SoC Poll - What's most important for you?

[MaxNormal]

I'm very glad this has all been thrashed out here.

Intel has been failing to get into the mobile space for years due to heat issues like this.

If they ever do create a viable SOC then we can look at it for a sucessor. Now onto evaluating snapdragon ...

 

[Esn]

How well would emulation of x86 DOS/Windows games on an ARM Pyra work?

Would something like Jazz Jackrabbit 2 require too many resources to work well?

At the moment that's the main reason that I'd lean towards x86 - the Pandora struggled to emulate a lot of 1990s computer games, which is kind of my favourite gaming period.

---

On the other hand, the major argument in favour of ARM for me would be the lack of serious malware & virus problems.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

None of us want to use Windows

It's the first time i agree with you.

 

[comradekingu]

Its a game capable handheld with laptop centric capabilities now rather than vice versa.
its a traditional laptop in the sense that it has no bad/artificial restrictions left on a laptop use-case.

Linux|gnu is matured, the successor platform too,

Those are still an extreme to where the world is at, in between with android, on casual tablets,

how it is different from a normal laptop is mostly good, but also bad in that partly the world is still geared towards windows running on x86, but thats a diametrically different prospect.

The smaller the form factor the less of a foothold intel has because the thermal envelope of intel starts off with x86, traditionally much higher because of the idle state being a more significant portion to the whole platform

X86 gaming is a different game, which we play on our x86 gaming laptops and desktops, which are at the forefront of big bulky computers in a market comprised of big and bulky players, commanding license fees is a similar sized cut of the cake.

Dragonbox being tiny in comparison with the pyra instead focuses on open source because thats where its rooted,thats what it can do best

Its against the old ways, which latest turn is for the worse in making more draconian and spying ecosystems, some enjoying partly the benefits that make linux viable now.

Go the whole way, be different, compete on being good. Thats support which is so deeply rooted i have no words for how much i like the pandora.

TL;DR i think the worlds of x86 and proprietary free, casual, ARM and handheld, niche dont converge yet, and there is still a devide between them. Finding the sweetspot is what the pandora already has done.

 

[SNESFAN]

What would be the maximum theoretical emulation level of x86 on a a15? Pentium 3 maybe? Flip of that what would be the emulation level of an arm chip on one of these baytrail x86 chips? Pandora level maybe higher? Would things like neon translate well into SSE etc?

 

[God Ginrai]

What would be the maximum theoretical emulation level of x86 on a a15? Pentium 3 maybe? Flip of that what would be the emulation level of an arm chip on one of these baytrail x86 chips? Pandora level maybe higher? Would things like neon translate well into SSE etc?

Like the theoretical maximum matters if no one builds an emulator for it? For emulating x86, you mainly just have to emulate the architecture. For emulating ARM devices, you have to emulate all of their accompanying hardware.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

I think I remember some back-of-the-napkin math saying that the OMAP5 should be up to 3 times as fast as the DM3730 (but can't find that particular math so don't quote me on it) at single threaded applications.

If this is true then we should expect things with requirements up to maybe a Pentium running at 180Mhz, late 90s I think.

Just sit back and wait for Exophase to explain where I'm wrong though, before making any plans.

 

[SNESFAN]

What would be the maximum theoretical emulation level of x86 on a a15? Pentium 3 maybe? Flip of that what would be the emulation level of an arm chip on one of these baytrail x86 chips? Pandora level maybe higher? Would things like neon translate well into SSE etc?

Like the theoretical maximum matters if no one builds an emulator for it? For emulating x86, you mainly just have to emulate the architecture. For emulating ARM devices, you have to emulate all of their accompanying hardware.

-God Ginrai

True that, I'm just curious as to what level the alternate would be. CISP seems to have an advantage over SISP when it comes to emulation. My PC emulates android fairly well through qemu virtual arm PC but is also magnitudes stronger than these atom chips.

These things have a technical background will directly effect the end user experience for a main use case of the pandora.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I think I remember some back-of-the-napkin math saying that the OMAP5 should be up to 3 times as fast as the DM3730 (but can't find that particular math so don't quote me on it) at single threaded applications.


If this is true then we should expect things with requirements up to maybe a Pentium running at 180Mhz, late 90s I think.


Just sit back and wait for Exophase to explain where I'm wrong though, before making any plans.

The 1GHz@1.2GHz is a bit limit on Broodwar/win95 Qemu. I'd compare that to 486/early pentium performance as pentium 1 (tested on 166 i think) was ok except when mass carriers (many sprites/objects) were on screen in 1v1 network play. Surprisingly, there's almost no slowdowns with carriers on OP.

Broodwar low limit is pentium 90 (cd cover info).

Of course this is totally unreliable as a benchmark (like intel bench tools for intel products).

 

[klapse]

With respect to DOS games, the 486 was pretty much the end of the DOS era. Only a handful of games required the Pentium to run well. DOSBox on Pyra (regardless of SoC) should be able to run the vast majority of DOS games.

Anybody up for a round of Alleycat?

 

[hmc]

Alleycat even ran on my first PC, an 80286-based one with 640kB of RAM. Great game!

