Some More Cortex A8 Documentation.

[Adventus]

Not sure if this has been posted before....but in my usual Pandora related trawls of the internet i stumbled upon this:

http://www.embeddedtechjournal.com/article...0051004_arm.htm

All of this information is probably available from the official documentation, but its nicely summarized in this article. It goes into a fair bit of depth into the pipelines of each component, as well as almost all the hardware features(L1 & L2 Caches, Neon unit, Thumb-2, Super-scalar, Branch prediction). It also states that 30fps VGA H264 decoding can be achieved at 350mhz and MPEG4 at 275mhz using the Neon unit.... very promising for those videophiles who like their battery life.

Anyway, Interesting read for anyone curious about the A8 but not prepared to dig though the unwieldy official docs.

 

[notaz]

A nice read, thanks for the link.

 

[Pickle]

nice technical read

 

[javaJake]

QUOTE
Data privacy and DRM protection are becoming critical in consumer products like mobile phones, personal digital assistants and set-top boxes that run open operating systems. To keep up with this trend in the Cortex-A8, we brought forward the ARMv7 TrustZone technology. Implemented within the processor core, TrustZone protects peripherals and memory against security attacks. A secure monitor within the core serves as a gatekeeper, switching the system between secure and nonsecure states. In the secure state, the processor runs “trusted” code from a secure code block to handle security-sensitive tasks such as authentication and signature manipulation.


*sigh*

Well, at least I can be thankful the Pandora won't implement this...

 

[WizardStan]

Well, at least I can be thankful the Pandora won't implement this...

Why? Sounds like a potentially useful feature in the right hands.

 

[notaz]

TrustZone must be supported by OS, and Linux has it disabled AFAIK.

 

[WizardStan]

Yes, but why thankful for such? As if it being implemented is necessarily a bad thing.

 

[sindbad]

DRM is always a bad idea. At least we get a RNG and hardware encryption along with this.

 

[WizardStan]

DRM is just one use of the technology, though. I can imagine other uses for it entirely noble in nature: online games, wherein the network code is kept safe and theoretically unhackable, for instance. Data encryption, password protection, and many other useful things as well, I'm sure. Just because DRM is a possibility is no reason to deny it in it's entirety.
Besides, seriously, who would actually use it to DRM something on the Pandora?

 

[javaJake]

Yes, there are good uses for this, but if we get commercial interest, no doubt they would want to DRM their stuff. In my opinion, it's better if we don't give them that option unwittingly.

 

[sdedalus83]

Yes, there are good uses for this, but if we get commercial interest, no doubt they would want to DRM their stuff. In my opinion, it's better if we don't give them that option unwittingly.

Having the option is probably the only way the Pandora would ever get any significant commercial gaming interest, so while DRM is annoying, it's hardly a bad thing to be able to advertise this capability. At least having the option for hardware DRM would prevent the nightmare that the PC gaming industry is currently experiencing.

 

[WizardStan]

Yes, there are good uses for this, but if we get commercial interest, no doubt they would want to DRM their stuff. In my opinion, it's better if we don't give them that option unwittingly.

If some commercial vendor implements DRM, don't buy it. You have that choice. Dollars speak louder than words.
So long as you still have a choice in the matter, someones abuse of the technology should not prevent that technology.
Start complaining when you don't have a choice (or the choice is of the "cake or death" form, which isn't really a choice) a la the whole purchasing MP3 deal. That's just my opinion on DRM, though. I've chosen not to buy Spore, and I've chosen death over the sweet, sweet cake that is legally purchased MP3s.

 

[ldesnogu]

OMAP3530 internal ROM is secured and runs the rest in non-secure mode (the rest includes the kernel). There are some ways to interact with the secure mode but TI does not disclose that information