Our New Machine, Pandora

[icurafu]

I read that TI were producing OMAP 3430s in two groups.

One at lower speeds that don't leak much at standby and another that leaks quite a bit more but runs at higher speeds.

The 1Ghz version would be unsuitable for mobile phones and the next Nokia n-series as it should not be left on when not used.

I think it is more ideal for a game console where users would prefer, say, double the performance against leaving it on standby overnight.

I'm sure there is a lot of people gunning for PDA like standby mode, but there will be a lot more hoping for a 1Ghz or greater wonder.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, updated the table.

CODE
DSLite PSP (slim) Craiginator GP2X F200
CPU1 ARM9@67Mhz MIPS R4000 @ 333 Cortex-A8@1Ghz ARM9@200
CPU2 ARM7@33Mhz MIPS R4000 @ 333 No ARM9@200
MIPS 74 + 30 333 + 333 2000 220 + 220
Memory 4 MB 64MB + 2MB (embedded) 128MB 64MB
3D Video Yes, also VFPU. 166MHz Core 200Mhz SGX None
Triagles (per second) 120,000 33 Million 13.5 Million ?30,000?
Fill (pixels/sec) ?? 664 Million 1200 Million ?
Screen Size 3" 4.3" 4.3" 3.5"
Screen Res 256x192x2 480×272 800x480 320x240
TV-Out No Yes Yes Yes
Brightness control Yes 4 settings ? No (third-party app)
Digital control Yes, DPAD. 4 way. Yes, DPAD. 4 way. Yes, DPAD Yes, DPAD. 4 way.
Headphone jack 3.5 Sony/3.5 ? 3.5
Analog control Must use touch screen Nub 2 Must use touch screen
Touchscreen Yes No Yes Yes
Wifi Yes Yes Yes No
Weight 218gm 189gm ? 161gm (without batteries)

 

[sam fisher]

The clock speed is not set in hardware. As long as the first batch are of the same quality components as the ones TI used for these benchmarking tests, then software overclocking will bring them to 1ghz. The same way my GP2x does 280mhz when its a 200mhz rated core. Well technically a reject 266mhz core but that doesn't matter .

 

[Vince2501]

With all of this (relatively) new information relating to OMAP. I ask again, is DC (As in DREAMCAST) emulation even possible?

 

[icurafu]

With all of this (relatively) new information relating to OMAP. I ask again, is DC emulation even possible?

Why would you bother? Wait until the DS is a retro console or atleast discontinued. If devs say it is possible, people will just nag to get it emulated.

What the devil!?!!?!?

QUOTE
"The Cortex-A8 processor utilizes a superscalar pipeline with advanced branch prediction to deliver more than 2000 DMIPS when clocked at 1GHz."

-http://www.arm.com/news/16539.html

That 20,000 MIPS! That's....
more than 60 times faster than one PSP CPU
more than 270 times faster than the faster DS CPU.
more than 666 times faster than the original PSX.
More than 60 times faster than a single GP2x CPU clocked to 300Mhz.
More than 40 times faster than the PS2
More than 55 times faster than the dreamcast.

This must be a typo.

 

[A_SN]

With all of this (relatively) new information relating to OMAP. I ask again, is DC emulation even possible?

Why would you bother? Wait until the DS is a retro console or atleast discontinued. If devs say it is possible, people will just nag to get it emulated.


What's with you people on this forum, you guys make more 'reados' than typos. He said DC, that means Dreamcast, not DS, and that's a legitimate question.

 

[Exophase]

QUOTE
"The Cortex-A8 processor utilizes a superscalar pipeline with advanced branch prediction to deliver more than 2000 DMIPS when clocked at 1GHz."

-http://www.arm.com/news/16539.html

That 20,000 MIPS! That's....
more than 60 times faster than one PSP CPU
more than 270 times faster than the faster DS CPU.
more than 666 times faster than the original PSX.
More than 60 times faster than a single GP2x CPU clocked to 300Mhz.
More than 40 times faster than the PS2
More than 55 times faster than the dreamcast.