 

[EvilDragon]

True, but I prefer the Atari800 version of Alleycat

 

[Stainy]

But there is the C64 version

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[EvilDragon]

But that's a completely different game

 

[comradekingu]

ED on a whole different off topic meta. Next level.

Edit:Cant touch this.

 

[Grench]

ED on a whole different off topic meta.

Meh - it's his boards. He could talk about racing pigeons if he's inclined.

 

[destraht]

This is my first post on the boards.  I've been following openpandora for a number of years and although I never bought one I have always wanted one.  I think that the reason that I did not make a purchase earlier on is because simply I did not know if I would actually receive one for my money and then later on I felt that the system was outdated and for something as simple as not wanting to carry a mini-usb cord around.

I travel A LOT and currently I am living in Ukraine.  I develop my own web software (on Linux) and I frequently need to communicate with California via skype or google voice.  It is just a fact of life that some wifi routers do not like certain wifi cards and so I use my iPod touch 5th gen as a backup.  I endeavour to keep my Linux install very clean from proprietary software and at the moment I have cut the list down to only flash and then I use virutualbox for skype when I need to.

If the Pyra could run Skype (maybe inside of a Linux Virtualbox even for some better security) then I could throw my iPod away.  Then as far as games I think that Bay Trail would do a great job as I'd be able to play NWN, CIV4-5, etc using WINE.

Also I'm concerned that many of the SOCs won't be able to support Wayland in a few years and Intel is actually one of the main developers for this.

I looked long and hard at getting a Viliv x86 clamshell but it is so niche and Linux support would have been a nightmare.  I want a badass gaming, full-featured desktop Linux machine.  Fucking Windows, that is what WINE is for.

Hey also I'm very serious about a full open source stack and the Thinkpad x230 coreboot developer used a few dumps that I sent him.  I am also very interested in Qubes Linux.  One of the very noticeable problems with running an ultra secure hypervisor OS such as this is that the application VMs have zero acceleration.  That means NO GAMES.  So I think that there is a real market for something that can function as a gaming/network administrator/web socket testing/communication device.  An x86 device would better suit me than an ARM one.  Also fuck Windows.

Has anyone considered that Broadwell is likely to be a simple drop-in for Haswell boards since they are only doing a node change next cycle?  The new Pyras could get an easy next upgrade version in say a 1.5 years.  This is baked into the cake.

Well I'll conclude that I think that this Freedrino powered ARM chip sounds like the best ARM option and I think that Bay Trail would be far better than the current TI chip.  Shitty blob GPU driver?!?!?  Really do we need to go back 5 years.  We've come so far.

 

[EvilDragon]

Just for the information:

I'm currently working on testing various power usages of the OMAP5 EVM, etc.

PLEASE NOTE!

THESE ARE JUST QUICK TESTS I DID MYSELF!

Please don't take them as 100% correct, I might have made a mistake here!

Also, why I generally know what I'm doing, I'm no expert!

If my assumptions and calculations are correct, then it would run about 12 hours under full load when limited to the speed of a 1GHz Pandora running at 1,2GHz.

That's what I expected upfront - the Perf/W is better, so it should be better at same speed.

When idling, power consumption goes down, should be similar to what the Pandora does right now (needs some more work on the Kernel, same for the Pandora when we moved from 2.6 kernel to 3.2).

However, when running both cores at full load with 1,5GHz, consumption goes up... Battery would last a bit more than 2 hours.

That would be like running six 1,2GHz Pandoras with full load though (pretty unlikely scenario, I guess - what app needs the power of six Pandora at the same time for a longer period?)

It made me think of two things though...

1. Does a Quad-Core A15 even make sense? That would lower the battery life to 1 hour... big.LITTLE wouldn't help here. Full Load is full load, it would use the A15 and not the A7.

2. Should I try to increase the battery size a bit? It could be possible and get us more capacity, but the battery won't fit anymore in the Pandora (well, except for if we made it thicker and offered a new battery cover together with it).

Some more things I found in the Internet:

The Snapdragon 800 seems to be capped to using 4W max on tablets and 2W max on smartphones.

So while it's more powerful, it's limited to not use too much power.

The Intel z3770 has 2W SDP (typical use scenario).

According to Intel, that's running at low speed (1,4GHz) with normal work being done (no games, etc.)

2W would mean approx. 3W with all other components needed in a mobile system, and that would mean 5 hours battery life with a Pandora battery.

So approx. 5 hours with 1,4GHz normal usage.

Whatever SoC we choose - while they certainly all are better than the current Pandora in terms of Perf/W, they are all able to drain the battery within hours when being run with high-demanding tasks.

 

[ekianjo]

However, when running both cores at full load with 1,5GHz, consumption goes up... Battery would last a bit more than 2 hours.

Wow, that's a critical issue.

Can you do anything, software wise, to cap the max output to prevent full load when working on battery mode ? I think it's fine to run at this kind of mode if the Pyra is plugged in, though.

 

[vcoleiro1]

I know its a long shot and probably expensive if available, but have you been keeping tabs on Silicon Anode batteries ED?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174477-at-long-last-new-lithium-battery-tech-actually-arrives-on-the-market-and-might-already-be-in-your-smartphone