Tegra K1

[vcoleiro1]

^  Don't know where the comment re: comparing the Pyra to smartphones came from, did anyone say that. You seem to have quoted me, so I'm assuming you meant me, but as per what I said, which you quoted, I never said that at all.  

I also don't know why you got all razed up, all SNESFAN said was that its a little disapointing that the latest SOC can't be used for the Pyra - it was a mute point with full understanding of why that had to be.  

As far as the Vita people do compare it, particularly with the Shield, it's envitable that people will compare gaming devices. They will also compare the Pyra to the K1 shield when it comes out.  But as you said, the Pyra does have it's own uniqueness and as long as that's maintained , should keep its niche following.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Well the K1 with dual core 64bit armv8 will be out in products around mid this year, making the OMAP5 at least 1 gen old.

Keep in mind that a 64bit CPU hardly provides any advantages for us, concerning 64bit software it may actually perform slightly worse in a general purpose context.
Looking back at the 32->64 bit transition of the x86 architecture, the small plus in overall performance actually came from other improvements: Lots of new general purpose registers, passing arguments of functions in registers instead of using the stack, some more efficient commands for random stuff... and of course the fact that stuff like SSE2 is always available.

You generally get a significant drawback by switching over to 64bit due to memory overhead etc, which might get compensated to some degree by getting the chance to get rid of old cruft. x86 had a lot of legacy stuff and restrictions for a good backwards-compatibility, so the result was quite good. I doubt that there's that much room for improvements for the old 32bit ARMv7 architecture, especially since backwards-compatibility has never been that important in the past (someone might correct me on this if I've got a wrong impression).

 

[WizardStan]

Automotive/Industrial has ALWAYS been a WAY bigger part of TI than the mobile part. The OMAP3 has a 10-year-availability rate, TI ensures you can buy it until at least 2018. The OMAP5 should be similar, because that's the most important thing in the industrial business

I can't speak for TI specifically, but I have been dealing with Freescale (technically a reseller of Freescale but close enough) and they said something similar about their automotive line: design now and be assured that you'll still be able to get the same (or at least 100% compatible) processors years from now.The smartphone market changes within months, automotive computers need to be able to last or be replaced for years. You get a 5 year warranty on your new car with an entertainment system; 4 years 11 months into it the CPU burns out. You think Nissan is going to accept that they can't get a replacement part for you? No way.

 

[EvilDragon]

Yes, that's normal. Additionally, you can buy them in lower quantities. It might be a company only needs a couple hundred for an internal system no one else ever needs (maybe robotic, etc.)

They can buy them AND get replacement parts years later. They could never do that with SoCs for smartphones.

Minimum order quantity is usually 100,000 and availability in the future is not assured.

That's my main concern with the display we'll most likely use.

MOQ is 5000.... which is not much, but 5000 times 70 EUR really adds up.

If MOQ would be 1000, I could probably afford the production of the first 1000 Pyras completely without preorders, but due to the displays, I need some financing here.

Mobile market is horrible for small companies and products like the Pyra.

Sent from my Xperia Pro using Tapatalk

 

[Natsu]

So would you like to spend 600 EUR for a new Pandora-successor each few months?

BTW: Does anyone say that the VITA is already 2gens behind, as it uses an old CortexA9 SoC?


Nope, no one does, because no one compares the VITA to a smartphone. Why the heck does ANYONE compare the Pandora / Pyra to smartphones?


That's just plain stupid.

That's a very good point, but I worry about the price the power and features ratio.

Look at this link. If we are going be paying 600 no matter what then I was hoping for the better chip set.

I hope that didn't comes out as being mad or anything.

 

[WizardStan]

And I hope gold bars fall out my butt. We all have to accept that some things just aren't possible.

 

[SNESFAN]

My point was moot (not "mute point" sorry vcoleiro, nails on the chalkboard) I was hoping that was clear. I was asked to elaborate on why I was less than impressed. Stated my reasons and got some backlash. Further explained and big man ED jumped in on the discussion. No sweat off my back. Hope ED isn't upset that I'm not all googly eyes over it, or the situation. I'm sure plenty will be, and he'll still have my order too for sure, I'm just not 100% dream machine like I was when the pandora's specs first hit the press. I'd be more impressed with a tegra 4, and even moreso if he gets this K1 which is supposed to have one of the best GPU's ever in it, added with the higher probability of having an open source GPU driver at some point to me seems like the best answer. If not possible, then w/e.

If omap 5 is the best of what is available and practical I'm sure it will still do just fine. It's not bleeding edge spec gpu, but it's a great improvement for the current pandora, and it's current gen SoC. And it's fine if it gets outdated as soon as it's released. People are going to compare it to everything just like people still compare crap to the pandora now. They and I have been doing it for years now. Since the first a9's hit the market, the xperia play, cheap chineese android game things, nexus 7's, gcw zero's and more recently the shield.

There's going to be a ton of the same people defending the pyra specs then that still defend the pandora specs now. Backing the pandora so far back into it's niche the more outdated it gets "if it ain't a clone of the pandora, it's not worth comparing", "no pandora logo, no competition" and other absurd thought processes(brainwashing). So 2 weeks after the pyra is released and the newest tablet out performs it, it will begin with the back and forth of something being more powerful, but people's use cases making the comparison irrelevant in their minds. That's just how it's going to be. 

