ARM but nowhere rarely people actually throwing out numbers where you can compare the two. I tried to provide info the best I could find on the new atom procs comming out and how it would unbiasedly compare to the current panda setup.

I'm searching back and maybe I'm just blind but I don't see where anyone told me this other than a one liner that sounded somewhat uneducated and uncertain, maybe it just went over my head. But yes, I am asking from someone who actually knows hardware & electronics how that would work out number wise. And if one was interested make a theroretical build that would work based on x86.

I don't think the market would be that different? Yes one is retro & open-source gaming & the other is more mainstream. Linux, being very well written, ARM being very well designed, I'll give ya those, but the really good software titles just aren't there for that setup. I will have my fingers crossed as much as the rest of you that this changes, but I can't really see myself doing anything other than emulation and quake and crap on this guy for the foreseeable future. If neither side is gonna budge software devs or hardware devs, we will never see those really cool games in our hands.

I'm also not suggesting that it be on their plate of stuff in the near future, but I would like to put the idea out there as to not completely strike x86 off the list of future designs as it overwhelmingly appears now from those who aren't fans of the x86 architecture... and apparently those who have lots of knowlege in the ways of hardware. Eventually far later down the line as this is the only company that does this kind of stuff that listens to suggestions from the community. And this was a topic of next generation pandora design correct? I was just trying to inspire the idea. I guess nobody likes my idea (agian)

 

[Exophase]

I can't dig up where I read it, but I'm certian it said 2 cell for the mbook and I did mention this in my 1st or 2nd post on this thread, and I admitted I wasn't a battery expert, and did the basic (incorrect apparently) math... but how does that equate out when compared to the pandora battery then if it's 2 cell or is more info still needed? I've searched around the web and can't find detail specs in reference to the battery it uses for the number of volts/amps/watts or else I would have posted it. I've constantly read where people bash x86 for ineffecintcy of power consumption as opposed to ARM but nowhere rarely people actually throwing out numbers where you can compare the two. I tried to provide info the best I could find on the new atom procs comming out and how it would unbiasedly compare to the current panda setup.

I'm searching back and maybe I'm just blind but I don't see where anyone told me this other than a one liner that sounded somewhat uneducated and uncertain, maybe it just went over my head. But yes, I am asking from someone who actually knows hardware & electronics how that would work out number wise. And if one was interested make a theroretical build that would work based on x86.

If it's two cell that means nominal 7.2V, or 18720 Wh. This is compared to the 15540 Wh the batter on Pandora will provides, so the mbook would have a higher capacity. If you traded batteries then the battery life would go down, not up.

I don't think the market would be that different? Yes one is retro & open-source gaming & the other is more mainstream. Linux, being very well written, ARM being very well designed, I'll give ya those, but the really good software titles just aren't there for that setup. I will have my fingers crossed as much as the rest of you that this changes, but I can't really see myself doing anything other than emulation and quake and crap on this guy for the foreseeable future. If neither side is gonna budge software devs or hardware devs, we will never see those really cool games in our hands.

The market would be different partially as an indirect consequence of the price and battery life. Costing twice as much definitely tends to change your market. It'd also be different because a lot of people want an ARM device instead of an x86 one.

I'm also not suggesting that it be on their plate of stuff in the near future, but I would like to put the idea out there as to not completely strike x86 off the list of future designs as it overwhelmingly appears now from those who aren't fans of the x86 architecture... and apparently those who have lots of knowlege in the ways of hardware. Eventually far later down the line as this is the only company that does this kind of stuff that listens to suggestions from the community. And this was a topic of next generation pandora design correct? I was just trying to inspire the idea. I guess nobody likes my idea (agian)

I don't think people would be that happy with a next generation Pandora having a very different architecture from the first one, because it'd restrain a lot of compatibility between the two. That'd probably be so bad as to negate the wins you get from bringing in x86 compatibility. craigix has actually said they have a lot of interest in x86 but are wary due to power consumption. But he's probably a lot more interested in other things (like OMAP4).

 

[SNESFAN]

I don't think people would be that happy with a next generation Pandora having a very different architecture from the first one, because it'd restrain a lot of compatibility between the two. That'd probably be so bad as to negate the wins you get from bringing in x86 compatibility. craigix has actually said they have a lot of interest in x86 but are wary due to power consumption. But he's probably a lot more interested in other things (like OMAP4).

oh well, I can't say I'm more than a little disappointed to hear all that. Maybe in the far far future another company will make one. gasp: actually rooting for knock off pandora) or by that time you and your boys could figure out how to 100% emulate me a pentium core 2 duo so I can get my warcraft on :lol:

thanks for your insight

 

[Exophase]

If you want to emulate a Core 2 Duo then why would an Atom suffice..?

