What would the world and his dog think if P2 used an x86 SOC? (but not mini SD) ;)

[3_bit]

Now if only there was an x86 processor with the same/similar pinouts and hardware requirements as an ARM one... Anyone? After all, such a thing would be the ultimate compromise. Heck, you could probably use both, similar to how some PowerPC Mac's had an added x86 processor and ran both OSes. Surely allowing the user to run Windows, Linux and Android would appeal to everyone except those who play games like Crysis? After all, they couldn't possibly get that kind of power in such a package anyways.

 

[MrConfusion]

... some PowerPC Mac's had an added x86 processor and ran both OSes...

/me is hitting eBay right now if this is the case, but are you sure about this, because I can't remember anything like this?

I haven't seen anything like that since the good old Amiga days? Those Amiga PC cards were Good Stuff..

 

[Grench]

... some PowerPC Mac's had an added x86 processor and ran both OSes...

/me is hitting eBay right now if this is the case, but are you sure about this, because I can't remember anything like this?

I haven't seen anything like that since the good old Amiga days? Those Amiga PC cards were Good Stuff..

I recall there was an optional add-on X86 card for some of the Macs from the early/mid 90's?  A card as expensive as a desktop computer to give a Mac the ability to reboot into Windows.  It was sad.

 

[SageX]

if the change to x86 happens think about adding case fans to the pandora just like every other x86 arch machine I prefer Arm for efficiency if the next version went x86 you could see a huge loss in the dev community 

 

[MrConfusion]

... some PowerPC Mac's had an added x86 processor and ran both OSes...

/me is hitting eBay right now if this is the case, but are you sure about this, because I can't remember anything like this?

I haven't seen anything like that since the good old Amiga days? Those Amiga PC cards were Good Stuff..

I recall there was an optional add-on X86 card for some of the Macs from the early/mid 90's?  A card as expensive as a desktop computer to give a Mac the ability to reboot into Windows.  It was sad.

OK, found them, even on Youtube. And now that I saw the name "DOS Card" I even remember reading about them...

Seems very much like the old PC/XT cards you were able to put in your Amiga.

It's not about rebooting to Windows or DOS, it's really about running in parallel, in a Window. I remember being so jealous when my friend had an Amiga 2000 that also contained a PC... The Amiga had such wonderful, odd, crazy hardware available back in the day... very experimental stuff. And also some clear C64 "legacies" like the ActionReplay cards .

 

[Grench]

if the change to x86 happens think about adding case fans to the pandora just like every other x86 arch machine I prefer Arm for efficiency if the next version went x86 you could see a huge loss in the dev community 

Please read up on the new Z3770 22nm chips that Intel has recently started to produce.  At ~2W there could be a passive cooling solution - in theory.  These are why this conversation exists - because Intel produced something that makes it theoretically possible with passive cooling.

We're not talking about a 130W monster with screaming fans here.

As for, 'huge loss in the dev comunity'...  When your dev community is tens of people in a 'community' of a few thousand, loosing any is a huge loss.

How about, 'huge gain in user base and attracting new devs'?

The claims of requiring fans (active cooling), poor efficiency, slow as snot performance, closed systems - that's just fear mongering.

Yes, there have also been a lot of developments on the ARM side of things - most of which seem to have made the ARM chips very proprietary and supply restricted by their manufacturers.  Apple and Samsung have made great strides - and kept them for themselves.

It's an odd day - but Intel's Z3770 seems like it might be the more open and available platform - with perf/watt and thermals within reasonable limits.  Note 'might'.  More information is needed.

 

[xiongxioi]

Ah, this give raise to another very interesting question.

If we switch to x86, then would notaz and exophase's roles still be as important as they are today?

If there are thousands of readily available softwares and games on the net, and all we need to do is drag and play. (may be contribute a few bucks in the process)

Where's the importance of the community?

If that's a bit hard to imagine, let's say what if pandora can run any android games at full speed, all we ever need to do is log in our googleplay accounts and download away, then we would not be so dependent on the repo and people who are working their hands to the bones for us. Sure it would save everyone a lot of time, but develpers would not feel as involved as they are today. That feeling of insignificant may drive many of them away.

I know, this sounds very sketchy and does not make much sense. I'm showing my concern about the survival of pandora's wonderful community.

Moving onto x86 may bring more people into the scene and open up more possibility, is it all that worth it?

I'm partially aware of how much potential x86 has, but it is such a drastic change and the decision making process is so hard; we may just wait until the ARM X86 war ends, and then pick a side.

Me personally could not care less about joining a so called mainstream group. Sure more developers could come in (if they give a damn about pandora), but the device will feel less personal and unique.

