OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Sharp Zaurus => Model Specific Forums => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => C1000/3x00 Hardware => Topic started by: A5DF on October 21, 2005, 10:14:52 am
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My 3100 is a dream com true. It's what portable computing should be. I have many notebook computers. I've had 3 PowerBooks, and I still have my PB G3. My smallest is my Fujitsu P-Series. (crusoe) They both eat batteries for a snack.
We need Xscale (arm) based laptops. They could even run "Pocket PC" to keep the marketing bunch at bay. OTOH we have GNU/Linux, and it works great. What is missing from a notebook? Touch screen, also I like the twist screen/tablet look too. The nice thing about my P-Series is, it's small. (perfect size/weight) Lets call an end to "Pentium" based portables. They just don't let you use them to any gainful pursuit w/o "burning" off your energy stores.
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It appears we may be on the verge of a break-through in battery technology that may solve a lot of your problem. I've heard of a new Lithium battery that may yield 4 times the power than the current lithium battery of the same size. Also, the promise of fuel cells that will provide longer battery life.
If these technologies pan out, we may no longer have to sacrifice functionality to conserve energy.
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Part of why the 3100 seems "always on" like my cell is b/c the OS is on the flash memory. The notebooks we all use still don't have this functionality. Batteries are not the solution.
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Part of why the 3100 seems "always on" like my cell is b/c the OS is on the flash memory.
Although this may be faster than loading from HDD, the real reason IMO is that the Z is not actually turned off - therefore you don't need to reboot it.
My laptop can suspend (keeping the memory powered but shutting off everything else) which is what the Z does - and from this state it resumes pretty much immediately like the Z.
So batteries are still the solution I'm afraid, that or making the entire system consume very little memory meaning that it can be resumed from disk/flash relatively quickly.
Si
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Right, but how long does your laptop survive in that state? Not days I can say that much for all of mine. This is a chip/technology problem, not a battery issue.
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Right, but how long does your laptop survive in that state? Not days I can say that much for all of mine. This is a chip/technology problem, not a battery issue.
I agree, it's not days, however my laptop has to keep far more memory refreshed while it's suspended.
I do agree with your comments about the chips though when using the machines - the ARM processors are far more frugal (though they are also slower) than the Intel/AMD fare in laptops.
Si
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Even I use a huge P4 notebook for work. Being able to bring it to the lab is nice. I would never consider using it w/o being plugged in. My PowerBook is a little better than this, and so is my lifebook. There are levels of usefulness. I'm just tired of all the "centrino", and "Pentium M" talk about being better for everyday use. The "M" sucks azz when you put it to work. (linux journal nov:05:p69) "Centrino" is all hype. I want an arm notebook that can be always on for days. I have a dream! I want a touch screen notebook. I have a dream! I want a P-Series size, very light notebook. I have a dream! I want 64bit risc, and I want the windoze users to pay to keep the price down. I have a dream! ;)
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Arm based Windows CE laptops exist, they just aren't popular. Windoze users get confused when they can't install MS Office or their favorite Solitaire program onto thier laptop. Check laptops -> Other on eBay, you should be able to find some there. There's even some *nix distros for some out on the net.
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- I've got a "huge P4" laptop for work as well. Runs 4.5hrs on a charge w/ a Gig of RAM and 3Ghz HT full (not that mealy-mouth M crud) processor. Sure it's a *fraction* of how long Hiroshi runs ... that guy goes forever, until I plug in the WiFi. (grin)
- But they're apples and oranges. With the ability to run 30 memory-hungry applications and multiple simultaneous development environments comes decreased battery life, even with a four pound state-of-the LiIon battery, huge size, and huge weight. Hiroshi is a stellar PDA that slips easily into any pocket and runs for an eternity on a single charge, with more Open Source software and alternative operating systems than you can shake a stick at, and really excellent, friendly forum to boot. (wink)
- Both have their advantages and their disadvantages. This will always be the case for the foreseeable future. Even if this 4x output LiIon battery appears on the market tomorrow, it'll just allow dual-core laptops to have some decent battery life. I'd LOVE to have a dual-core laptop w/ 4Gigs of RAM and three VMWare partitions. Now that's power.
- I'm not aware of any ARM that can match a full-speed P4 HT core. Until one comes around, they're not going to be in laptops. There's nothing to be dismayed about, that I can see. (shrug) I'm much more dismayed about the thread the seems to indicate Sharp is giving over to the enemy, than no ARM-based laptops...
