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General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: bluedevils on November 10, 2006, 09:46:27 am

Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: bluedevils on November 10, 2006, 09:46:27 am
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/10/marvell_intel/ (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/10/marvell_intel/)

"One of the first products to come out of this acquisition will be a new processor, previously code-named "Monahans", which will succeed the current "Bulverde" Xscale PXA270 generation. Monahans was first demonstrated in August of 2005 with a clock speed of up to 1.25 GHz with a promised performance capability that reaches into Pentium 4 territory, while consuming substantially less power.

Monahans, which was part of Intel's Hermon cellphone platform, is expected to be complemented by a Shader Model 3.0 capable graphics engine that is based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX blueprint. The SGX supports OpenGL ES 2.0, D3D Mobile, Open VG, Open GL 2.0 and DirectX9+ running under Linux, Symbian, WinCE and Windows Mobile OS. The fillrate of the chip ranges from 200 million to 1.2 billion pixels per second at a clock speed of 200 MHz. Polygon performances is rated at 2 to 13.5 million polygons per second."
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 10, 2006, 11:09:38 am
An i.mx31, philips LPC, omap 3430 or BCM2820 would be a lot more usefull and faster because those have a VFP unit.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: bluedevils on November 10, 2006, 11:44:18 am
vfp=virtual floating point?  IIRC the current xscales don't have proper floating point and OZ and pdaxrom had to make their own software float.  Is this an assumption that this new chip also does not or something else?

edit:  I found "vector floating point"
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 10, 2006, 12:17:53 pm
The xscales don't have VFP or FPA hardware, and the monahans lacks it as well.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: bluedevils on November 10, 2006, 01:43:29 pm
Thanks Koen.  As long as we can get pda sized devices operating comparably to a p4 desktop, I'm all for it.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Mickeyl on November 10, 2006, 05:07:49 pm
How about a Samsung S3c2460?
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: adf on November 10, 2006, 05:16:13 pm
Quote
How about a Samsung S3c2460?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146028\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
...as in the neo?  that's probably a good call for a "next Z" it's small enough and connects well, with vga, more ram,etc.   I'm curious about stuff like keyboards and possible video out too, though
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 10, 2006, 05:51:39 pm
Quote
How about a Samsung S3c2460?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146028\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The mpeg4 codec is neat, but it's still arm9 without a vfp. It would rock in a phone, but for a 'personal mobile tool' I'd go for something beefier.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 10, 2006, 05:52:38 pm
Quote
Quote
How about a Samsung S3c2460?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146028\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
...as in the neo?  that's probably a good call for a "next Z" it's small enough and connects well, with vga, more ram,etc.   I'm curious about stuff like keyboards and possible video out too, though
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146030\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The gta01 uses a s3c2410 iirc, which is an arm920t core
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: adf on November 10, 2006, 07:32:52 pm
Quote
Quote
Quote
How about a Samsung S3c2460?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146028\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
...as in the neo?  that's probably a good call for a "next Z" it's small enough and connects well, with vga, more ram,etc.   I'm curious about stuff like keyboards and possible video out too, though
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146030\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The gta01 uses a s3c2410 iirc, which is an arm920t core
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146034\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]
ah.. my mistake. The numbers are close, and given the release news, etc, it seemed like a reasonable guess.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Da_Blitz on November 10, 2006, 08:35:35 pm
vfp = vector floating point = SSE

as someone who has been keeping a very close eye on the arm bassed processors i might mention that althogh the clock speed is 2x higher intel have said on the record that you can only expect on average to see a 20% performance gain by going faster

what makes it nice is the DDR ram as the xscale is a memorey bandwidth hungry chip due to the way the bus is multiplexed and the internal frame buffer setup

personally i am putting my money on the i.MX3 as its the same as used in the toshiba gigabeat and if i reacall my facts correcttly the Zune as well

i havent heard much about the samsung chips but did a quick review of them and found that they were designed with the mobile market in mind

