the open pandora 2 must use an amd apu!


actually the GNU/Linux that Pandora runs is a portable operating system, that runs on dozens of different CPU's.  It makes windows look like a bad joke.
I get that, my point is if we used a more standard architecture like x86 it'd open up a world off programs to the Pandora that weren't available previously. PCSX2, Dolphin, Steam and all of its games, Minecraft, Photoshop... the list is endless.

It'd also mean that we wouldn't have to screw around with USB devices so much, since drivers for them are readily available.
 
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There's no shortage of android apps for ARM, and endless stuff for windows

One's shallow software for a fundamentally good OS, the other's good software for a flakey OS

Given the poor battery life of an x86 chip, I'd rather go with the former.
 
There's no shortage of android apps for ARM, and endless stuff for windows

One's shallow software for a fundamentally good OS, the other's good software for a flakey OS

Given the poor battery life of an x86 chip, I'd rather go with the former.
then again what does the os choice have to do with end users? whether it runs bsd,linux,window does it matter if it will be used to play games? as for battery life, seems like a worthy sacrifice for more software to me...3.5W is arm a9 territory (amd a4 dual apu) and 5.9 is a little above arm a15(amd a6 quad apu).
 
There's no shortage of android apps for ARM, and endless stuff for windows

One's shallow software for a fundamentally good OS, the other's good software for a flakey OS

Given the poor battery life of an x86 chip, I'd rather go with the former.
I'm not saying make the Pandora 2 exclusively Windows, or Linux, or Android, or anything. I'm saying use a x86 CPU so we can run whatever the hell we want on it. I'd use the same GNU/Linux that the Pandora 1 uses for most things and switch to Windows or Android for emulators/games/applications/etc that aren't available on Linux.

Additionally, where do you get off saying x86 has bad battery life? 

Clocking my laptop's AMD Llano A6 CPU (64-bit) to 1.2GHz (max speed) will last for about 6-8 hours if I'm doing my normal thing (heavy multi-tasking with multiple programs, lots of browser windows, etc etc). If I run an intensive game (Team Fortress 2) I get about 3 hours. Keep in mind this is clocking the CPU to its absolute maximum clock, under full load. Clocking it to 800 MHz gives me about 16 hours with normal tasks. This is with a 10.8V, 4400mAH Li-Ion battery pack. 

The only real problem with x86 is all the heat that it puts out, I don't think it'd be possible to reasonably manage the heat while keeping the handheld small. 
 
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How would you fit a 10.8V 4400mAh battery in something like a Pandora? You do realize that that is more than 3 times the capacity of Pandora's 3.7V 4200mAh battery?

Also, 6-8 hours under normal load, 3 hours under high load, 16 hours when underclocked, that does sound good for a laptop, but that's about half of what we have and love in the Pandora.

So in your example you need 3 times the capacity to get half the battery life, that's about 6 times worse.

I understand why people would want x86, but imo, the days of x86-only games/applications are numbered anyway.
 
Battery capacity in joules (a sensible unit):

takato's laptop: 10.8 * 4.4 * 3600 = 171kj

pandora1: 3.7 * 4.2 * 3600 = 56kj

High load power consumption:

takato's laptop: 171000/(3*3600) = 15.8W

pandora1: 56000/(10*3600) = 1.56W

Note the position of the decimal points.
 
AMD / Intel / x86 just plain sucks as an architecture.  I bought my Pandora because I love ARM, and ARM has a pretty nice and interesting instruction set.

However ... maybe we should consider MIPS? 
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I did MIPS assembly at uni, seems like a very nice and well designed core.  The instruction set is simpler than ARM.  The one we used had 16 "caller saves" registers and 16 "callee saves" registers, which I thought is a very good idea.  Also MIPS already has 64-bit cores since a long time ago, if we would want to go 64 bit.  I'm more keen on 32-bit still, 64-bit seems excessive to me, for many tasks.

"The top of the range proAptiv aims to give ARM Cortex-A15 core a run for its money by offering equal DMIPS/MHz performance while shaving the silicon real estate used by almost half."

So it's decided then - Pandora 2 "MIPS edition" shall use a MIPS SoC!  (we can also have an ARM one, I would like that, hell if monstercameron wants to invest a few millions let's have Pandora "AMD" too.  I have cargo pants!)

And the best reason to do MIPS - we gotta keep them emulator dynarec peeps busy, or they will go crazy and start killing people.
 
The one we used had 16 "caller saves" registers and 16 "callee saves" registers, which I thought is a very good idea.
That's just a calling convention. Has nothing to do with the hardware design. You need to have an agreement on which registers a function is and isn't allowed to modify, which everyone has. Personally, I always found the MIPS one to be a pain in the ass. It's not really 16/16, it's actually 17 caller save, including one register wasted on assembly temporaries and an extra return value register. When you consider r0 is constant 0, r26 and r27 are reserved for the kernel, r28 is supposed to be constant, r29 is supposed to be the stack pointer, and r31 return address, you really only have 9 callee save registers. 8 if functions are allowed a frame pointer.

I strongly advocated for recompilers targeting MIPS to not call standard convention functions (like C/C++ functions) directly unless they were really expensive, instead writing ASM functions so a custom convention could be used.
 
if we did an ARM stick there would be no purpose, as having a TV would mean we'd have the necessary outlet to power higher wattage gear. what WOULD be cool is if we could get  a 1Ghz-like Pandora on a stick that we could plug into our laptops and have the amazing OP software at our fingers via some console program and have a full screen keyboard. all we'd need then is a software means of underclocking the host's tech (maybe not the GPU or CPU, and maybe use them in emulation?)
 
You can also just install any GNU/Linux distro and run that on your laptop. There's very little Pandora software that is exclusively available on Pandora.
 
I like steam! And I bet the Z-60 could tackle TF2 and Portal 2! The OP2 could be what the Razer Switchblade would have been! I would buy the OP2 in a heartbeat if I could play TF2 on it, even if I had to deal with setting everything to low!
 
I like steam! And I bet the Z-60 could tackle TF2 and Portal 2! The OP2 could be what the Razer Switchblade would have been! I would buy the OP2 in a heartbeat if I could play TF2 on it, even if I had to deal with setting everything to low!
the z60 cant manage tf2, but maybe the temash versions. The newer temash chips will also use less power.
 
I like steam! And I bet the Z-60 could tackle TF2 and Portal 2! The OP2 could be what the Razer Switchblade would have been! I would buy the OP2 in a heartbeat if I could play TF2 on it, even if I had to deal with setting everything to low!
the z60 cant manage tf2, but maybe the temash versions. The newer temash chips will also use less power.
I managed to get about 30 FPS out of a Pentium B970 Dual-core with Intel HD 2500 and a low-polygon pack. I really don't mind the reduced graphics. I can actually play Portal 2 and L4D2 pretty nicely on low settings (which is, as usual with modern games, still really nice looking). The cpu benchmark is 2,017, and TF2 really isn't CPU-intensive. I do know Minecraft should be very happy on low settings, which is something I know quite a few people want. if we combine x86 with a mobile package AND at least 3 hours battery AND dedicated controls and of course, a better case etc., we can take (some (more) of) the mobile gaming market.
 
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