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I've got a P4 too, it's not the issue here. I'm not aware of any P4 HT core that can match the raw power of an Opteron. I think armX is "good enough" for everyday carry it around use. Like my cell, and like my Z. "Until one comes around, they're not going to be in laptops." This is already wrong, as stated by Tom61. I really want a runs for ever on a charge notebook.
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Back in the old days PSION did a solid state laptop using ARM which had somthing like a 12hr battery on it. It never took off but was great if you were on a plane to HongKong.
2 ideas. both a variation on this theam
1 have a solid state Intel based sub laptop / tablet /pda with a slower less power hungry CPU but running WinME or similar (Win98lite runs great on a PII 233 with 64MB ram and 1-2GB storage)
This would then iether dock with a PC in the clasic PDA/PC mold or could be used as a USB boot device to use the PCs faster processor but access the same info/apps
2 do the same with a ARM / Linux sublaptop / tablet/ PDA and have a bootable partition on it for intel linux or carry a CD with linuz wich mounts the PDA as a drive to access the files.
For some more idesa see http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html) while this is aimed at getting computers to 3rd world schools they have got some good ideas on how to make mobile computing truly mobile (wind-up laptop anyone)
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Excellent ideas! I'm sure either AFS, or using the ~/ under GNU/Linux could play a role in this as well.
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Hell i was working on trying to build a Xscale based laptop with their high end chips (the ones that clock over 1Ghz and have mini processors like the CELL (hah IBM wasn't the first)) however Intel refuses to deal in low volumes, thats why the video card hack looks like it might be imposible .
this means that unless you have the support of programmers (for apps) you would never see something like this, your average user would want something running windows which won't run on ARM processors or windows CE which wont run on ARM cpu' s (its a joke )
however if you found one i would buy it. at the moment i have found an Xscale based design that takes SODIMMS (laptop memory) supports 4 SATA drives, has minipci and is dual core @ 733Mhz, however i would hate to see the price plus the cost of making a case for it.
that said i plan to by some to use as my next computer, i don’t care about speed, all i need is links, lynks of w3m and i would be happy. beats cross compiling
now for the clarifications (from an computer engineering student)
Clock for Clock, the P4 wins hands down by about 2 times the performance in syinthetic benchmarks (eg bogomips)
Clock/power vs Clock/power the ARM pulls away, i can't give you exact numbers however if i had an allocation of power (say 80watt like a p4) and used that to build a multi cpu Xscale machine i know the performance of the arms would be far in advance of the p4, hell that machine i talked about earlier only runs at 12 watt (for dual cpu) so 80W/12W = 6.6 boards, lets take 6 then, times that by 2 to represent total amount of cpu's and you get a 12 cpu machine with each core at 733Mhz that can each address up to 2GB of ram each
the design of the CPU is much cleaner, for example each instruction is conditional not just branches allowing you to do a
if x !=0
{
x++
}
in one instruction, dosent mean much to you guys but lets just say that it can give you a very nice speed boost.
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I don't use the Z 4 GPS. Nothing on the Z can do verbal directions that corrects the route as you blunder. I'd be dead by now if I had to look down at the Z everytime I get lost in the car.
Ipaq 1935 / 1940 (model with bluetooth d/ced, 100-150 fleabay)
generic bt gps direct from hk 100-150 FB
100 iNavigator or Tom Tom 5 (eiher works well, sadly no linux equivalent for Z)
For hiking or biking u just get an antanae which weights next to nothing to "wear". The
BT GPS is like a hockey puck and you would not want to have to have it always facing the satellites.
I wonder if there is some way to use dosbox to get an old gps program that can compute verbal directions 4 Z.
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I don't use the Z 4 GPS. Nothing on the Z can do verbal directions that corrects the route as you blunder. I'd be dead by now if I had to look down at the Z everytime I get lost in the car.
I hate to say it, but you seem to be off topic? Maybe you need a thread started for your own discussion?
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...[snip]...12 cpu machine with each core at 733Mhz that can each address up to 2GB of ram each the design of the CPU is much cleaner, for example each instruction is conditional not just branches allowing you to do a
if x !=0
{
x++
}
in one instruction, dosent mean much to you guys but lets just say that it can give you a very nice speed boost.
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- Man, Da_Blitz, you are just out there! I'm jealous! (wolfish grin) I kinda migrated away from a very strong hardware background somewhere over 15 years ago ... coincidentally at exactly the same time that I started programming for a living. Will wonders never cease?
