Nulldce On The Beagleboard

[Tor]

In any case I'm quite certain we're not getting speed-sorted chipsets (unlike Nokia, and they're probably paying extra for it), so there's no guarantee whatsoever that your particular sample will be able to OC at all.

 

[Patrick R Ludvigsen]

Hmmm, I remember reading a TI document somewhere regarding this but I'll just wait and see how things turn out.

 

[God Ginrai]

And, until you KNOW you need it, why presume you do?

Good thing I KNOW I'll need it for N64 emulation. I don't plan on overclocking all the time, but there are certain times that overclocking will help. (i.e.: N64 emulation will probably achieve better speeds with it) I'm hoping that I don't have to overclock it for anything other than N64 emulation, but you never know. It's not like I plan to overclock it when I don't need to.

The engineering samples can overclock to 900MHz, but there's NO assurances that the production parts will 100% consistently and stably do the same thing as they're not paying TI to speed rate the parts to be overclockable- which costs quite a bit more money.

I wasn't using my GP2X as a model to prove that the ARM would reach those speeds. If anything, it would be a better model to prove that these speeds are not always the same with each system, seeing as how my GP2X's ARM can only OC up to about 245~255 MHz, whereas other people's were able to reach 290~300 MHz.

-God Ginrai

 

[darkblu]

Actually, according to pvr docs the compressions used are totally different.Dreamcast uses a simple 256 2x2 pixel palette that is very simple to downsample to a normal paletted texture (thats what i do on psp).

you are right - i always assumed pvrtc was a derivateive of the VQ (vector quantisation) scheme found in the clx2. i could not have been more wrong - it is a different class of compression scheme altogether - vq is code-book, pvrtc is more of a hybrid between BTC and hierarchical compression. ..bah, talk about misconception.

 

[Phawx]

How do you "KNOW" you'll need to OC to emulate N64. Have you created an N64 emulator that we don't know about? Or have you been testing someone else's N64 emulator on a Pandora-related board?

 

[God Ginrai]

How do you "KNOW" you'll need to OC to emulate N64. Have you created an N64 emulator that we don't know about? Or have you been testing someone else's N64 emulator on a Pandora-related board?

I'm not going to answer your second or third questions, because I want to keep you guessing.

As for the first question: Fullspeed N64 is highly unlikely on the Pandora, so the only way to get it, or near it, would be overclocking. Especially in the early stages of the emulator's development.

-God Ginrai

 

[Chip]

I don't have a beagleboard -- i was quoting numbers from the youtube videos of it (the official ones).You guys know any places to get one from within Europe ?
That is odd. Going back through some of the posts in the dev forum, some people with boards have said it gets quite hot, others have said barely warm. I wonder what the variable is. If getting hot is normal for this chip, then fine, but that much variation piece-to-piece is bizarre.

I don't know of any European distributors, but Digikey does ship internationally and accepts payment in GBP or Euros. Shipping seems fairly reasonable.

CODE
http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/mkt/International.html

 

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

same here I don't know much, but judging from the fact that the dreamcast uses an arm cpu (while the sh4 might be powerful, it doesn't really reflect how its used in games), we might look at some pretty funky optimizations in the future
keep up the great work!

What are you talking about? The Dreamcast has an ARM, but it's many times weaker than the SH4 (which is NOT an ARM, in case you were wondering). Games don't really push it very hard so it doesn't have to be emualted at anywhere near full speed either.

uh oh, my bad on saying the sh4 is an arm (now that I got another look at dc specs, doesn't it worry you guys that this processor is a beast at floating point operations? :unsure: )
but yes, that's what I was talking about: although it's a very good processor, it doesn't really have to be emulated at full speed, since games didn't really stress it to the maximum.

 

[notaz]

About OMAP heating, mine gets warm, but I can always keep my finger on it, even when overclocked to 900. I don't think OMAP3 will have any heat issues (although haven't tried getting all it's main parts - Cortex+NEON, SGX and DSP loaded with heavy work at the same time while overclocked or not). The companion power chip is usually warmer.

 

[Svartalf]

I'm pretty sure it does, more or less. Read back to the threads which I posted. I don't fully understand the terminology used, but the translation into lay-speak was that the modifications needed to overclock to 900Mhz left it rated for 44K hours of use. In simple, easy to understand terms, that's 5 years of continuous, 24/7 use. That 44K number may just be an extrapolation, but it's still based in scientific figures and calculations that would not be unreasonable to trust.

That's a MTBF... You shouldn't be using that as a piece of gospel on lifespan. Moreover, it still leads to that you shouldn't NEED OCing this thing for most stuff.

And God Ginrai, it doesn't lead to that you will need OC on the Pandora to do N64 emu- you don't know precisely what you will/won't need. Project64's emu was able to manage this on a PIII 600 with similar RAM and display adapter profiles as we're looking at. Now, as we all know, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but we're in the rough ballpark of a proper emu WITHOUT dinking with clock speeds.

 

[Username]

And God Ginrai, it doesn't lead to that you will need OC on the Pandora to do N64 emu- you don't know precisely what you will/won't need. Project64's emu was able to manage this on a PIII 600 with similar RAM and display adapter profiles as we're looking at. Now, as we all know, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but we're in the rough ballpark of a proper emu WITHOUT dinking with clock speeds.

Do you really believe that perfect full speed N64 emulation is possible without ever overclocking? Maybe after heavy development can we think to see near-perfect emulation without overclocking, but that's a long ways away.

