Overview of SoC options

[Askarus]

the Pandora has a full desktop environment and keyboard how many people could justify those features over the much faster cutting edge and 1/3 price Shield? No one could.

I could. and can.

Many people on this forum can too.

Pyra has a lot more than just full desktop environment and Keyboard.

And yeah, I share Binky's point of view, even if it would "only" have a desktop environment and a Keyboard.

 

[rohezal]

I am a computer science student who needs a full debian with its libs on the go. I have not much use for the shield, the Pandora is what I need. And no, a netbook is to big and heavy for my taste, not pocketable or useable without a seat.

 

[Fzero]

...also the Shield is too big, that isn't going to fit in many jean pockets eh

 

[Askarus]

...also the Shield is too big, that isn't going to fit in many jean pockets eh

Not an argument

 

[Reyhn]

Weeell, I tested GIMP on the current devboard, running with half the CPU Speed... and a Gaussian Blur only took 3 - 4 seconds on a 2500x1902 picture

Please provide the image so we can bench it and make crazy hypotheses h34r:

 

[Fzero]

yeah.. looks comfortable that

 

[rohezal]

Please provide the image so we can bench it and make crazy hypotheses

Gaussian Blur takes the average of 3x3, 4x4 or something like this pixels. It is independent of the image you use if it has the same resolution (2500x1902) and the same number of channels (greyscale, rgb or rgba).

 

[Reyhn]

Yeah, thought of it later.

But anyway it was meant to be a joke. ^_^

 

[ShleeDragon]

ed, you are a sexy man.

 

[alucart1984]

I think those requirements will probably be met, except the quad core. What do you need 4 cores for on a handheld? Isn't it more important to look at what those cores are? E.g. quad core Cortex-A7 would not be that powerful.

Very true about what cores.  I was thinking more of future proofing and better multitasking but of course the RAM amount will help determine that as well anyways.

Weeell, I tested GIMP on the current devboard, running with half the CPU Speed... and a Gaussian Blur only took 3 - 4 seconds on a 2500x1902 picture (working with FullHD Desktop output).


That's pretty impressive.

This is good to hear.  After reading through the Nvidia K1 thread and researching what SoCs are available I think your choice was better and a significant improvement over the current Pandora.  One thing I am missing though.....where did the name Pyra come from and why not just call it Pandora 2?

 

[rohezal]

This is good to hear.  After reading through the Nvidia K1 thread and researching what SoCs are available I think your choice was better and a significant improvement over the current Pandora.  One thing I am missing though.....where did the name Pyra come from and why not just call it Pandora 2?

 http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15142-pandora-successor-name-final-poll/

Long story short: The name Pandora is related to Craig which is why ED wants to have a different name. There was a big name discussion going on, and Miriad and Pyra were the finals. Pyra won.

Of course the best name is Open Pandragon but is was not choosen

 

[levi]

Dev tools also, as most big compile can use the "make -j 2" or more to make parallel compilation.

On superscalar out-of-order x86 processors, I found it quickest to run with twice the number of jobs as cores most of the time, as some of the time the processor will be able to run the two threads at the same time. The Cortex A8 in the Pandora is also superscalar, but in-order so I'm not sure if that will work as well on that, but the A9 and A15 are out-of-order superscalar, so if you've got two of them in a chip I'd suggest trying out -j 4.

 

[Exophase]

On superscalar out-of-order x86 processors, I found it quickest to run with twice the number of jobs as cores most of the time, as some of the time the processor will be able to run the two threads at the same time. The Cortex A8 in the Pandora is also superscalar, but in-order so I'm not sure if that will work as well on that, but the A9 and A15 are out-of-order superscalar, so if you've got two of them in a chip I'd suggest trying out -j 4.

Out of order doesn't mean that it can run multiple threads on the same core. For that you need some form of hardware multithreading like SMT (symmetric multithreading), also known as Hyper Threading.

However, you can still get a little extra performance sometimes with a make count higher than the hardware thread count. This is because some of the time make could be blocking on I/O (like when reading in the source files) and during this time it can switch to another compilation thread instead of just waiting for the blocking to be done. I usually run with twice the number of jobs as I have hardware cores, but if I were using a system with SMT (currently I'm not, am on an i5-2500K) I'd probably do something like 1.5x the number of hardware threads.

 

[levi]

Ah, of course. Just because the A8 is dual issue, those two instructions are part of the same thread of execution, unlike on an SMT processor where you can assign two different processes to the two pipelines. Thanks, I haven't got my head around modern processors at all well yet.

 

[matzesu]

I wants 2 SD Card Slots on my Pyra, because, if there is a Dreamcast Emu for it, whe need the second slot for the 32 gb Card filled whit Dreamcast Games, as the first slot has on the Pandora allready a Card, whit PSX, N64, DS etc Games...

The 2 Card Slots on the Pandora, was for me one of the best things on the thing, expect the long Batterielife..

(im today starts to get me some dreamcast games, for the Pyra...)

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

^ It would be nice to have 4  memory card slots for  2 full size SD cards and 2 micro SD cards.  The two micro SD cards could be on either left or right or both the left and right side of the PYRA

 

[WizardStan]

Micro SD cards are designed for devices where you may want to swap the cards sometimes but not regularly. They're typically hidden away. This is why they don't lock into place, or the other way around I'm not sure.

But if you were to have 4 SD cards, two full sized and 2 micro, it would probably be a reasonable compromise to have the two micro hidden away under the battery somewhere, your giant internal storage that you never really change but can if you want to.

That being said, the OMAP5 only has 3 SD controllers, and I'm pretty sure one of them is multiplexed with one of the USB ports and the SATA activity indicator, so decisions are going to have to be made.

edit: scratch that, I forgot about the "eMMC" interface, so yes, four are technically available.

 

[levi]

The micro SD slot on my phone clicks cards into place just like the Pandora does full sized ones. But that's not especially hidden away (it's just under a rubber bung) so I guess that's not fulfilling that role.

 

[Granitehead]

I would like more SD slots if possible, micro ones hidden under the battery would be okay too.

 

[God Ginrai]

I would be perfectly happy with 1 plain SDHC slot, 1 SDIO slot, and an eMMC slot on the inside for the OS.

-God Ginrai