- 12 CPUs in 80 watts. Nice! Monsterous speed in a monstrous package! (wink) Talk about "luggable". (heh heh) 'Course a first-rate fab plant could probably put that on a 50mm die without a lot of effort. Now if I could just find where I put that darned thing!
- This instruction example reminds me of ENIAC ... it had ten ALU/register combo units, and each one *had* to do an arithmetic operation every time, so they'd add zero if something was being done that they didn't want the number to change. (snicker) Off-topic ... sorry!
- Does the cross-compiler for the Z generate the approriate instructions to take advantage of this compact execution, or does cross-compiled code lose that? Or is that just the high-end Xscale? Or does the Z use something different and I've skipped a groove again?? (drool)...
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the stuff i was talking about was arm apecific, not xscale however i am not sure if gcc can optimise to that level
what i like about the xscales is they sacrificed some power saving tradeoffs for raw speed, word on the net is that the other arm manufactures arent happy with this which is the reasong behind the arm11 chips, arm tried to release a chip to stay competitive with intel.
some other cool stuff from the arm chips is the 16 registers that can also act as index registers or even the PC if you wanted, in fact R16 is the PC which allows you to add 16 to R16 and jump ahead 16 instructions!
what intel has really done is polish the entire ARM packeage by adding insane amounts of cache compared to the standard chip and heavy pipling to bump up the clock speeds. in fact intel even tests the low power tech on the xscales before it goes in the P4's and as far as i know the xscales are the only ARm chips manufactured at 90nm
the iwmmx is nice as well, all the mmx instructions AND the integer sse ones as well (not sure how many there were thogh)
not sure about the optimisation, dont think so but am currently trying to find out. i belive its because the gcc toolchain is so closly aligned with the x86 arch that they might not think of somthing like this, however i might be wrong
hopefully i should get the cpus' up some time next year, but if you are looking for real power there is another intel chip thats been doing the CELL mini cpu thing for a couple of years now, its a 1.1Ghz xscale core with 4 900mhz mini cpus and supports up to 12GB of RAM in total and PCI-e see: http://www.intel.com/design/network/produc...ily/ixp2350.htm (http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixp2350.htm)
i will have to look into the ENIAC chip, was it a VLIW cpu?
ive gone off topic already if you want more info email me
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Not sure this is all that off-topic -> the topic title is fairly broad.
Please continue, I'm interested
Si
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i normally sum it up at this point by saying "Xscales kick some serious arse" i really dont think there is much more to say at this point, any questions that anyone wants ansered.
one thing i might clarify is if you have read my posts about CF cards and RAM and why they are bad for each other, the best way to sum it up is they want the same hardware and they fight for it, unfortunattly the odds are 50:50 even worse is that CF is slow and kill performance. you are better off with USB of SD, if you are watching moives i would only do it off SD or USB due to the performance hit.
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the stuff i was talking about was arm apecific, not xscale :) however i am not sure if gcc can optimise to that level
- So I did skip a groove. Just not the one I imagined. (snicker) Typical.
...[snip]...
not sure about the optimisation, dont think so but am currently trying to find out. i belive its because the gcc toolchain is so closly aligned with the x86 arch that they might not think of somthing like this, however i might be wrong
- Not surprising. The surprising thing was that gcc would work for Z compilation at all. At least to me. Any compiler in a storm, no?
hopefully i should get the cpus' up some time next year, but if you are looking for real power there is another intel chip thats been doing the CELL mini cpu thing for a couple of years now, its a 1.1Ghz xscale core with 4 900mhz mini cpus and supports up to 12GB of RAM in total and PCI-e see: http://www.intel.com/design/network/produc...ily/ixp2350.htm (http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixp2350.htm)
- Sweet! Seems a bit specific to network processing, but that gives it some interesting capability, like four built-in ethernet ports. (snicker) Didn't delve too deeply to see if that's an issue or not, or what it's power requirements are.
i will have to look into the ENIAC chip, was it a VLIW cpu?
ive gone off topic already if you want more info email me
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- (guffaw) ENIAC is credited as being the first "programmable" electronic computer ever built, circa 1949. It was comprised of over 18,000 tubes, filled a large room, consumed megawatts of power, and ran an average of thirty seconds between crashes, operating at a phenomenal rate of 3500 instructions per second. I found a book published in 1956 that completely describes ENIAC's design and operation. Very interesting, from an historical perspective.
- Now where did that topic go? It was just right here. Oh yeah. How's that for a sorry state of computing? Makes me happy to see what's available now. (cheshire grin)