Another concept I would like to state is that, in this world of ours, quantity and quality are often mutually exclusive. When people are working for the sake of working, then they can't possibly make anything special, because getting that salary is all they care about. There are hundreds of thousands of active developers for android, but nearly all of the best emulators were born within this tiny group of ours. Pandora being a very personal device, it motives people to do great things with it. The same could not be said for mostly anything mainstream.

This really comes down to whether you want a million mediocure apps, or a few second to none masterpieces.

 

[God Ginrai]

I know, this sounds very sketchy and does not make much sense. I'm showing my concern about the survival of pandora's wonderful community.

Moving onto x86 may bring more people into the scene and open up more possibility, is it all that worth it?

I agree. I joined the homebrew community with the GP2X back when it was first released. It didn't have much software at first, but you were constantly checking back and finding new software released every week. This was due to the work of the dedicated developers who wanted to code for the device. It was an amazing experience, and I looked forward to it when it happened with the Pandora. There's a really neat experience that you get when developers challenge themselves with a device and when users are there to appreciate it. If we switch to x86, I could very well see that experience disappearing.

There are hundreds of thousands of active developers for android, but nearly all of the best emulators were born within this tiny group of ours.

This is very true. Many of the emulators on iPhone and Android were either created by or ported to those systems by members of our community. (Zod on the iPhone side with all of the emulators he ported to iPhone, as well as the Mupen64plus emulator on android that was a port of Ari64's work)

-God Ginrai

 

[Grench]

So - your argument is that having an obscure ecosystem with a few great developers is better than having a more common ecosystem with more developers of an unknown quality?

I also saw an argument there that having a more powerful system makes the developers lazy as they don't have to optimize as much.

The assumption that going X86 would loose the existing developers is a bit of a stretch too.

The project doesn't own the developers.  It does need to attract them though - the Pandora would be junk without them.

From what I can tell, device capabilities is what attracts developers - not the architecture of the SoC, but the overall capabilities.  If X86 can yield more capabilities per $ and/or per W and/or software base, then why not consider it?

Developers are just like the rest of us.  They like shiny things too.

 

[_wb_]

From what I can tell, device capabilities is what attracts developers - not the architecture of the SoC, but the overall capabilities.  If X86 can yield more capabilities per $ and/or per W and/or software base, then why not consider it?


Developers are just like the rest of us.  They like shiny things too.

Yes, if x86 is better on all fronts, then sure, why not. That's a big if though.

I wonder why there is no solid information to be found on the power consumption curves (from idle to full use) of BayTrail.

Software base is not an issue: as long as gcc has it as a target architecture, we'll manage. Perf, perf/W, price, availability, and FOSS support: those matter. And it does not need to be cutting edge to be fun - I prefer a smart "not-the-best-but-good-bang-for-buck" attitude when deciding on something.

 

[Grench]

I wonder why there is no solid information to be found on the power consumption curves (from idle to full use) of BayTrail.

Give it a few weeks.  So far there aren't any consumer devices to generate that from.  Just press people getting access to a tablet in an Intel lab.

 

[God Ginrai]

So - your argument is that having an obscure ecosystem with a few great developers is better than having a more common ecosystem with more developers of an unknown quality?

In certain situations, yes.

I also saw an argument there that having a more powerful system makes the developers lazy as they don't have to optimize as much.

No, my argument is that already written code for x86 is unoptimized because it is written for PCs that have tons of cycles and RAM to spare. For example, Beats of Rage's minimum requirements were 256MB of RAM, and Squidge got it running on the GP32 which only had 8MB of RAM. This is a perfect example of people not optimizing their applications because their target system runs it just fine. A lot of these x86 applications (including those closed source ones you want) will be the same.

From what I can tell, device capabilities is what attracts developers - not the architecture of the SoC, but the overall capabilities.

If that was true, then Exophase, Notaz, and Ari64 would be developing their own BSNES-esque emulators and apps for x86 PCs rather than developing for Beagleboards and other embedded applications. Developers want a challenge. What challenges them is up to them, but a lot of the ones who develop for our community do so because working with and around hardware limitations presents problems that they need to challenge themselves to come up with solutions for.

Here's a quote by Exophase from an interview with Pandoralive which I believe helps illustrate my point:

For the last several years I’ve been interested in doing emulators for consoles where existing (otherwise very good) emulators are too slow for some handheld gaming platform. That means looking for places where the current emulators are too slow but a highly optimized one might not be. It’s hard to tell for sure but it’s easy to narrow it down to what could be possibilities, and I had a good feeling GBA could be like this for PSP, and DS for Pandora or at least other current gen ARM devices. Starting with GBA helped make the rather complex DS more approachable since a lot of its technology extends off of what GBA had. I think you’ll find a lot of DS emulator programmers worked with GBA emulation beforehand.