the reason i am betting on the i.mx3 is the inbuilt graphics processor, ddr support, the crossbar switch and the non multiplexed busses (in some casese partially multiplexed for negligable performance hit) its also bassed of the ARM11 architecture which has some nice features that help boost performance
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: adf on November 11, 2006, 01:40:10 am
I'm betting, honestly, on pxa 270 for the next 2 years followed by an incremental upgrade at best, and the end of zaurus.  Look at the 3100 & 3200...not even a RAM UPGRADE?!! This is why I'm so interested in things like pocket penguin and neo1973. I think the next embedded linux handheld to do zaurus like duty will not be from sharp--minor Z upgrades aside.
Even if sharp does get kind of a clue and upgrades the hardware (don't get me wrong, I love my 3100 & my 6k) it seems to me that they've been outdone and will stay that way by both FIC and Nokia.  The future of linux embedded seems to me to be commercial devices built with the expectation of an open distro
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Da_Blitz on November 11, 2006, 09:41:08 am
+1 instightful

except i am not expecting there to be another Z
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 11, 2006, 11:39:14 am
Quote
+1 instightful

except i am not expecting there to be another Z
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146062\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Wait till the prices for 8GB microdrives drop
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Mickeyl on November 11, 2006, 12:43:38 pm
Quote
An i.mx31, philips LPC, omap 3430 or BCM2820 would be a lot more usefull and faster because those have a VFP unit.

So, between those three, what are the most open? Someone *cough* needs to decide soon what CPU to base his next platform on...
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: koen on November 11, 2006, 01:26:48 pm
Quote
Quote
An i.mx31, philips LPC, omap 3430 or BCM2820 would be a lot more usefull and faster because those have a VFP unit.

So, between those three, what are the most open? Someone *cough* needs to decide soon what CPU to base his next platform on...
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146069\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

From the list above you can forget about philips and broadcom about being open.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: speculatrix on November 11, 2006, 06:33:12 pm
Quote
Wait till the prices for 8GB microdrives drop
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=146068\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I'm waiting delivery of a 3100.. in a way I am happier with a 3100 than 3200 because of it's overclockability (if there's such a word), and if I want more than 4GB internally I'll wait for 8GB compact flash cards to become a reasonable price. I've seen 4GB CF cards for less than GBP60 now, and 8GB ones for less than GBP180 so it won't be too long before it's not an expensive option.

I think the 20GB drives are around but hitachi are selling them for the hidef camcorders. Anyone found a place that sells them yet?
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Da_Blitz on November 11, 2006, 10:27:49 pm
actually i would drop toshiba as well, they keep some parts very closed. mainly there high end stuff however, the low end stuff normally has some documentation
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: bluedevils on November 29, 2006, 02:16:05 pm
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/29/marvell_...hans_processor/ (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/11/29/marvell_monahans_processor/)

Some more update:

There is much more potential in this processor - according to a presentation in August 2005 at least 1.25 GHz - but Marvell, which completed the $600 million acquisition of the Xscale processor business earlier this month, believes that there is simply no need for that kind of processing power in handheld devices today. For now and the near future, 624 MHz and perhaps 806 MHz in some high-end devices will be it.

In fact, other processor features may be much more important to help the chip to become more successful than its predecessor. Marvell claims that Monahans has made quite some progress in the areas of Multimedia capabilities, mobile Internet performance and battery consumption. Perhaps most significantly, the chip is able to run H.264 video, encoded at 3 Mb/s, at 30 frames per second and a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels (VGA). Other new features include the support of up to 5 megapixel digital cameras and, according to Marvell, and "hourglass free" web experience, which promises load webpages up to 50% faster than Hermon.


As its predecessor, Monahans is also capable of adjusting its clock speed between 104 MHz, 208 MHz, 416 MHz and 624 MHz, but apparently has received better fine-tuning in using the different clock speeds for specific applications: For example, playing MP3 files only requires 104 MHz, while loading webpages is accelerated at 624 MHz. All Monahans versions include Intel's Wireless MMX2 instruction set, but - similar to desktop and notebook processors - will differ on features such as cache. For example, only the PXA320 will integrate 256 KB L2 cache. Just like its predecessors, the third-generation Xscale processor is still based on a core that is based on 90 nm ARM technology.
Title: Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?
Post by: Da_Blitz on December 02, 2006, 01:25:31 am
here is a better link: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8290441804.html (http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8290441804.html)

apparenttly is bassed of the arm11 chipset which i dought as they mention iwmmxt2 where as most arm11's have a vfp already.

it seems to indicate a vedeo decoding unit inbuilt (simmilar to the imx.3) however it might be that they got confused with the iwmmxt instructions

will try and get my hands on the manual of this thing