This must be a typo.

Not a typo, DMIPS means "Dhrystone MIPS" which is supposed to roughly mean how fast it is compared to a VAX 11/780 (so in this case 2000 times the speed). It's not "decaMIPS" ^_^

It doesn't help that the VAX could do all sorts of crazy things in single instructions though, so I have no idea what it REALLY means in those terms, but there are statistics that break down what operations are used. It's a benchmark score so it's pretty complex.

Here's a fun quote to further screw up the conversation:

"For a while the VAX-11/780 was used as a baseline in CPU benchmarks because its speed was about one MIPS. Ironically enough, though, the actual number of instructions executed in 1 second was about 500,000. "

Take that as you will >_>

 

[icurafu]

With all of this (relatively) new information relating to OMAP. I ask again, is DC emulation even possible?

Why would you bother? Wait until the DS is a retro console or atleast discontinued. If devs say it is possible, people will just nag to get it emulated.


What's with you people on this forum, you guys make more 'reados' than typos. He said DC, that means Dreamcast, not DS, and that's a legitimate question.



You people? Oops. Sorry vince. I admit to speed reading most things.

I hope DC emulation improve dramatically soon.


Ah, so only about four times faster than the PS2 CPU? with error for translation from DMIPS to MIPS. Thanks for the information exophase. Sounds confusing. :S

 

[Vince2501]

Me too. If Radiant Silvergun is now fairly playable on Mame++0.117 then I really think that this is possible.

 

[DaveC]

What? The XGP never came out, as far as I remember. And it was more advanced than the gp2x. It had the same amount of RAM, wifi, a rechargeable battery, a larger screen, and it used the VRender3D SoC. Where the hell were you when this all happened?

Well "more advanced" isn't the thing that determines if it is successful in this community. The XGP just wasn't very suitable for what we use handhelds for alot such as emus, ports and HB. It only had an analog stick and no pad, crap for emus, it had a weird resolution screen that didn't fit any emus or ports well etc. About the only thing it would be good for is a quake port or commercial games. It was basically a PSP clone without the PSP power or commercial support. It had no real market.

The Craiginator is being designed as far as we know to be good for both emus of 2D systems as well as well as 3D stuff. It should fit our market well as well as others too. I think it will be around for a long time, even if a more powerful system does arrive on the scene. I doubt any other system will take into account 2D emus, PC ports, and 3D HB with controls that are as good and versitile as the Craiginator. The only unknown for me is how well the controls for vertical arcade titles such as MAME will be.

 

[OMars]

What? The XGP never came out, as far as I remember. And it was more advanced than the gp2x. It had the same amount of RAM, wifi, a rechargeable battery, a larger screen, and it used the VRender3D SoC. Where the hell were you when this all happened?

Well "more advanced" isn't the thing that determines if it is successful in this community. The XGP just wasn't very suitable for what we use handhelds for alot such as emus, ports and HB. It only had an analog stick and no pad, crap for emus, it had a weird resolution screen that didn't fit any emus or ports well etc. About the only thing it would be good for is a quake port or commercial games. It was basically a PSP clone without the PSP power or commercial support. It had no real market.

<snip>

I will not take back what I said, it's true. B) Even if it would have had a crap community, it was still more advanced.

 

[cappuchok]

Blech, Ubuntu. Just Debian it

Actually I was quite amazed when I replaced a stock Ubuntu install on an old 400 MHz PC with an equivalent stock Debian install. Debian was much faster and more responsive, despite there not being any discernible difference as far as desktop environment and applications go. Not to mention Ubuntu is lacking alsaconf, so I couldn't configure my SB32.

But I'm not sure how Debian does on "embedded" systems like the Craiginator. I guess we'll see, at one point or another I'm sure Orkie will try it if it's not the default.

 

[StealthBagel]

Both Ubuntu and Debian are too heavy for a handheld system. They have that one nice feature, Apt, to automate software installs. But in the end most software you could automatically install won't run properly without a real keyboard/mouse or would be too demanding for the handheld in the first place. Software for a handheld should be custom tailored or installed manually; or a custom app can be made to install software for people who would have difficulty.

