possible soc updates.

[Grench]

Well, we'd lose too much in my opinion.

Android games, NDS, Optimizations and our full Pandora software library, with all the small optimizations made in the last years to work properly on our little handheld.

And we'd get a system where the software is not much optimized for power usage or similar, since people simply would buy a new PC and don't care about power usage.


There definitely is too much we'd lose and too little we'd gain here.


I rather have a small and good community (as we are now) than thousands of buyers who would be disappointed because Win8 and their latest games would suck the battery dry in a couple of hours.

OK.  I'll drop it then - even though you're making a horrendous exaggeration about the power drain, declaring that since it's X86 it would have to ship with and have support for Windows, assuming that the latest games would have to run on it (but not making the same assumption to ARM) - I understand.  Apparently an X86 handheld would be held to a higher requirements standard than ARM.

 

[Exophase]

I don't think the emulation situation is going to favor ARM that heavily. PPSSPP and mupen64plus have always been optimized for x86 too. AFAIK the CPU emulation parts of PCSX-reARMed have been. Yabause may be more optimized on ARM right now, but SSF may be more for x86. PS2 and emulation is optimized for x86 with nothing for ARM. Gamecube is at best similar for both. For Dreamcast we still have nothing of nullDCe but have a few x86 emulators with recompilers. What you lose isn't that much more than the stuff I did - the PS1 renderer and DraStic. I'm eventually going to start working on x86 optimized emulation for DraStic, probably long before Pandora 2 is out (PS1 GPU renderer is open source, someone else can do it if they really want)

So I don't think the situation will be that much worse going to x86, especially if we can start working on it long before it's out. It's not at all pleasant but it's not that bad.

As for the best benchmark - probably Geekbench. It uses real native C compute with latest GCC (4.8) similarly tuned for both. In other words, it's the only thing which is close to what WE will compile. It shows that high-end Silvermont is fairly similar to highest end Cortex-A15s and Qualcomm Krait 400, probably using less power though. But if you can get something like Z3770 but can't get Exynos 5420, Tegra 4, or S800 then what difference does it make? Or if you can't get any of them then it still doesn't matter. The situation thus far with every vendor asked has been very discouraging. I think Intel absolutely should be asked. We shouldn't even be entertaining the thought of going with some quad core Cortex-A9 (at best!) over Z3770 or similar. And like Grench says the SoC price isn't high enough to be a big barrier.

Trust me, I would not be siding with Grench and monstercameron if I didn't think this was a good idea

 

[moxie]

its not about disagreeing

Yes it is.

You may disagree with him. You may refute his arguments. You may not start calling him names.

Insults don't do any good to anyone.

If you object to someone as an entirety, please chalk it up to "another wierdo on the internet" - don't let us know about it!

Please apply the same moderation to post 321 from God Ginrai?

Thank you.

Post 321 doesn't seem to be by God Ginrai, so I can't really do that. There is a "you're a jerk" comment a few posts later, but that is rather milder than equating someone with an STD, and also carries a lot better motivation - Without going into the factual defintion of a "jerk" and whether you are one or not at least that comment is directed at something you did, rather than just coming spuriously out of the left field. Thirdly, monstercameron has been building up to some moderation quite some time, so that comment above is not only directed at that precise posting.

Then again, I'd prefer if noone calls anyone anything apart from possibly their names. That includes God Ginrai too.

 

[Grench]

its not about disagreeing

Yes it is.

You may disagree with him. You may refute his arguments. You may not start calling him names.

Insults don't do any good to anyone.

If you object to someone as an entirety, please chalk it up to "another wierdo on the internet" - don't let us know about it!

Please apply the same moderation to post 321 from God Ginrai?

Thank you.

Post 321 doesn't seem to be by God Ginrai, so I can't really do that. There is a "you're a jerk" comment a few posts later, but that is rather milder than equating someone with an STD, and also carries a lot better motivation - Without going into the factual defintion of a "jerk" and whether you are one or not at least that comment is directed at something you did, rather than just coming spuriously out of the left field. Thirdly, monstercameron has been building up to some moderation quite some time, so that comment above is not only directed at that precise posting.

Then again, I'd prefer if noone calls anyone anything apart from possibly their names. That includes God Ginrai too.