 

[SNESFAN]

If you want to emulate a Core 2 Duo then why would an Atom suffice..?

i was just kidding about that... anything better than around the Pentium II era or better would probally be enough for the of PC games that don't generally suck graphics wise I donno I'm just throwing something out there... 486/windows98 era was kinda lackluster... but beggers can't be choosers I suppose and if I'm correct that's basically where we're at x86 emulation wise currently correct?

 

[ldesnogu]

I can play all my favorites wow, warcraft 3, starcraft, diablo 2, maple story, gunbound (lot of blizzard entertainment I know) on my Asus EEE pc 90x & my Acer one at an acceptable playable (IMO) fps as long as it's configured correctly.

These Blizzard games will never have support for Pandora-like controllers, so that means you'd need some touchpad. So the Pandora form factor would have to change dramatically, and it'd have to be bigger.

If we rule out Pandora form factor and its controllers, which make it so different, add a touchpad and x86, then we have a traditional netbook. Sorry, this looks pretty uninteresting to me

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

These Blizzard games will never have support for Pandora-like controllers, so that means you'd need some touchpad. So the Pandora form factor would have to change dramatically, and it'd have to be bigger.

If we rule out Pandora form factor and its controllers, which make it so different, add a touchpad and x86, then we have a traditional netbook. Sorry, this looks pretty uninteresting to me

I think you are forgetting about the Pandora's touchscreen, which would be substancially better than a touchpad, especially for the games I recognized. It might even control better than the original.

 

[SNESFAN]

These Blizzard games will never have support for Pandora-like controllers, so that means you'd need some touchpad. So the Pandora form factor would have to change dramatically, and it'd have to be bigger.

If we rule out Pandora form factor and its controllers, which make it so different, add a touchpad and x86, then we have a traditional netbook. Sorry, this looks pretty uninteresting to me

Not to jump down your throat, but to make an uneducated statement like that then jump to your own conclusion might not be the best way to enter this discussion. Please check out a program called "joy2key" for windows as I've been using it for years to play said controller unsupported games. What joy2key does is it takes any analog/digital controller and maps any input to keys. There's another one that I don't use, i forget the name, but it maps analog input to mouse movements. It's freeware and works at the OS level so it doesn't need configured within each game. You can select separate profiles for different mappings on the fly.

In my mind you wouldn't have to change the form factor at all, keep all the keypad, dpad, nubs, screen, speakers, case etc etc exactly as they are now just change the mainboard, proc/video/ram/chipset, agian I don't know how this will effect the form factor, but agian going back to the mbook, it is comparably the same size. With the new atom proc I mentioned they are aiming for the system on a chip idea moving the GPU and stuff onboard with the proc. Sizewise I'm generally assuming it would work, would have to see one in person I suppose and make a size comparison. But the mbook doesn't use the new atom/chipset combo and they seem to have shrank it down what is normally 2/3 times it's size. Intel is said to be aiming for the MID and smartphone market so I'm sure they really had handhelds in mind when they designed this.

Exophase did shed some light on this whole thing for me to kinda just got me going back to just wishful thinking. OP is gonna do what they want regardless, if they see a market for this and the desire to do so they will, if not, then they won't, I don't think a handful of people on this board are going to steer them in any other direction than the one they want to go in. So untill that time when something similar to this hits the market I'll just go back to dreaming.

:le sigh:

 

[ldesnogu]

Not to jump down your throat, but to make an uneducated statement like that then jump to your own conclusion might not be the best way to enter this discussion. Please check out a program called "joy2key" for windows as I've been using it for years to play said controller unsupported games. What joy2key does is it takes any analog/digital controller and maps any input to keys. There's another one that I don't use, i forget the name, but it maps analog input to mouse movements. It's freeware and works at the OS level so it doesn't need configured within each game. You can select separate profiles for different mappings on the fly.

