Possible New Cpu For Future Zs?

[bluedevils]

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."

[koen]

An i.mx31, philips LPC, omap 3430 or BCM2820 would be a lot more usefull and faster because those have a VFP unit.

[bluedevils]

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"

[koen]

The xscales don't have VFP or FPA hardware, and the monahans lacks it as well.

[bluedevils]

Thanks Koen.  As long as we can get pda sized devices operating comparably to a p4 desktop, I'm all for it.

[Mickeyl]

How about a Samsung S3c2460?

[adf]

How about a Samsung S3c2460?
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...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

[koen]

How about a Samsung S3c2460?
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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.

[koen]

How about a Samsung S3c2460?
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...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
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The gta01 uses a s3c2410 iirc, which is an arm920t core

[adf]

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.

[Da_Blitz]

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

[adf]

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

[Da_Blitz]

+1 instightful

except i am not expecting there to be another Z

[koen]

+1 instightful

except i am not expecting there to be another Z
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Wait till the prices for 8GB microdrives drop

[Mickeyl]

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...