Your post counter in this thread must be different from being a moderator?

For me, this shows up as #321.

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/12626-possible-soc-updates/?p=275076

Apparently he was taking offense - requiring foul language and name calling - for my having replied to different conversations within the thread using multiple replies.  I consider that to be a polite way of keeping separate threads and thoughts separate instead of mushing them together into gruel.  His opinion apparently differs on proper posting methodologies.  His response though was very off topic, argumentative, personal and non-constructive.  But I guess he gets a pass.

 

[Grench]

I don't think the emulation situation is going to favor ARM that heavily. PPSSPP and mupen64plus have always been optimized for x86 too. AFAIK the CPU emulation parts of PCSX-reARMed have been. Yabause may be more optimized on ARM right now, but SSF may be more for x86. PS2 and emulation is optimized for x86 with nothing for ARM. Gamecube is at best similar for both. For Dreamcast we still have nothing of nullDCe but have a few x86 emulators with recompilers. What you lose isn't that much more than the stuff I did - the PS1 renderer and DraStic. I'm eventually going to start working on x86 optimized emulation for DraStic, probably long before Pandora 2 is out (PS1 GPU renderer is open source, someone else can do it if they really want)


So I don't think the situation will be that much worse going to x86, especially if we can start working on it long before it's out. It's not at all pleasant but it's not that bad.


As for the best benchmark - probably Geekbench. It uses real native C compute with latest GCC (4.8) similarly tuned for both. In other words, it's the only thing which is close to what WE will compile. It shows that high-end Silvermont is fairly similar to highest end Cortex-A15s and Qualcomm Krait 400, probably using less power though. But if you can get something like Z3770 but can't get Exynos 5420, Tegra 4, or S800 then what difference does it make? Or if you can't get any of them then it still doesn't matter. The situation thus far with every vendor asked has been very discouraging. I think Intel absolutely should be asked. We shouldn't even be entertaining the thought of going with some quad core Cortex-A9 (at best!) over Z3770 or similar. And like Grench says the SoC price isn't high enough to be a big barrier.


Trust me, I would not be siding with Grench and monstercameron if I didn't think this was a good idea

Thank you for giving it proper consideration.

Keep this up though and I'll have to use a second hand to count the times we've agreed.

 

[Binky]

Your post counter in this thread must be different from being a moderator? For me, this shows up as #321. http://boards.openpa...dates/?p=275076

That's weird...

For me, the post you link to is 325:

Because the Pandora was designed as a gaming handheld....

...and post 321 is:

Sunspider is a bullshit benchmark...

:unsure:

 

[moxie]

Apparently he was taking offense - requiring foul language and name calling - for my having replied to different conversations within the thread using multiple replies.  I consider that to be a polite way of keeping separate threads and thoughts separate instead of mushing them together into gruel.  His opinion apparently differs on proper posting methodologies.  His response though was very off topic, argumentative, personal and non-constructive.  But I guess he gets a pass.

There is the word "shit" and the word "jerk", in two sentences at the end of a post that otherwise is not, as far as I can tell, neither offtopic nor personal. This whole thread is Argumentative and Non-constructive, so I can't really fault him on that.

As I said, I'd prefer if neithed "shit" nor "jerk" was there, and I agree with you on the preferred posting style, but apart from those last sentences you're both going at each other in full argumentative non-constructive mode, so it is (in my eyes) an overstepping of the line that is a part of a heated exchange. I'd prefer if noone calls anyone anything (as I've already said) and I'd also prefer if you all cooled down, realised that this is so far a rather academic discussion, try to take the other ones arguments as being sincerely held and premeditated (I'm seeing quite a lot of "since you don't agree with me, you must be misinformed/a fanatic/arguing out of spite/stupid" from both sides), and just retreated to a civilized tone, the whole lot of you. I realize, also, that this won't happen, so I try to stop the worst bits. "Jerk" doesn't quite peg my meter the same way as comparing people to an STD, is all.

 

[Grench]

And all of that for the audacity of saying something to the effect of - hey, look, Intel created something cool that might fit our needs!  Should we look into it more?  It's early, but what can we find out about it?

Apparently that is how holly wars begin.

 

[moxie]

Apparently that is how holy wars begin We have our proof in text here It does also, of course, require that the one doing the saying isn't adverse to pressing the matter quite a lot, too.

