Pandora Emulator

[Kings]

Are their any plans for a Pandora emulator? Because it seems like a good way to get more developers and decrease development time.

Anyone with a MK0 care to comment on the viability of such an emulator?

 

[yaKC]

Are their any plans for a Pandora emulator? Because it seems like a good way to get more developers and decrease development time.

Anyone with a MK0 care to comment on the viability of such an emulator?

LMAO

This forum keeps getting funnier and funnier...

 

[slaanesh]

Are their any plans for a Pandora emulator? Because it seems like a good way to get more developers and decrease development time.

Just my 2c worth. I don't have a Pandora Mk0.

A Pandora emulator for development would be nice but not necessary.

Yes, the GP32 had an emulator a long time ago, but developing for this was slower as it didn't have a Linux-like OS to provide all that wonderful connectivity.

The GP2X doesn't have an emulator for what I suspect will be the same reason for the Pandora - it doesn't really need one. Coding and testing new builds is easy and fast thanks to telnet and samba (which allows you to share and use files directly over the USB network).

 

[astro]

Lol files. :lol:

 

[icurafu]

There is nothing wrong with this question.

If it is to mean an OMAP 35x virtual machine and yes you can get them for a lot of ARM devices. I'm not sure if it would be free, but it would not work perfect for all applications.

 

[Exophase]

It wouldn't be worth it. It'd be very difficult to write fully and the end result would be very slow. A real Pandora will be both easy to access and communicate with and should be easy to debug on too (including hardware profiling information, I hope).

 

[ldesnogu]

(including hardware profiling information, I hope).

There is an ARMv7 oprofile patch that's been posted. However it seems there are still some issues with it (look on BeagleBoard IRC logs for more info).

 

[Squidge]

Considering that Pandora apps will be running under Linux, and not hacking the hardware, you should be able to test applications using PC Apps such as Qemu.

 

[Exophase]

Considering that Pandora apps will be running under Linux, and not hacking the hardware, you should be able to test applications using PC Apps such as Qemu.

Fair enough, but if your app is running under "normal" Linux then the only thing QEMU will offer over developing a Linux app for PC is the ability to run ARM ASM. While this is pretty beneficial, I don't know how up to date QEMU is in supporting ARM v7a with NEON et al. The timing is almost certainly going to be way off, so it won't be useful for benchmarking or even really getting a good idea at all at how your code will perform on a Pandora. And I also don't expect it to correctly emulate things like cache misses and branch mispredicts, much less profiling information for them. Anything using any kind of modules running on the DSP won't work, especially for custom code uploaded to it.

Developing for Pandora isn't going to be like developing like an old console, DS, or even a PSP. You should be able to easily access and run binaries that are stored on your PC, over a telnet/ssh connection. With TV-out and peripherals attached over USB you could even develop directly on the Pandora itself, although I wouldn't recommend this because of diminished compilation performance.

 

[ldesnogu]

Fair enough, but if your app is running under "normal" Linux then the only thing QEMU will offer over developing a Linux app for PC is the ability to run ARM ASM. While this is pretty beneficial, I don't know how up to date QEMU is in supporting ARM v7a with NEON et al.

qemu happily runs FFmpeg with NEON asm code

 

[PoisonedV]

This isn't LOL files- this a legitimate question. The only way you could think this was funny or stupid was if you interpreted it wrong.

 

[Kings]

Thanks for the replies, sounds like porting most apps and games wont be as hard as i thought.

Edit: One of the benefits of an open system I guess.

 

[Game_over]

Nah, it wouldn't be, I'd imaging it would be a few steps up from the original f100 with the net chips in it. I honestly don't know how some of these guys are still coding for the f200 with out them. I know I'm missing something there, I don't have one either.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Are you guys sure he isn't talking about a Pandora emulator for the Pandora?

 

[Tinnus]

Yes.

 

[MilanC]

Erm... atomicthumbs... you should sleep more often, y'know...

 

[nubie]

Are their any plans for a Pandora emulator? Because it seems like a good way to get more developers and decrease development time.

Anyone with a MK0 care to comment on the viability of such an emulator?

No, it runs standard ARM linux applications, no way to speed the quick dev time that I can think of.

If you really want a similar platform look to beagleboard.

The real problem (correct me if I am wrong) is that to get a really good app ported/written the base takes 10-30% of the time and making it work well with the platform/optimizing can take the other 70-90%, the stuff you can't do on an emulator.

Just wait a bit and there will be a dev setup for the PC, you can compile SDL/X windows apps and as long as they are well written for SDL or X they should work without a hitch on the Pandora.

Think of the Pandora as a Computer, it has Linux and libraries already installed. No need for an emulator when it is standard PC supported libraries. Just code away .

It is a serious question, I hope I have enlightened you as to why it simply isn't necessary.

 

[javaJake]

Developing for Pandora isn't going to be like developing like an old console, DS, or even a PSP. You should be able to easily access and run binaries that are stored on your PC, over a telnet/ssh connection.

Under normal circumstances I'd recommend sshfs instead, but that might be considered nit-picking in this context, so nevermind.