You think it's funny that it's me opening this thread?
Don't worry, I don't think it's outdated. It's just sad to see the usual comments on SlashGear, etc. "this thing is outdated", etc.
As I had a talk with TI technicians last week (both about our current Pandora as well as about a potential future model) and some other devs as well, I found out quite a few things I'd like to share with you here.
Especially with those who think the Pandora is horribly outdated.
1. The Cortex A9 is so much faster!
The Pandora features an OMAP3 SoC with a CortexA8. Currently, modern smartphones are normally using the CortexA9.
Some benchmarks have been made, and guess what the speed improvement from the A8 to the A9 is? 10 - 20%, depending on the application.
So the A9 actually is not that much faster than the A8 in the Pandora. Aditionally, the A8 we have in the Pandora features some neat things like NEON.
NEON is NOT included in every A9 CPU. It's optional. And NEON is a nice FPU. Thanks to NEON, we can enjoy fullspeed PSX emulation with 650MHz (well, also thanks to Exophase and notaz, of course).
Also, the L2 cache and other tidbits CAN make a difference.
There's an interesting article found here, which compares a cheap A9 with a proper A8. The A8 wins.
Interestingly, someone at gp32x.de grabbed a Yinlips (which is using that cheap A9 core) and thought the emulators performed worse than on the Caanoo...
BTW: While the Pandora SoC has a standard clockrate of 600MHz, actually, quite a few can clock up to 1,2GHz, a lot to 900 - 1GHz and most to 850MHz. If you check the web, the current DM3730 is being sold as 1GHz version.
What's the difference to the old DM3730 or our Pandora CPU? Basically nothing.
Production machines are constantly being tweaked, so the more recently produced OMAPs simply are guaranteed to run at a higher clock rate. The chip itself is the same, and it cannot clock higher, it will also stop working at about 1,2GHz (as a maximum).
You can happily run your Pandora with 800MHz. It won't cause you any damage.
2. But modern phones have DualCores, so they are way better!
Sure, a DualCore is neat, but does it really give you a lot of speedups?
A single program usually runs on a single core. So no emulator or game would get a speed boost from a DualCore CPU. It would speed things up with multitasking though.
So if you were running 10 apps at once on the desktop, you would probably see a speedup of the system.
Unless you plan to do that on the Pandora, a DualCore wouldn't speed things up a lot.
It sure makes sense for a smartphone, as a smartphone has multiple services like a phone service, etc. running all the time. But the Pandora is pretty optimized in that case, so it wouldn't help that much.
Besides, DualCores probably need more power - so you would sacrifice battery time for a small speedup (if any).
3. Why do you NEED a modern CPU?
This is an interesting question. What would a Cortex A9 give the Pandora that can't be done right now?
I cannot think of any game that would not be possible to work on the Pandora right now (unless badly coded and quickly ported
)
The A9 wouldn't bring you more emulators either.
We've got everything up to N64 running in fullspeed, basically. Sure, N64 might run a bit faster. Maybe also some MAME games. But that's about it.
You wouldn't be able to emulate PS2. Or GameCube. Or whatever.
So, what would a more recent CPU in the Pandora help?
4. A system is also the software, not only the hardware
While faster SoCs are nice, a lot of the actual speed of a device also depends on the OS around it.
I heard that Forget-me-not runs slower on the iPhone4 than it runs on the Pandora even though the iPhone4 has a faster CPU (and a proper one as well, no cheap one).
Well, the difference is: A smartphone is a smartphone and the Pandora is NOT a smartphones.
The smartphone is a telephone, so the OS has been coded to always be responsive if e.g. a phone call comes in. This eats ressources, as well as all the other stuff that is running (the touch based UI, etc.).
The Pandora doesn't need all that. It has a desktop with a small memory and CPU footprint, and therefore, it can run stuff way faster.
Or is there a PSX Emulator that runs fullspeed without stuttering on an A8 with 650 MHz on Android or the iPhone3GS?
Not many devs used the potential of the Pandora. PCSXReArmed is one of the few outstanding examples that show what's possible with the Pandora.
No one is using the DSP yet, and not many apps make use of NEON. There's so much more possible.
5. Conclusion
I think the A9 wouldn't give us much. No more emulators than we already have. I don't think there exist a lot of games that would work fine on an A9 but not on an A8.
The speed boost from the A8 to the A9 wouldn't be high. So while the SoC is an older model (not "outdated" though), the more recent one wouldn't help much.
If there will be a Pandora 2 (I hope so, but it depends on the sales of the Pandora 1 ), it will probably use something like a Cortex A15.
According to some sources, it should be about 8 times faster than our current model. That's something!
However, the A15 won't go into mass production before 2013. So I think we still can have a lot of fun with our current Pandora hardware
Keep in mind though that I'm no hardware expert. While I try to be as honest and accurate as possible in this post, it might be I didn't understand something correctly. Feel free to correct me, if you know about these things as well
Don't worry, I don't think it's outdated. It's just sad to see the usual comments on SlashGear, etc. "this thing is outdated", etc.
