Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sunday 08 June 2008 02:28:42 Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:08 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) Hehe, I was surprised that they could market products because they use one sort of freescale's arm cores... funny people. z. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 22:40:24 +0200 Holger Freyther [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Sunday 08 June 2008 02:28:42 Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:08 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) Hehe, I was surprised that they could market products because they use one sort of freescale's arm cores... funny people. it's japan. it's that part of the world where you say i was surprised ... a lot when you visit and come back... :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. I agree, it's one of the main reasons I was interested. 480x800 is also a good idea if the displays become available in small quantities. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:15:09 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Thanks for the response and don't take this the wrong way but it doesn't really answer my question. :) Openmoko could take these sweet spec components and do stuff with them. That would lead to increased sales for these component manufacturers. It's in their interest to make them, and hopefully therefore the specs, available to you. 1) Why don't they make the components available to anyone other than the manufacturers for phones meant for the japanese market, even those who wouldn't care about open specs? actually all we are is a pain for them. we are such low volume - negotiating a sales contract is not even worth their time. not to mention their sourcing and component selection is proprietary information to those manufacturers and they aren't about to give that info to us (a competitor). unless we are being their phones wholesale - much like an oem, i don't see anything really happening. Regards Dave On Sun, 2008-06-08 at 10:28 +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:08 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) Regards Dave On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 16:51 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote: 0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:03:59 +0800 Simon Matthews [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: The big companies making these hi-tech electronic parts are probably only interested in orders it the hundred of thousands if not millions of parts. 500k+ are the order sizes. often in multi-millions. that is what they start dealing with. it's like going to cost-co who sell beer by the case and going but we only want 1 bottle! (sorry - buy the case, or go somewhere else). :) There is less risk to them of intellectual property being stolen or parts copied having a few customers buying large quantities at low margins than lots of smaller companies buying small numbers at higher margins and it is also less hassle. It is probably not worth the big companies to get their lawyers to draw up the contracts for small quantities (we all know how much lawyers cost!) Then there are the cosy exclusive deals that only the big companies have the power to negotiate. I would think it has been a big advantage for Openmoko having FIC behind it when trying to source all the specialised components. Even then they are still a small fish in a very large and expensive pond. On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 19:15 -0700, Dave O'Connor wrote: Thanks for the response and don't take this the wrong way but it doesn't really answer my question. :) Openmoko could take these sweet spec components and do stuff with them. That would lead to increased sales for these component manufacturers. It's in their interest to make them, and hopefully therefore the specs, available to you. 1) Why don't they make the components available to anyone other than the manufacturers for phones meant for the japanese market, even those who wouldn't care about open specs? Regards Dave -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:58:51 +0200 Marcel Wirth [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) I think the high resolution / high DPI might come in handy when displaying those complex kanji characters. So maybe it's not just about having better tech specs... they were able to display them just fine on half the dpi :) trust me. i spent enough time reading them :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sunday 08 June 2008 14:23:29 Carsten Haitzler wrote: 500k+ are the order sizes. often in multi-millions. that is what they start dealing with. it's like going to cost-co who sell beer by the case and going but we only want 1 bottle! (sorry - buy the case, or go somewhere else). :) So there are half a million Pandora consoles in the making right now? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
The number I heard was a first run of 3000... ;) (and 100 prototype devices before that) Ortwin On 6/8/08, Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sunday 08 June 2008 14:23:29 Carsten Haitzler wrote: 500k+ are the order sizes. often in multi-millions. that is what they start dealing with. it's like going to cost-co who sell beer by the case and going but we only want 1 bottle! (sorry - buy the case, or go somewhere else). :) So there are half a million Pandora consoles in the making right now? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sun, 8 Jun 2008 22:26:16 +0200 Gabriel Ambuehl [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Sunday 08 June 2008 14:23:29 Carsten Haitzler wrote: 500k+ are the order sizes. often in multi-millions. that is what they start dealing with. it's like going to cost-co who sell beer by the case and going but we only want 1 bottle! (sorry - buy the case, or go somewhere else). :) So there are half a million Pandora consoles in the making right now? i have no idea. ask them. if you want to source the newest or best components - you buy in large orders. those also get the better/best prices. others may or may not find components in smaller quantities later in the product cycle (eg if chip came out last week - no chance to get it unless you buy 500k+. if you want 12 months, they may sell in smaller batches). -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? Regards Dave On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 16:51 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote: 0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:08 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) Regards Dave On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 16:51 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote: 0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Sat, 7 Jun 2008 16:51:37 +0800 Wilkinson, Alex [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: 0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? http://www.au.kddi.com/seihin/ichiran/cdma1x_win/w63sa/index.html 800x480 2.8 http://www.au.kddi.com/english/product/lineup/w61s/index.html 800x480 2.8 others too... -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) I think the high resolution / high DPI might come in handy when displaying those complex kanji characters. So maybe it's not just about having better tech specs... signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Thanks for the response and don't take this the wrong way but it doesn't really answer my question. :) Openmoko could take these sweet spec components and do stuff with them. That would lead to increased sales for these component manufacturers. It's in their interest to make them, and hopefully therefore the specs, available to you. 1) Why don't they make the components available to anyone other than the manufacturers for phones meant for the japanese market, even those who wouldn't care about open specs? Regards Dave On Sun, 2008-06-08 at 10:28 +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:19:08 -0700 Dave O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Just out of interest, why don't other countries get access to these components sooner? Why do Japanese consumers get them first? Do they pay significantly more than the rest on phones so they're a better market for manufacturers or could openmoko steal a lead here in the rest of the world? Might it be an idea to appeal to these component manufacturers competitive sides and say if you give us the specs to write open drivers we can give you sales in the rest of the world? japanese phones are all about tech specs - and that's it. well that and looking sexy (nice design/cases). usability is pretty poor. their software and ui's are atrocious mostly. but that doesn't matter because they can do the i'm cooler than you. my phone has more pixels! (irrespective if they can even use more than 10% of the features of the phone, nor see the pixels they have so many of...) :) Regards Dave On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 16:51 +0800, Wilkinson, Alex wrote: 0n Fri, Jun 06, 2008 at 12:46:57PM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! Raster, got a link to any pictures of these magic phones ? -aW IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of the Australian Defence Organisation and is subject to the jurisdiction of section 70 of the CRIMES ACT 1914. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact the sender and delete the email. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
The big companies making these hi-tech electronic parts are probably only interested in orders it the hundred of thousands if not millions of parts. There is less risk to them of intellectual property being stolen or parts copied having a few customers buying large quantities at low margins than lots of smaller companies buying small numbers at higher margins and it is also less hassle. It is probably not worth the big companies to get their lawyers to draw up the contracts for small quantities (we all know how much lawyers cost!) Then there are the cosy exclusive deals that only the big companies have the power to negotiate. I would think it has been a big advantage for Openmoko having FIC behind it when trying to source all the specialised components. Even then they are still a small fish in a very large and expensive pond. On Sat, 2008-06-07 at 19:15 -0700, Dave O'Connor wrote: Thanks for the response and don't take this the wrong way but it doesn't really answer my question. :) Openmoko could take these sweet spec components and do stuff with them. That would lead to increased sales for these component manufacturers. It's in their interest to make them, and hopefully therefore the specs, available to you. 1) Why don't they make the components available to anyone other than the manufacturers for phones meant for the japanese market, even those who wouldn't care about open specs? Regards Dave ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Boo, the Glamo seems to kill everything :( On 6/6/08, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:04:27 -0700 Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: at vga.. forget mame and games - they will be doing fullscreen updates. at vga... no chance (of any decent framerate). if you don't believe me... try it when you get one! :) at qvga though - maybe. also a lot of arcade games are for qvga res... or older ones are at least... You know, you are jokingly commenting about this ... ... but i'm fully setting mine up as a mame emulator. I think that while initially moko is positioned for the technically experienced, I believe we have a device here that can trully do something unique - become a portable general computing and gaming device. Why not? Why can't we have a moko with a fold out keyboard that can be pulled out and replaced with a game pad? This could seriously set the device apart and interest a lot of homebrew and small game shop developers because the playing field is so fair and level on this platform. I think gaming on the moko should be considered a VERY serious proposition indeed. - Robert Markus Bossert wrote: Somehow I just remember how nice Tie Fighter looked on my computer back in 1994 - or 1996? With a full fledged VGA resolution. And gouraud shading. Mhmmm. If wine happens to run on the om? :-D ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten, There is any posibility to change the screen resolution without reboot? If we can do so we can dinamically change it to got the best of two worlds, a high resolution for almost statical screens