 

[Grench]

Apparently that is how holy wars begin We have our proof in text here It does also, of course, require that the one doing the saying isn't adverse to pressing the matter quite a lot, too.

Not Holy wars - holly wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly

Kind of like paintball only we use wrist rockets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrist_rocket

Stings a bit, but hey...   wear eye protection.

 

[vcoleiro1]

Well, there is this multi page review and benchmarking of Bay Trail done by Anandtech :  http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested

However, I agree we need to see some real world tests.  So lets just wait 2 months for the armada of Bay Trail Win 8.1 tablets that are coming out, some of which will have bundled Office as well.  It should give us an idea of what they are like.

But as Exophase said, we look to be in an unfortunate position of having to grab anything decent that we can get.

 

[MrConfusion]

(

Well, there is this multi page review and benchmarking of Bay Trail done by Anandtech :  http://www.anandtech.com/show/7314/intel-baytrail-preview-intel-atom-z3770-tested

*chuckle*

If you put that thing in a P2, assume this laptop I'm typing on won't die on me until it comes out, pray the old PPC Mac I occasionally use for sequencing won't break... and what's going to be the end result?

The end result would be that the P2 would easily be the third fastest computer in our entire household :rolleyes: maybe even second fastest, it's difficult to measure with the PPC Mac...

)

 

[Askarus]

A lot of people might know I heavily dislike Android (especially EvilDragon ) but for me it's somehow important to have full Android compatibility.

The better the ARM machines will be the better the Android games are.

Lots of Android games support game controls now.

I'd rather have the full Android store than some PC games.

 

[Mr_Loon]

I just want to mention some points that aren't mentioned any more.


1: Pandora compatibility


There's so much optimized stuff for Pandora.


Don't throw it away.


...

This of course is a very important consideration, however if a current gen ARM SoC is not available to purchase in 'small' quantities then surely x86 is well worthy of consideration, if a current gen x86 SoC is available in 'small' quantities. Major consideration should be given to potential future sales of P2 as well as backwards compatibility with P1 IMHO.

 

[Klumpen]

I trust Ed, that he will not sacrifice all the previous software development and developers

and will keep his mind on backward compatibility, if it's a bit less powerful than others but keeps a good battery life and all the software, everything is fine.

So I hope, that ARM will not die or there will at least be some tricks for compatibility.

 

[_wb_]

It's good to know all options before deciding, and I certainly wouldn't exclude x86 just because it is not ARM.

It looks like Samsung and Qualcomm don't want to deal with low-quantity niche stuff like this. Maybe Intel is different in that respect - it doesn't hurt to try.

But what about HiSilicon K3V3?

And if sourcing a cutting edge SoC is too hard, then why not go for something like the Rockchip RK3188? It's "only" Cortex-A9, but it has 4 cores, 1.8GHz each, and the GPU is not too bad, and it's using 28nm nodes which is the best possible node size unless you're Intel.

 

[Thorgan]

Arm or not Arm isn't really the question for the P2.

I think we need to keep the amazing battery life (it is a major feature, see the 3DS console...), the same form factor (lighter could be better), the full usb 2 port (500mA should be enough for everyone), keyboard buttons and nubs, the sd cards and so on...

There is room for improvement :

- reliable wifi (fortunately for me, It is stable enough once the powersaving is off)

- keyboard and nubs (I really feel the keyboard could be tweaked to type faster, and the nubs could be more psp like)

- better web browsing experience (hardware and software related)

- moar ram (never enough)

- lighter device and better casing ? better screen ?

I could perfectly live with the current SoC with those improvements, and that would be for me a true P2.

I haven't developed for Pandora because once you have been coding for 8 years in .Net c#, you become lazy and it's hard to even consider writing a makefile or using an open source toolchain. If it's enough to keep me away...

What about people that made the effort to learn all the toolchain, all teh arm/neon/dsp/opengles/dark opensource ways ? What about all those dev that made the device what it is currently ? Changing to another platform like x86 or mips could be a cause of unwanted headache and could damage the motivation of some devs.

Losing compatibility is a thing, having someone reengineering code is another. Regardless of the platform anything can be ported if the source is available. But who would do this ? Who is willing to go and port all the über optimized neon code, and everything ?

