On Thursday 07 December 2000 23:52, Richard C. Burnett wrote:
> Well I have decided to get the iPaq instead of the Agenda PDA. The
> iPaq has a 206Mhz ARM processor, 16Meg Flash, 32Meg Ram and Compaq
> has released a linux distro for it, although other people are
> working on ones with smaller footprints.
>
> I asked them what type of sound driver they are using, they wrote
> there own OSS compatible driver. The only thing that really
> aggrevates me is that the ARM processor is also no-floating point.
>
> Has anyone done any types of benchmarks as to what a non-floating
> point processor performs compared to a floating-point. I want some
> way to derate the clock frequency as to what to compare it to.
It depends a great deal on what you're actually comparing. If you use
FP code and software emulation (software interrupt instead of FPU
instructions), it's going to be dog slow. if you inline the FPU
emulation code, it becomes slightly faster.
Doing it the real way, and rewriting the code for integer processing,
you get anything from slightly slower to faster than FP, depending on
the requirements on resolution and dynamics.
However, integer (actually fixed point) processing basically requires
asm, as no high level languages, or even mid-level languages like C,
give you enough control to benefit from carry bit chaining, the fact
that muls are N bits in, 2*N bits out, and other common ALU
peculiarities...
//David
.- M A I A -------------------------------------------------.
| Multimedia Application Integration Architecture |
| A Free/Open Source Plugin API for Professional Multimedia |
`----------------------> http://www.linuxaudiodev.com/maia -'
.- David Olofson -------------------------------------------.
| Audio Hacker - Open Source Advocate - Singer - Songwriter |
`--------------------------------------> [EMAIL PROTECTED] -'