to webbrowsing, doc editing, picture viewing, an a low resolution to mame, video playback(?), and anything else doesn't fit on high res. It can be done? Regards --- El vie, 6/6/08, Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: De: Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asunto: Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo Para: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org CC: Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fecha: viernes, 6 junio, 2008 4:36 On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Well... yeah, that's kindof the reason for the initial post! I must have misunderstood previous posts as I was convinced the glamo was itself attached to the CPU's SDIO interface. You can understand where I was coming from now! :) Right. Shame the cpu doesn't have more cache so it has a better change of getting on with something else while the DMA occurs. Thanks for clearing things up. It's good to hear that the problem isn't because of any particularly bad decision on OpenMoko's part. Renews my faith a little. :-) glamo is a fairly old graphics cpu and design. frankly it was designed for qvga - at best. it CAN do vga, but that is beyond its intended use. we have pushed it much farther than smedia intended it to be - even smedia is amazed at the bus speeds we get to the glamo - they have never seen it so fast. glamo turned up primarily for 2 reasons. 1. we added wifi - and we just didn't have any other (good) interfaces (we can sit and discuss spi all u like right now - but lets hold that thought). so we needed to use up our sdio port for... wifi - but where will we stick the actual sd card? glamo came with its own sd interface - bonus, so we get that back again. 2. refresh. we run a vga screen. 640x480x70x2 - 41mb/sec ... JUST to refresh the screen. we lost 41mb/sec of memory bandwidth just to keep the screen displaying on the gta01. vga was by far pushing what the soc can do. literally that is a huge amount of the bandwidth we had left (as its reads only and we clock @ 100mhz for the bus clock on the gta02, it's be about 20% of memory bandwidth gone). the glamo removes that drain and gives u back bandwidth... but at another cost - the glamo's own bus and the extra work to write acceleration to keep as much on the glamo as possible. we definitely don't do everything we can on the glamo - but there is only so much time and development effort to go around. as such we only really knew what the glamo was like once we had it going reasonably, and by then - it's too late. glamo is in. it's not going away as there just is no alternative. so solutions could be: ditch vga, go to qvga, thus dropping mem bandwidth loss to 10mb/sec (1/4 of what it was), and now have to drive only 1/2 the pixels in software. end result would be much lower dpi, but much smoother and nicer performance. but then go all the cries of i must have vga!!! (though i wonder just how many people have good enough eyesight to really tell the difference). if we want to live in the realms of such high resolution, imho, we need to look very carefully at a high-end soc with good on-board graphics acceleration, but that would have put the freerunner on hold as a product for a looong time. so you would all still be waiting and waiting. no one would be talking of production runs right now! :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community __ Enviado desde Correo Yahoo! La bandeja de entrada más inteligente. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:58:08 +0200 Federico Lorenzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: you can just drive it at qvga... Boo, the Glamo seems to kill everything :( On 6/6/08, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:04:27 -0700 Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: at vga.. forget mame and games - they will be doing fullscreen updates. at vga... no chance (of any decent framerate). if you don't believe me... try it when you get one! :) at qvga though - maybe. also a lot of arcade games are for qvga res... or older ones are at least... You know, you are jokingly commenting about this ... ... but i'm fully setting mine up as a mame emulator. I think that while initially moko is positioned for the technically experienced, I believe we have a device here that can trully do something unique - become a portable general computing and gaming device. Why not? Why can't we have a moko with a fold out keyboard that can be pulled out and replaced with a game pad? This could seriously set the device apart and interest a lot of homebrew and small game shop developers because the playing field is so fair and level on this platform. I think gaming on the moko should be considered a VERY serious proposition indeed. - Robert Markus Bossert wrote: Somehow I just remember how nice Tie Fighter looked on my computer back in 1994 - or 1996? With a full fledged VGA resolution. And gouraud shading. Mhmmm. If wine happens to run on the om? :-D ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
X certainly can do that, but AFAIK without specs you can't do hardware scaling, so using anything different than the screen resolution would be slow and/or use too much cpu thus drain the battery. On Friday 06 June 2008 09:08:41 David Samblas Martinez wrote: Carsten, There is any posibility to change the screen resolution without reboot? If we can do so we can dinamically change it to got the best of two worlds, a high resolution for almost statical screens to webbrowsing, doc editing, picture viewing, an a low resolution to mame, video playback(?), and anything else doesn't fit on high res. It can be done? Regards -- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
From what I remember of the of the discussions of video playback on the freerunner on the list, plans are there to offer default video playback in QVGA mode in the polished software as it is more practical on the current hardware. Also I may be wrong on this but it should not be impossible for an application to change resolutions to its preset values when it is launched or even offer a resolution configuration option. Rakshat Carsten, There is any posibility to change the screen resolution without reboot? If we can do so we can dinamically change it to got the best of two worlds, a high resolution for almost statical screens to webbrowsing, doc editing, picture viewing, an a low resolution to mame, video playback(?), and anything else doesn't fit on high res. It can be done? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