If there is a porting taskforce ready and a x86 SoC meeting the requirements, this could be an option. I think the x86 supporters across this thread (that haven't done so) have to start releasing things ! Learn how to code/port guys ! Platform election is mainly an active dev's choice, a gem without software is a brick. Steam's library won't magically pop up on a device.

 

[xiongxioi]

Future potential does not equal to what we will get.

Intel can go all day long about what they would try to implement, but they've chosen their words carefully so their promises aren't binded by the law.

I remembered sony talked about how powerful the cell was, and how it would shape the future of gaming.

I remembered how nvidia bumbling about how good the tegra was, and how it would be the shit.

These are just marketing, these are just proposals that may or may not come into fruition.

Yes, they will have evidences to back them up, but that's just how feasibility studies are for. They wouldn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on those if their products spelt failure. Unless they are microsoft and apple who are so out of touch that they stopped giving a damn about their future.

I simply don't see a lot of growth potential in the smart phone or tablet market. Intel is not bringing in anything new, the cake will not be bigger in any foreseeable future.

Anyone who know a little bit about market and economy would know that, if you aren't bring in new customers into the market you are entering, then you are not going to perform well in the first few years, or even decades.

I would give out 2 examples, one is apple, it did it right. It is because of apple, people start to like the whole smart phone for dummies concept, and are willing to drop a few hundreds on those. So, in a way, apple enhanced the industry.

Another example from the opposite side of the spectrum would be pepsi. It has tried to be the cola for decades, but it just can't catch up. Even though it's making the samething, it's spent much more money on marketing, hiring big names to hold pepsi in their hands and smiling on TV. Pepsi is not bring in anything new to the market, so it has to make a name of its own even though it has nothing to brag about. Sure it's doing all right after years of throwing money at fire; it had a rough start.

Yes, Intel is pushing out some good products for once, does it add anything to the market? I don't think so. I rarely see anyone using a smart phone and say "this would be a much better experience if I can run office on it". If they are that type of dudes, they will bring their laptops with them. The consumer base is different. Most people using a smart phone, or a tablet rarely have the need to put their workshop into it. They are in it for the convenience, and convenience only.

To put our faith in such an unreliable product is like investing all your money into funding cancer treatment researches. There will be people getting rich from that, but usually it will not be the first bunch of them. The bubble will burst soon enough, and people will come to their senses that no matter it's x86 or arm, they are all basically the same, the experience they provide is only as good as the softwares on them. Old English cheese may be very delicious, but it is not the kind of material you would want to build a castle with. May be after three or five years, x86 would be as adepted as arm, but at the moment, the market demand is not there.

 

[God Ginrai]

Then again, I'd prefer if noone calls anyone anything apart from possibly their names. That includes God Ginrai too.

Well, I got a little angry since he specifically ignored my earlier request to stop double-posting:

Also, in the future, could you please refrain from double posting? Any additions can easily be added to your most recent post with the Edit function.

And then pointed out that he does this on purpose. That is jerk-like behaviour, IMHO, so I called him out on it.

Double- and triple-posting is not conducive to healthy forum conversations, because it wastes a lot of space on one person. This makes for more scrolling and more pages for other users, which is frustrating. Not to mention, it is also toxic against other topics because it pushes other topics down, making it less likely for the other topics to be noticed. Thirdly, double-posts mean more entries in the database. This increases the amount of rows in the DB tables and thus hurts functionality and wastes space. Sure, we don't notice anything from one double-post, but they add up, eventually to a lot of wasted space and possible performance hits due to the number of rows in the tables. The only acceptable time to double post is when you are trying to bump a topic back onto page 1.

It is not hard to address multiple conversations in one post, and if you feel you need to somehow separate them, BBCode offers many ways to format your post in such a way as to separate your different discussions.

Also, it says it is post 321 for me as well. Maybe the mods are seeing deleted posts?

@Exophase Do you really think that quad-core ARM Cortex A9 may be the best SoC EvilDragon may be able to get?

-God Ginrai

 

[sebt3]

because it wastes a lot of space on one person.

Yep, some need more space for themself. Usually those with the "I'm all for equality as long as I'm more equal than anyone else...."