 

[God Ginrai]

I'm pretty sure it does, more or less. Read back to the threads which I posted. I don't fully understand the terminology used, but the translation into lay-speak was that the modifications needed to overclock to 900Mhz left it rated for 44K hours of use. In simple, easy to understand terms, that's 5 years of continuous, 24/7 use. That 44K number may just be an extrapolation, but it's still based in scientific figures and calculations that would not be unreasonable to trust.

That's a MTBF... You shouldn't be using that as a piece of gospel on lifespan. Moreover, it still leads to that you shouldn't NEED OCing this thing for most stuff.

And God Ginrai, it doesn't lead to that you will need OC on the Pandora to do N64 emu- you don't know precisely what you will/won't need. Project64's emu was able to manage this on a PIII 600 with similar RAM and display adapter profiles as we're looking at. Now, as we all know, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but we're in the rough ballpark of a proper emu WITHOUT dinking with clock speeds.


I'll be happy to be proven wrong that fullspeed on N64 is possible without OC, but I think you're the one looking for pie in the sky now. I also noted that during development you would need OC to get full or near full speed. And that is something you can't contest, because no emu for anything this recent is fullspeed on the first test.

-God Ginrai

 

[Chip]

I'll be happy to be proven wrong that fullspeed on N64 is possible without OC, but I think you're the one looking for pie in the sky now. I also noted that during development you would need OC to get full or near full speed. And that is something you can't contest, because no emu for anything this recent is fullspeed on the first test.
This arguement is exceedingly pointless. Right now NullDC for the Pandora is just a proof of concept. No amount of overclocking is going to make anything playable. No N64 emulator for the Pandora exists at all. Any claim that overclocking is or isn't necessary is an uneducated guess and of no value. It's going to take a LOT of work before any N64 or DC emu is even in the neighborhood of playable.

If / when that happens, it may be that overclocking makes a significant difference in playability, but we won't know either way until that time. For now, just be happy that somebody is looking into it.

 

[Phawx]

Chip, you don't understand. He wants to keep you guessing. He has something up his sleeve. he "KNOWS" it will need OC'ing. I can't believe you have the audacity to defy God..........................................Ginrai.

 

[God Ginrai]

Chip, you don't understand. He wants to keep you guessing. He has something up his sleeve. he "KNOWS" it will need OC'ing. I can't believe you have the audacity to defy God..........................................Ginrai.

I've acquired a follower.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

That's a MTBF... You shouldn't be using that as a piece of gospel on lifespan. Moreover, it still leads to that you shouldn't NEED OCing this thing for most stuff.
I never claimed that we would. In fact, I would prefer that we didn't. The point of my post was to prove that overclocking it does, in fact, cause permanent damage, at least in the theoretical based on the limited tests that TI did, and then to use that as yet another reason why we shouldn't overclock unless we absolutely have to, while at the same time saying that even if we do, it's not really so bad.
In short: Don't unless you have to, but if you really really have to it's not nearly as bad as it could be.

 

[Alpha2]

Every device sofar that anyone has tried to put an emulator on at one point or another has needed overclocking. from the GP32 to the PSP, from NES to SNES. Of course there will probably be a point at which over clocking to get playable speed will be necessary but there's also a possibility that some some point it may not need to any more or atleast not need it as much later.

But right now it`s not worth bitching about which will or will not. If the DC emu gets anywhere near a playable speed in the first 6 months of the Pandora`s existence it's going to be because of over clocking. Some people will choose to do it at their own risk and some wont. I had Homebrew running on my PSP, I had the option to over clock or just not use an app, I chose not to. I sure as heck over clocked my GP32, it still works, the firmware is ancient, but I;m sure that`s a minor issue and it'll continue working for a long time, I just chose not to risk my PSP.

Any overclocking carries a risk but most of the time the risk is negligable in the life time of the device. So you can risk it and feel safe or you can play it safe and not risk it but it`s always the person that owns the devices that makes the choice to do it at their own risk, what ever that risk might be it's on them, they dont care? let em do it. Damage or not people are going to do it if it means more speed or less battery life so arguing about it is pointless if they`ve made the choice to want to do it.

Let's just pipe down and wait for this to make more headway.

 

[Esn]

I do not have a pandora unfortunately, doesn't even look like I can get one?
If anyone can help me out here that would be nice ..

Try sending an email or PM to craigix. There were a number of "free Pandoras" given to developers a while ago, but I don't know if any are left.

 

[Exophase]

But right now it`s not worth bitching about which will or will not. If the DC emu gets anywhere near a playable speed in the first 6 months of the Pandora`s existence it's going to be because of over clocking. Some people will choose to do it at their own risk and some wont. I had Homebrew running on my PSP, I had the option to over clock or just not use an app, I chose not to. I sure as heck over clocked my GP32, it still works, the firmware is ancient, but I;m sure that`s a minor issue and it'll continue working for a long time, I just chose not to risk my PSP.

I hope you realize that all PSPs are rated to run at 333MHz and doing so is not "overclocking" them at all, nor are they at any kind of risk. Sony just prevented games from using it because they wanted them to conserve battery power as much as possible.

Unfortunately rumors kept getting propagated that it's harmful to do this -_-

 

[Alpha2]

Yeah technically it;s not over clocking I;m refering to back when most apps ran normally at 222 before people realised 333 was it;s optimal state and only ran at 222 to conserve power but not everyone knew that at first. My bad, I dont always choose my wprds perfectly when talking tech because I;m not as hard core as some of the folks here.