But we are able to do to hardware scaling, isn't it? afaik in the long video play resolution thread this were mentioned (maybe there are differents scale concepts) --- El vie, 6/6/08, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: De: Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asunto: Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo Para: community@lists.openmoko.org Fecha: viernes, 6 junio, 2008 10:53 X certainly can do that, but AFAIK without specs you can't do hardware scaling, so using anything different than the screen resolution would be slow and/or use too much cpu thus drain the battery. On Friday 06 June 2008 09:08:41 David Samblas Martinez wrote: Carsten, There is any posibility to change the screen resolution without reboot? If we can do so we can dinamically change it to got the best of two worlds, a high resolution for almost statical screens to webbrowsing, doc editing, picture viewing, an a low resolution to mame, video playback(?), and anything else doesn't fit on high res. It can be done? Regards --___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community __ Enviado desde Correo Yahoo! La bandeja de entrada más inteligente. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:08:41 + (GMT) David Samblas Martinez [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten, There is any posibility to change the screen resolution without reboot? If we can do so we can dinamically change it to got the best of two worlds, a high resolution for almost statical screens to webbrowsing, doc editing, picture viewing, an a low resolution to mame, video playback(?), and anything else doesn't fit on high res. It can be done? you can change screen res any time. assuming the drivers don't get it wrong, it will work just fine even runtime while x11 is up (xrandr will manage it). your transition from qvga to vga won't be smooth - you'll see flicker and things move/redraw/adjust, and right now xglamo seems to be doing a wonderful job of not switching properly, but as such it is perfectly possible to do it runtime without even finishing your x session. note - qvga really does look blocky on the 2.8 vga Regards --- El vie, 6/6/08, Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] escribió: De: Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asunto: Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo Para: List for Openmoko community discussion community@lists.openmoko.org CC: Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fecha: viernes, 6 junio, 2008 4:36 On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Well... yeah, that's kindof the reason for the initial post! I must have misunderstood previous posts as I was convinced the glamo was itself attached to the CPU's SDIO interface. You can understand where I was coming from now! :) Right. Shame the cpu doesn't have more cache so it has a better change of getting on with something else while the DMA occurs. Thanks for clearing things up. It's good to hear that the problem isn't because of any particularly bad decision on OpenMoko's part. Renews my faith a little. :-) glamo is a fairly old graphics cpu and design. frankly it was designed for qvga - at best. it CAN do vga, but that is beyond its intended use. we have pushed it much farther than smedia intended it to be - even smedia is amazed at the bus speeds we get to the glamo - they have never seen it so fast. glamo turned up primarily for 2 reasons. 1. we added wifi - and we just didn't have any other (good) interfaces (we can sit and discuss spi all u like right now - but lets hold that thought). so we needed to use up our sdio port for... wifi - but where will we stick the actual sd card? glamo came with its own sd interface - bonus, so we get that back again. 2. refresh. we run a vga screen. 640x480x70x2 - 41mb/sec ... JUST to refresh the screen. we lost 41mb/sec of memory bandwidth just to keep the screen displaying on the gta01. vga was by far pushing what the soc can do. literally that is a huge amount of the bandwidth we had left (as its reads only and we clock @ 100mhz for the bus clock on the gta02, it's be about 20% of memory bandwidth gone). the glamo removes that drain and gives u back bandwidth... but at another cost - the glamo's own bus and the extra work to write acceleration to keep as much on the glamo as possible. we definitely don't do everything we can on the glamo - but there is only so much time and development effort to go around. as such we only really knew what the glamo was like once we had it going reasonably, and by then - it's too late. glamo is in. it's not going away as there just is no alternative. so solutions could be: ditch vga, go to qvga, thus dropping mem bandwidth loss to 10mb/sec (1/4 of what it was), and now have to drive only 1/2 the pixels in software. end result would be much lower dpi, but much smoother and nicer performance. but then go all the cries of i must have vga!!! (though i wonder just how many people have good enough eyesight to really tell the difference). if we want to live in the realms of such high resolution, imho, we need to look very carefully at a high-end soc with good on-board graphics acceleration, but that would have put the freerunner on hold as a product for a looong time. so you would all still be waiting and waiting. no one would be talking of production runs right now! :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community __ Enviado desde Correo Yahoo! La bandeja de entrada más inteligente. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 5:18 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: note - qvga really does look blocky on the 2.8 vga It's looking blocky starting at 2... Take a look at the newer Nokia phones (E- and N-Series), and you'll even notice it on _pictures_ of their displays. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On 06/06/08 03:49:22, Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:04:27 -0700 Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: at vga.. forget mame and games - they will be doing fullscreen updates. at vga... no chance (of any decent framerate). if you don't believe me... try it when you get one! :) at qvga though - maybe. also a lot of arcade games are for qvga res... or older ones are at least... CPS1 and CPS2 games are 384x224 so no Capcom fighting games etc. and you can forget downscaling. Michael. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On 6/5/08, Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. Ken Young ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community I couldn't stand going back on resolution after having seen this screen. 640*480 is beautiful. Decreasing the resolution to increase speed is not worth it. Ortwin ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 19:59:35 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Tuesday 03 June 2008 09:06:35 Carsten Haitzler wrote: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) Sorry, just how open is the current glamo driver exactly? the driver is open. the chip specs so you can go write your own driver from scratch are only available under nda though :(. IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). i definitely can't argue here. :) i know when i turned up glamo was already in. my guess after some quick poking and a lot of spec doc reading was that given full drivers - we'd give or take have about the same performance as pure software only drivers (for 2d) in a dumb framebuffer - i.e. - what gta01 has. the exception might be opengl (3d) there where software won't be able to render and keep up with the glamo, but 3d comes with a lot of caveats on the glamo, like max 256x256 textures. no render-to-texture (so intermediate buffers are... well.. a pain), and the unhappiest is the max 3d buffer size (target for rendering) of 511x511 - so as such we can't manage fullscreen 3d @vga res. we'd always have to go down to something like qvga. OpenMoko insisted on having open source drivers, and the only hardware vendor which would let them do it was SMedia. So we get this massively underpowered graphics processor - but that's ok because OpenMoko can release the source code to the driver! Except SMedia wont let OpenMoko realease any technical info about the chip. So, in fact, the glamo driver can only be developed by people employed by OpenMoko and only after they sign an NDA. well we can't release the docs smedia gave us. but we are allowed to talk about the technical details all we like in public. THOSE docs that smedia wrote are theirs and we can't give them out. we are allowed to go write our own docs based on it - but that won't be a small document, and right now internally no one has the time to just sit down and write such a doc (as opposed to writing code). The Xglamo may be open source, but it is not, nor can it ever be, a community project. it can - partially, but only in as far as any chip specs that are apparent in the existing code. Now look at the other options OpenMoko could have gone with. Well, _the_ option of cource would be to have used a half-decent SoC, one with an integrated GPU such as a Freescale i.MX or TI OMAP, even an XScale would have been better. You'd then get a PowerVR GPU (same as used in the iPhone), which already has Linux drivers. What's more, OpenMoko would get the source code for the drivers, under NDA from Imagination Technologies. The only restriction would be that OpenMoko couldn't release the source. But that's no different to the glamo, given that only OpenMoko employees can work on it. again - we could have chosen much better soc's indeed, but as it stands right now that isn't happening. gta02 is basically a gta01 slightly improved. gta03 will at this stage be a gta02 minus glamo (which simplifies things a lot and at least for 2d stuff should get us an improvement). We would also have had a decent processor, one with a more up-to-date instruction set than the nearly 10-year-old armv4t. So there may not have been Cortex A8s around 2 years ago when GTA02 development began, but there were plenty of options. Why on earth did OpenMoko stick with an aging CPU and an almost useless GPU when there were so much better options? And please don't say BOM, I refuse to believe the combined price of the 2442 and glamo is cheaper than e.g. an i.MX31 or OMAP2420. because even before that the neo was inherited from an older project to do a windows-mobile phone... the hardware is based on an ancient product design. Cheers, Tom PS: Very sorry for the rant, I just had such high hopes for OpenMoko and am just fustrated with the hardware design decisions. understood. i can't blame you. i've done my share of ranting too. but even internally the most i have managed to do, i think, is influence the glamo to vanish from the gta03, but otherwise we have what we have now (just a new case, different battery, added a camera, a different gsm module). gta04 was looking good. the samsung 6400 as such is a nice soc. i've dug into the 2d gfx portion of the docs. it's a bit tricky to use, but much better than the glamo and much more powerful in the 2d department (u'll manage scaling and compositing even in argb32 bit) nicely on that baby. it's memory bus was way better than gta02, and as it's graphics is integrated on the soc software cpu access to do fallbacks as well as mixing with hardware accel is sane and performant (unlike accessing video memory across a puny bus from the cpu when you need to fall back to using the cpu to do stuff). but... gta03 is back from the dead, gta04 is off the map (for now) and everything is