Ha that could be a solution, though I wonder how long it would take me to get used to that, been using a mouse for more than 20 years, so changing could be an issue (I can't play FPS on consoles for instance...). If all that works well, you could perhaps try to play with a joypad on your PC and see how well/bad it works for WoW for instance, I wonder how that'd work during a raid

Anyway your comment about my uneducated guess though true in that case certainly doesn't mean my conclusion isn't true: didn't you notice I wrote "me" at the end of it? So please be kind enough let me have and express my own thoughts

 

[SNESFAN]

Ha that could be a solution, though I wonder how long it would take me to get used to that, been using a mouse for more than 20 years, so changing could be an issue (I can't play FPS on consoles for instance...). If all that works well, you could perhaps try to play with a joypad on your PC and see how well/bad it works for WoW for instance, I wonder how that'd work during a raid

Anyway your comment about my uneducated guess though true in that case certainly doesn't mean my conclusion isn't true: didn't you notice I wrote "me" at the end of it? So please be kind enough let me have and express my own thoughts

To the getting used to the controller in non-controller minded games. It's really not that bad at all, I personally don't like keyboard + mouse combo except for typing and browsing and I also kick ass at halo on the xbox (if I do say so myself) so using my xbox controller for wow was pretty easy to pick up, like an hour or so before I became pretty familiar with how I wanted everythign to work. Hard to remember what macros are tied to what when changing characters, but once you get used to it it's really efficient when it comes to doing things quickly and easy to sit for a couple hours and play that way, compared to a keyboard + mouse I personally get tired of useing it after several min playing a fps or something. Just like any new system, until you are familiar with the ascetics of it does seem kinda clunky, but once your finally used to it you wonder why you did the first method in the first place. If you've owned multiple consoles I'm sure you know the feeling.

To my somewhat off color comment, I didn't want to come off that harsh, but I do notice from time to time people seem rather dismissive to radical ideals, and they want to make quick judgments as to why something wouldn't work. I pride myself in my out of the box thinking, even though alot if not all of my ideas seem to get shot down. But I usually get questioned before a final judgement of an idea is made... ie "how do you plan on solving problem a)" I respect your opinion that if everything were to change it might turn some off, as I'm sure it would, but I took your comment as "this is what would have to change" so I guess I might be at fault of my own correction :/

 

[ldesnogu]

No problem

My point of view on x86 + Windows on a Pandora-like platform is pretty simple: I really find it boring. I can certainly understand people who like you would like to play their games on such a machine; I personally wouldn't because I prefer to play on a big screen and preferably on Linux by using Wine (that's the way I play WoW).

Now imagine a world where you'd only have x86 and Windows machines for consumers. That duopoly would (and in fact is) make customers prisoners of what Wintel wants; as an example, look at what happens on the Netbook market where due to Wintel requirements one can't have screens larger than 1366x768. Having diversity is important, but that shouldn't be restricted to form factor only. That's why I think that Linux and ARM should be supported because they look like the last alternatives to Wintel (there's also Apple but that's a different story).

I fully respect your point of view and what you'd like to get. But if Pandora would have been another x86 Windows machine in a different form factor, I just would have dismissed it as uninteresting (again this is my very personal preference).

 

[quartercast]

I want to play Daggerfall on my Pandora!

Halt! Halt! Halt!

 

[Axaj]

Would underclocking a processor decrease the amps used?

 

[dflemstr]

Would underclocking a processor decrease the amps used?

Not really, at least not significantly.

 

[darkblu]

To my somewhat off color comment, I didn't want to come off that harsh, but I do notice from time to time people seem rather dismissive to radical ideals, and they want to make quick judgments as to why something wouldn't work. I pride myself in my out of the box thinking, even though alot if not all of my ideas seem to get shot down. But I usually get questioned before a final judgement of an idea is made... ie "how do you plan on solving problem a)" I respect your opinion that if everything were to change it might turn some off, as I'm sure it would, but I took your comment as "this is what would have to change" so I guess I might be at fault of my own correction :/

jb0yx, not meaning to offend you in any way, but there's hardly anything radical about putting an x86 in a handheld - people have been trying to do this for eons, long before the masters of the x86 domain, intel, decided power efficiency mattered, and even longer before atom was as much as a figment of somebody's imagination. now, the reason you have not been hearing much about those attempts is that none of them has been particularly successful. and even today, with the oh-so-amazing atom at hand, the most this tech can achieve is netbook-size. that's it. so, to put this into perspective: one of the most advanced lithography techs in the world - intel's - is not sufficient to put their most power-efficient x86 designs on the handheld map. it's like the world's most renowned vendor of steam engines is trying to make those suitable for cessnas - why? why do you want to see a steam engine on a cessna, when there are so much better ways to power a cessna! - so you could use all that coal you have lying around? - come on.