As I had a talk with TI technicians last week (both about our current Pandora as well as about a potential future model) and some other devs as well, I found out quite a few things I'd like to share with you here.
Especially with those who think the Pandora is horribly outdated.
1. The Cortex A9 is so much faster!
The Pandora features an OMAP3 SoC with a CortexA8. Currently, modern smartphones are normally using the CortexA9.
Some benchmarks have been made, and guess what the speed improvement from the A8 to the A9 is? 10 - 20%, depending on the application.
So the A9 actually is not that much faster than the A8 in the Pandora. Aditionally, the A8 we have in the Pandora features some neat things like NEON.
NEON is NOT included in every A9 CPU. It's optional. And NEON is a nice FPU. Thanks to NEON, we can enjoy fullspeed PSX emulation with 650MHz (well, also thanks to Exophase and notaz, of course).
Also, the L2 cache and other tidbits CAN make a difference.
There's an interesting article found here, which compares a cheap A9 with a proper A8. The A8 wins.
Interestingly, someone at gp32x.de grabbed a Yinlips (which is using that cheap A9 core) and thought the emulators performed worse than on the Caanoo...
BTW: While the Pandora SoC has a standard clockrate of 600MHz, actually, quite a few can clock up to 1,2GHz, a lot to 900 - 1GHz and most to 850MHz. If you check the web, the current DM3730 is being sold as 1GHz version.
What's the difference to the old DM3730 or our Pandora CPU? Basically nothing.
Production machines are constantly being tweaked, so the more recently produced OMAPs simply are guaranteed to run at a higher clock rate. The chip itself is the same, and it cannot clock higher, it will also stop working at about 1,2GHz (as a maximum).
You can happily run your Pandora with 800MHz. It won't cause you any damage.
2. But modern phones have DualCores, so they are way better!
Sure, a DualCore is neat, but does it really give you a lot of speedups?
A single program usually runs on a single core. So no emulator or game would get a speed boost from a DualCore CPU. It would speed things up with multitasking though.
So if you were running 10 apps at once on the desktop, you would probably see a speedup of the system.
Unless you plan to do that on the Pandora, a DualCore wouldn't speed things up a lot.
It sure makes sense for a smartphone, as a smartphone has multiple services like a phone service, etc. running all the time. But the Pandora is pretty optimized in that case, so it wouldn't help that much.
Besides, DualCores probably need more power - so you would sacrifice battery time for a small speedup (if any).
3. Why do you NEED a modern CPU?
This is an interesting question. What would a Cortex A9 give the Pandora that can't be done right now?
I cannot think of any game that would not be possible to work on the Pandora right now (unless badly coded and quickly ported
)The A9 wouldn't bring you more emulators either.
We've got everything up to N64 running in fullspeed, basically. Sure, N64 might run a bit faster. Maybe also some MAME games. But that's about it.
You wouldn't be able to emulate PS2. Or GameCube. Or whatever.
So, what would a more recent CPU in the Pandora help?
4. A system is also the software, not only the hardware
While faster SoCs are nice, a lot of the actual speed of a device also depends on the OS around it.
I heard that Forget-me-not runs slower on the iPhone4 than it runs on the Pandora even though the iPhone4 has a faster CPU (and a proper one as well, no cheap one).
Well, the difference is: A smartphone is a smartphone and the Pandora is NOT a smartphones.
The smartphone is a telephone, so the OS has been coded to always be responsive if e.g. a phone call comes in. This eats ressources, as well as all the other stuff that is running (the touch based UI, etc.).
The Pandora doesn't need all that. It has a desktop with a small memory and CPU footprint, and therefore, it can run stuff way faster.
Or is there a PSX Emulator that runs fullspeed without stuttering on an A8 with 650 MHz on Android or the iPhone3GS?
Not many devs used the potential of the Pandora. PCSXReArmed is one of the few outstanding examples that show what's possible with the Pandora.
No one is using the DSP yet, and not many apps make use of NEON. There's so much more possible.
5. Conclusion
I think the A9 wouldn't give us much. No more emulators than we already have. I don't think there exist a lot of games that would work fine on an A9 but not on an A8.
The speed boost from the A8 to the A9 wouldn't be high. So while the SoC is an older model (not "outdated" though), the more recent one wouldn't help much.
If there will be a Pandora 2 (I hope so, but it depends on the sales of the Pandora 1
), it will probably use something like a Cortex A15.According to some sources, it should be about 8 times faster than our current model. That's something!
However, the A15 won't go into mass production before 2013. So I think we still can have a lot of fun with our current Pandora hardware
Keep in mind though that I'm no hardware expert. While I try to be as honest and accurate as possible in this post, it might be I didn't understand something correctly. Feel free to correct me, if you know about these things as well
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