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:26:25 +0200 Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. I think he's talking about other applications. I think picasa uses wine. and google earth No, Google Earth is a native Qt application... Only Picasa uses wine. it is? you are right. its incredibly bad fonts and ugliness and general attempt to look as much like win95 as possible had me fooled :) Then you need to set up your distro better. Qt is easily configurable. You can use qconfig to set Qt to use preferred fonts/style, etc. an ldd of the binary does show it's using qt... :) -- Lorn 'ljp' Potter Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Wednesday 04 June 2008 21:56:56 Andy Green wrote: | IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a | shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). Huh what? It's a 16-bit memory bus, maybe you mean 2^4 ;-) When I actually use the thing I don't notice much sluggishness. Your best bet is to eyeball one, I think you'll find it isn't the issue you think it is. I thought it was connected to the (4-wire) SDIO bus? If it's connected to the address/data bus, why is it so slow and why can't DMA be used to copy data to it? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: | On Wednesday 04 June 2008 21:56:56 Andy Green wrote: | | IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake | (Connecting it to a | | shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). | | Huh what? It's a 16-bit memory bus, maybe you mean 2^4 ;-) When I | actually use the thing I don't notice much sluggishness. Your best bet | is to eyeball one, I think you'll find it isn't the issue you think it is. | | I thought it was connected to the (4-wire) SDIO bus? We would rightly deserve to get our asses laughed at if we did that. You're likely thinking about the actual SD Card interface is now via the Glamo, which has an SD interface poking out of it. WIFI is hooked to the CPU SDIO bus and we don't otherwise use these buses. | If it's connected to the address/data bus, why is it so slow and why can't | DMA be used to copy data to it? DMA can be used, I seem to recall someone saying they did something with it in Xglamo, but PIO isn't where the problems are coming from. The Glamo offers normal async memory bus interface which we use, but it has a bunch of timing constraints. (There is a synchronous burst bus mode that we don't use because the CPU doesn't support it and adding a CPLD in there to translate will eat power and doesn't make sense.) In addition, we currently slug the Glamo IO with quite heavy wait states to get stable operation; without it the Glamo acts weird in ways we never got to the bottom of. A few weeks ago I experimented again with reducing these and saw all kinds of framebuffer corruption. The Glamo has several processors in it sharing its internal DRAM (6 or so), I guess there is some stuff going on from that direction despite we hold the unused ones in reset in there. So unless our understanding of that beastie evolves further than the datasheets, the current speed of it is what we have to work with. However like I said when you hold the thing and use it, IMO it's perfectly adequate. The August Software Update ;-) has some cool alpha and moving things going on that look nice, it's just not so bad as you got the impression I believe. - -Andy -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkhHo/AACgkQOjLpvpq7dMprrQCfcns5dpSLGSGl0ynzqRxHSvGE 3Q8Anj0+9wH0oAgfMqY3FzYv9XKYnA4Y =+qHS -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:57:12 +1000 Lorn Potter [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: On Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:26:25 +0200 Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. I think he's talking about other applications. I think picasa uses wine. and google earth No, Google Earth is a native Qt application... Only Picasa uses wine. it is? you are right. its incredibly bad fonts and ugliness and general attempt to look as much like win95 as possible had me fooled :) Then you need to set up your distro better. Qt is easily configurable. You can use qconfig to set Qt to use preferred fonts/style, etc. luckily for me qconfig isn't on there :( kde apps look fine. i'm utterly unsure how to get a plain qt app like google-earth to use kde's qt setup. :( but out of the box it does look hopelessly ugly :( -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:33:58 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Wednesday 04 June 2008 21:56:56 Andy Green wrote: | IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a | shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). Huh what? It's a 16-bit memory bus, maybe you mean 2^4 ;-) When I actually use the thing I don't notice much sluggishness. Your best bet is to eyeball one, I think you'll find it isn't the issue you think it is. I thought it was connected to the (4-wire) SDIO bus? it's on the memory bus, not sdio. a gfx chip on sdio would indeed be just about the most stupid idea i have ever heard of and anyone doing that should be summarily executed with a blunt spoon! :) If it's connected to the address/data bus, why is it so slow and why can't DMA be used to copy data to it? dma can. it just is even slower than using the cpu. also the entire memory bus is locked up when doing a copy with cpu OR dma, so even if dma were the same speed as doing a copy with the cpu, we'd still have the cpu locked out of the memory bus while waiting for dma - so no gain anyway (as in all practice you will need the memory bus :)). actual tests found dma to be LESS than 1/2 the speed of doing a copy with the cpu. this is just a limitation of the SOC, and the glamo is just well... not fast at accepting read/write requests - the bandwidth is limited to about 7mb/sec for writes ( can't remember what reads are - but i think its symmetric). so a big performance bottleneck we have is transfers to/from glamo - it really hobbles performance as it is a tiny straw we send data through. not to mention sd-card IO data also shares this glamo bus... :) so don't go doing any heavy IO on the SD card AND gfx... at the same time! :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 19:59:35 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Tuesday 03 June 2008 09:06:35 Carsten Haitzler wrote: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) Sorry, just how open is the current glamo driver exactly? the driver is open. the chip specs so you can go write your own driver from scratch are only available under nda though :(. IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). i definitely can't argue here. :) i know when i turned up glamo was already in. my guess after some quick poking and a lot of spec doc reading was that given full drivers - we'd give or take have about the same performance as pure software only drivers (for 2d) in a dumb framebuffer - i.e. - what gta01 has. the exception might be opengl (3d) there where software won't be able to render and keep up with the glamo, but 3d comes with a lot of caveats on the glamo, like