Bottom line Debian and Ubuntu have too much bloat for a handheld. There would be too much startup time, too much extraneous software included and too much upkeep. When a new firmware is released it needs to be specific to the handheld, not specific to desktop PC OS'es....

And on top of all that, Debian/ubuntu is meant to be installed on a read/write filesystem (a hard disk really) and would perform slowly on built-in flash memory whenever a write needed to occur. while I've never seen a flash chip physically exhausted to the point you can't write to it, there's the theoretical potential for it, and anything that would harm the longevity of the device would be a good idea to avoid.

 

[Firefox]

Perhaps you could point me to the book you're reading sometime, it sounds like pretty good material.

Oh, it's "ARM system-on-chip architecture" by Steve Furber (one of the duo who designed the ARM). As far as I know it's the only book he's published.

http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/publicati...oks/ARMsysArch/

It's not so much a reference book as a discussion of how the ARM cores are designed, how they're programmed (including bits on the toolchain and operating systems), and how they're integrated into some real SOCs. There's a chapter at the end where he talks about his work on the AMULET asynchronous logic -based ARMs.

I find it pretty readable (not too dry) and it's helped me a lot to understand why the ARMs are like they are.

 

[Tobriand]

Those people saying that <insert linux here> is too dumbed down, don't forget that a big part of the appeal of this thing is supposed to be the one-click install system. It's not only supposed to appeal to ubergeeks, afaik.

Unless of course that model went out the window when we started to boost the chipset, and consequently the price.

But I doubt it...

 

[Firefox]

Why are people suddenly talking about heavyweight Linux distributions and package managers and the like?

Surely the magic of consoles is that they have identical hardware and so programs can be tailored to it? Why does it need to be more complicated than the GP2X, where you just copy a file or a folder onto an SD card and launch it from a menu?

 

[Squidge]

thanks squidge, so have you stopped your work on gp2x scene too

I do something when it interests me, I don't really play any emulators (or any other games) on my gp2x, and never have done (apart from simple testing of course). As an example, A few days ago I went back to working on my gp32 emulator - it now supports smart media cards, shows the game listing and loads games/etc. The only thing it doesn't do is actually run them! I don't see a way around the problem so it's back on hold for now.

and are you waiting for the cnator?

Not really waiting as such, but I will of course be eager to hack it when it finally arrives

Right now, I'm interested in blackfin (http://www.analog.com/processors/blackfin/)

larger screen + speakers + dpad and buttons... he's gonna be bigger than psp! also how it will manage that hires lcd screen? it will drain battery like a vampire will not?

The most power consumption will be from the backlight, so if you have it set to a sensible value, it shouldn't affect battery life that much. Resolution doesn't really come into much, just the size of the physical lcd.

 

[hlidegp2x]

Right now, I'm interested in blackfin (http://www.analog.com/processors/blackfin/)

still around ? i was proposed this processor several years ago when i wanted to make what Craig is trying to do after leaving Archos.

 

[Goity]

We do NOT want a full linux distro on this. Remember that it is supposed to be an entertainment console. If you just want a PDA you can get one right now for less than £200. Putting a full edition of Linux on this thing would not only alienate the audience, it would also increase boot time to extremely unacceptable levels.

Something similar to the PS3/PSP cross media bar would be perfect, minus a few changs such as folder support and Craigifying.

 

[Orkie]

it would also increase boot time to extremely unacceptable levels.

A full desktop distro would, but a minimal Debian with some customisation would be fine (for the millionth time ).

 

[Tobriand]

Putting a full edition of Linux on this thing would not only alienate the audience, it would also increase boot time to extremely unacceptable levels.

Also, as a corollary to Orkie's post, it would only alienate the audience IF it increased boot times to unacceptable levels.

Otherwise, it'd probably actually attract more people in.

But you're right that it would if boot time couldn't be cut down - it's just that those who know more about it think it could be!