-God Ginrai

 

[notaz]

Personally I have strong dislike of x86 (which is an extension of extension of extension of extension of instruction set for 8080 8-bit CPU), and that would discourage any kind of low level work from me if P2 went x86. But hey, maybe in this day of age with all the performance leaps in mobile space this stuff is no longer needed and I can finally retire.

P2 should go with whatever best SoC it can get, but it will be sad for me if that ends up being x86.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I want a Mini-SD slot in the P2.

 

[Grench]

Personally I have strong dislike of x86 (which is an extension of extension of extension of extension of instruction set for 8080 8-bit CPU), and that would discourage any kind of low level work from me if P2 went x86. But hey, maybe in this day of age with all the performance leaps in mobile space this stuff is no longer needed and I can finally retire.


P2 should go with whatever best SoC it can get, but it will be sad for me if that ends up being x86.

Right now, so early in the process with new stuff coming out of X86 and ARM, my humble opinion is that we should keep our collective minds open to the possibilities.  A new awesome ARM CPU with great availability and FOSS drivers could be around the corner that makes this all moot.  Or these Bay Trail Z3770 might be what they're cracked up to be - which would be awesome too.

Would you agree to the idea of including it on the 'potential list' until solid reasons come along to knock it off?

 

[xiongxioi]

I would be really really sad if notaz would retire from the scene.

Plz don't go x86 ED. 

You are not craigix, and you would keep friends in the cycle even when you don't need them at that instance, right?

I want a Mini-SD slot in the P2.

What are you talking about, Swat?

The only time I used a mini-sd is for my dingoo, and I felt dirty afterwards.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Mini-SD are the best, and we want the best for the P2, aren't we ?

 

[vcoleiro1]

Well I see it like this, we are at the cross roads, if you were to move to x86 , now is the time to do it.   The community is still small and the impact will be a lot less than if you went from a ARM P2 to x86 P3 you would think - if that ever happens

It is a strategic change of sorts, and the Pro's and Cons would need to be weighed up.  Personally , I think there is something appealing about a Windows 8 handheld.  Even if Win 8 is not officially supported for a P2 and Linux is the main OS, it will attract a lot more more people to buy a P2 than just a Linux P2 offering - so from from a commercial point of view, there is a lot of weight behind going with a x86 P2 . Don't forget that the more it sells the cheaper it should be due to the ability then to get volume discounts.

So a x86 P2 could be a cheaper offering with a bigger community - those are big plusses.  On the con side we would need to re-do/re-compile current P1 apps/games etc.  Fortunately the P1 app library is not the biggest - but this is still an issue.  

It's also a little hard to judge here what to go for , as we really don't know what time frame a P2 would come out in.  It could very well be years away , meaning other future SOCs for both ARM and x86 might be considered. 

It's an interesting decision.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, in my opinion, backwards compatibility is a very important thing.

Being able to use the current PNDs would be awesome.

There would be NO fullspeed NDS Emulator (unless someone codes one for x86), and if you just have a random x86 OS on there, it wouldn't be anything special.

It would just be "another PC", in my opinion.

Yes, you'd have sooo many games, but you would have no idea how well they would run. You need to tweak the settings, configure inputs, etc. for most games.

That's exactly why I never hopped from C64 and Amiga to video game consoles.

I want to start a game and play. Not tweak settings, configure stuff, etc.

That's why I stopped playing games on the PC back then.

On the Pandora, I know when I download a PND, it will work.

 

[monstercameron]

Well I see it like this, we are at the cross roads, if you were to move to x86 , now is the time to do it.   The community is still small and the impact will be a lot less than if you went from a ARM P2 to x86 P3 you would think - if that ever happens

It is a strategic change of sorts, and the Pro's and Cons would need to be weighed up.  Personally , I think there is something appealing about a Windows 8 handheld.  Even if Win 8 is not officially supported for a P2, it will attract a lot more more people to buy a P2 than just a Linux P2 offering - so from from a commercial point of view, there is a lot of weight behind going with a x86 P2 . Don't forget that the more it sells the cheaper it should be due to the ability then to get volume discounts.

So a x86 P2 could be a cheaper offering with a bigger community - those are big plusses.  On the con side we would need to re-do/re-compile current P1 apps/games etc.  Fortunately the P1 app library is not the biggest - but this is still an issue.  

It's an interesting decision.

I mentioned all these point and got continually shot down.