But what would matter, and would make it authentically more relevant is if you did have an GPU you could actually get your hands dirty with and keep up to date and fix stuff that's wrong out of the box. Not being limited to if the manufactuer has 3d acceleration handed to you, or x11 support, being able to do that kinda stuff yourself. Not having the latest breed of OpenGL and OpenGL ES are some of the things that will make it look like an old dog real quick in comparison. It should really be reconsidered. If I had to identify any one thing, it having an old powervr gpu has got to be the thorne in the side. Very similar to the pandora's now.

so sayeth SNESFAN the soothsayer.

 

[TrashyMG]

^ come drink the Koolaid with us... It's a better place.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

And I hope gold bars fall out my butt. We all have to accept that some things just aren't possible.

Gold bars do come out of your butt, they are just worth as much as fertilizer

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Sounds ok to me. It will still be a sweet device with a good community.

The vita? It's plenty powerful for a handheld gaming device.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

So this is what were getting in the pyra? http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/omap-applications-processors/omap-5-processors-products.page?paramCriteria=no

 

[TrashyMG]

So this is what were getting in the pyra? http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/omap-applications-processors/omap-5-processors-products.page?paramCriteria=no

That's the quasi-rumor..   

Feature wise it's pretty impressive. 

 

[EssoAir]

^ Don't know where the comment re: comparing the Pyra to smartphones came from, did anyone say that. You seem to have quoted me, so I'm assuming you meant me, but as per what I said, which you quoted, I never said that at all.


I also don't know why you got all razed up, all SNESFAN said was that its a little disapointing that the latest SOC can't be used for the Pyra - it was a mute point with full understanding of why that had to be.


As far as the Vita people do compare it, particularly with the Shield, it's envitable that people will compare gaming devices. They will also compare the Pyra to the K1 shield when it comes out. But as you said, the Pyra does have it's own uniqueness and as long as that's maintained , should keep its niche following.

Its funny that you mentiom the K1 shield. The more I think about it, I might get one of those instead of a Pyra especially if it runs Linux like the Tegra 4

 

[ekianjo]

The more I think about it, I might get one of those instead of a Pyra especially if it runs Linux like the Tegra 4

I thought you were a huge Android fan ? Since when do you care about Linux ? 

 

[sswam]

Don't worry, we can just put in two or three of the OMAP5 processors.  Solder the pins together, or how you do it.  Make it so.

This Parallella thingy is looking nice, too:  http://www.parallella.org/2013/12/30/first-parallella-user-created-video/

 

[bzar]

A device based on a beowulf cluster of omap5s on a single board

 

[Natsu]

I thought about more than one, but that seem kind of ridiculous and unlikely.

 

[EvilDragon]

So, some people still are more impressed by specs than what a device actually can do?

I could never understand that.

I'm still using my xperia Pro as phone, as there's not a single smartphone out there with a keyboard... and smartphones have become so huge.

And it does everything I need.

Modern phones don't impress me at all. They've got plenty of horsepower that most people will never use... so what for?

Same for the K1. Impressive GPU, sure - but honestly, what do you expect from it that won't run with an OMAP5 GPU?

HQ Commercial games? Will never be released on the Pyra anyways.

Dolphin? Maybe right now, but I honestly don't believe it needs OpenGL ES 3.0. Sounds like they didn't optimize it much for slower GPUs, but that can be done.

So, honestly, what do you expect that the K1 can do that an OMAP5 can't, when ignoring commercial games?

Sent from my Xperia Pro using Tapatalk

 

[ekianjo]

Modern phones don't impress me at all. They've got plenty of horsepower that most people will never use... so what for?

Agree with ED on everything he said. The Smartphones are the PC model all over again: no optimization and a race on specs to make up for it. 

I don't think we need to have the latest bleeding edge hardware. Of course we need a new, refreshed device, even now and then, if only to meet newer standards for connectivity and benefit from newer/better/cheaper parts (screens, controls, etc), but even the 1Ghz Pandora's power is largely underused currently for games (and we still haven't seen any application using the DSP yet), and most serious application work very well on it. 

This race on specs is pure madness, just like the race for pixels on digital cameras, while their optics are still as cheap as ever. Specs do not make much a difference. Software does. 

And you all know very well why specs are what matter for phones. Because phones have become a commodity, and when you enter a commodity market you can't fight on price anymore, you need to fight on features, and manufacturers' features are only about hardware, since they don't control the software side of thing. So, obviously they will focus on hardware to sell their shit, and be sure their marketing will be all about having the latest chip from the latest over-hyped company to ensure they get more orders from their resellers. That's a very LOW-level of marketing. 

 

[xiongxioi]

+1 internet cookie for ED. 

I don't get how 1080p screens are becoming a must for high end smart phones, it's just mad. Even if an android tablet is as powerful as my laptopk, it is still an android tablet that has little use other than messing around browsering some web pages. 

OMAP5 is more than 2 times powerful than pandora, if I can do this much with pandora, I can do a lot more with Pyra. 

editing large document, watching shows on youtube, streaming tv programmes, play shenmue, golden eye and Diablo 2. All my needs are satisfied. Sure, I would love a pocket sized PS3, but that's not going to happen in quite sometime.