max 256x256 textures. no render-to-texture (so intermediate buffers are... well.. a pain), and the unhappiest is the max 3d buffer size (target for rendering) of 511x511 - so as such we can't manage fullscreen 3d @vga res. we'd always have to go down to something like qvga. OpenMoko insisted on having open source drivers, and the only hardware vendor which would let them do it was SMedia. So we get this massively underpowered graphics processor - but that's ok because OpenMoko can release the source code to the driver! Except SMedia wont let OpenMoko realease any technical info about the chip. So, in fact, the glamo driver can only be developed by people employed by OpenMoko and only after they sign an NDA. well we can't release the docs smedia gave us. but we are allowed to talk about the technical details all we like in public. THOSE docs that smedia wrote are theirs and we can't give them out. we are allowed to go write our own docs based on it - but that won't be a small document, and right now internally no one has the time to just sit down and write such a doc (as opposed to writing code). The Xglamo may be open source, but it is not, nor can it ever be, a community project. it can - partially, but only in as far as any chip specs that are apparent in the existing code. Now look at the other options OpenMoko could have gone with. Well, _the_ option of cource would be to have used a half-decent SoC, one with an integrated GPU such as a Freescale i.MX or TI OMAP, even an XScale would have been better. You'd then get a PowerVR GPU (same as used in the iPhone), which already has Linux drivers. What's more, OpenMoko would get the source code for the drivers, under NDA from Imagination Technologies. The only restriction would be that OpenMoko couldn't release the source. But that's no different to the glamo, given that only OpenMoko employees can work on it. again - we could have chosen much better soc's indeed, but as it stands right now that isn't happening. gta02 is basically a gta01 slightly improved. gta03 will at this stage be a gta02 minus glamo (which simplifies things a lot and at least for 2d stuff should get us an improvement). We would also have had a decent processor, one with a more up-to-date instruction set than the nearly 10-year-old armv4t. So there may not have been Cortex A8s around 2 years ago when GTA02 development began, but there were plenty of options. Why on earth did OpenMoko stick with an aging CPU and an almost useless GPU when there were so much better options? And please don't say BOM, I refuse to believe the combined price of the 2442 and glamo is cheaper than e.g. an i.MX31 or OMAP2420. because even before that the neo was inherited from an older project to do a windows-mobile phone... the hardware is based on an ancient product design. Cheers, Tom PS: Very sorry for the rant, I just had such high hopes for OpenMoko and am just fustrated with the hardware design decisions. understood. i can't blame you. i've done my share of ranting too. but even internally the most i have managed to do, i think, is influence the glamo to vanish from the gta03, but otherwise we have what we have now (just a new case, different battery, added a camera, a different gsm module). gta04 was looking good. the samsung 6400 as such is a nice soc. i've dug into the 2d gfx portion of the docs. it's a bit tricky to use, but much better than the glamo and much more powerful in the 2d department (u'll manage scaling and compositing even in argb32 bit) nicely on that baby. it's memory bus was way better than gta02, and as it's graphics is integrated on the soc software cpu access to do fallbacks as well as mixing with hardware accel is sane and performant (unlike accessing video memory
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thursday 05 June 2008 11:29:10 Carsten Haitzler wrote: On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:33:58 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: On Wednesday 04 June 2008 21:56:56 Andy Green wrote: | IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a | shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). Huh what? It's a 16-bit memory bus, maybe you mean 2^4 ;-) When I actually use the thing I don't notice much sluggishness. Your best bet is to eyeball one, I think you'll find it isn't the issue you think it is. I thought it was connected to the (4-wire) SDIO bus? it's on the memory bus, not sdio. a gfx chip on sdio would indeed be just about the most stupid idea i have ever heard of and anyone doing that should be summarily executed with a blunt spoon! :) Well... yeah, that's kindof the reason for the initial post! I must have misunderstood previous posts as I was convinced the glamo was itself attached to the CPU's SDIO interface. You can understand where I was coming from now! If it's connected to the address/data bus, why is it so slow and why can't DMA be used to copy data to it? dma can. it just is even slower than using the cpu. also the entire memory bus is locked up when doing a copy with cpu OR dma, so even if dma were the same speed as doing a copy with the cpu, we'd still have the cpu locked out of the memory bus while waiting for dma - so no gain anyway (as in all practice you will need the memory bus :)). actual tests found dma to be LESS than 1/2 the speed of doing a copy with the cpu. this is just a limitation of the SOC, and the glamo is just well... not fast at accepting read/write requests - the bandwidth is limited to about 7mb/sec for writes ( can't remember what reads are - but i think its symmetric). Right. Shame the cpu doesn't have more cache so it has a better change of getting on with something else while the DMA occurs. Thanks for clearing things up. It's good to hear that the problem isn't because of any particularly bad decision on OpenMoko's part. Renews my faith a little. :-) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thursday 05 June 2008 10:29:36 Andy Green wrote: The Glamo offers normal async memory bus interface which we use, but it has a bunch of timing constraints. (There is a synchronous burst bus mode that we don't use because the CPU doesn't support it and adding a CPLD in there to translate will eat power and doesn't make sense.) What exactly do you mean by an async memory bus interface? Surely the bus has a clock to clock data in off the data bus? Are you saying that the CPU writes data out at a known frequency and the glamo clocks it in at the same frequancy with some UART-like clock sync? This sounds very, very bad? In addition, we currently slug the Glamo IO with quite heavy wait states to get stable operation; without it the Glamo acts weird in ways we never got to the bottom of. A few weeks ago I experimented again with reducing these and saw all kinds of framebuffer corruption. The Glamo has several processors in it sharing its internal DRAM (6 or so), I guess there is some stuff going on from that direction despite we hold the unused ones in reset in there. So unless our understanding of that beastie evolves further than the datasheets, the current speed of it is what we have to work with. But it _should_ be an aweful lot faster than it currently is. I understand the reasons why it's so slow, but these are hardware bugs. Surely SMedia are the ones who should be helping you try and fix those bugs? Or Samsung if it's the CPU. The only bit you've done is connect the CPU's bus lines to the Glamo's bus lines - I guess you do that with simple copper traces too. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount you can do differently? However like I said when you hold the thing and use it, IMO it's perfectly adequate. The August Software Update ;-) has some cool alpha and moving things going on that look nice, it's just not so bad as you got the impression I believe. Have you watched the video which started this thread? Seen an iPhone before? What about the latest Google android videos: http://androidcommunity.com/first-live-images-of-fullscreen-android-demo-20080528/ I get so fustrated with people thinking that it's ok for OpenMoko to be worse than everything else out there. Just because it's open source doesn't mean we can't make something to thrash the pants off everything else graphicly. To compete with iPhone, android and everything else which comes along, the OpenMoko is going to need a programmable 3D pipeline, end of story. IMO, that means an OMAP3, just like a pandora and just like the beagleboard. I guess FIC is tied to Samsung tho. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: | On Thursday 05 June 2008 10:29:36 Andy Green wrote: | The Glamo offers normal async memory bus interface which we use, but it | has a bunch of timing constraints. (There is a synchronous burst bus | mode that we don't use because the CPU doesn't support it and adding a | CPLD in there to translate will eat power and doesn't make sense.) | What exactly do you mean by an async memory bus interface? Surely the bus | has a clock to clock data in off the data bus? Async busses use strobes like chip select, read and so on instead of an explicit clock. | But it _should_ be an aweful lot faster than it currently is. I understand the reasons | why it's so slow, but these are hardware bugs. Surely SMedia are the ones who should When we figure it out we'll know. It the meanwhile, it's OK. | However like I said when you hold the thing and use it, IMO it's | perfectly adequate. The August Software Update ;-) has some cool | alpha and moving things going on that look nice, it's just not so bad as | you got the impression I believe. | | Have you watched the video which started this thread? Seen an iPhone before? | What about the latest Google android videos: | http://androidcommunity.com/first-live-images-of-fullscreen-android-demo-20080528/ I just jumped in to correct your wrong idea about graphic device connectivity, not answer is there a God? :-) - -Andy -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkhH5S8ACgkQOjLpvpq7dMpytQCfaKEEUEXfxWdZXpwoZBdZjAJ7 3RcAnA9G+6X1VyM5HvPz+M5tMwDoNgns =LPl7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. Ken Young ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Robert Schuster theBohemian at gmx.net wrote on Tue Jun 3 18:10:18 CEST 2008 Hi. flexd schrieb: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh lally.singh at gmail.com babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. There are many reasons to have FOSS drivers. The ability for non-kernel non-gfx people to change them is very low priority. But the kernel and gfx people care much more. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! Yeah and for this a free/open driver is a precondition. Regards Robert If that were true, the Neo/Freerunner wouldn't exist. It's quite obvious that for the foreseeable future some compromises are unavoidable if you want a usable, worthwhile device. Mark ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thursday 05 June 2008 18:05:47 Mark wrote: Robert Schuster theBohemian at gmx.net wrote on Tue Jun 3 18:10:18 CEST 2008 Hi. flexd schrieb: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh lally.singh at gmail.com babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. There are many reasons to have FOSS drivers. The ability for non-kernel non-gfx people to change them is very low priority. But the kernel and gfx people care much more. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! Yeah and for this a free/open driver is a precondition. Regards Robert If that were true, the Neo/Freerunner wouldn't exist. It's quite obvious that for the foreseeable future some compromises are unavoidable if you want a usable, worthwhile device. Not at all obvious to me. :M: ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Somehow I just remember how nice Tie Fighter looked on my computer back in 1994 - or 1996? With a full fledged VGA resolution. And gouraud shading. Mhmmm. If wine happens to run on the om? :-D Ken Young schrieb: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. Ken Young ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- (\./) (o.o) ( X ) This is Bunny. Copy Bunny into your signature to help him on his way to world domination. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
You know, you are jokingly commenting about this ... ... but i'm fully setting mine up as a mame emulator. I think that while initially moko is positioned for the technically experienced, I believe we have a device here that can trully do something unique - become a portable general computing and gaming device. Why not? Why can't we have a moko with a fold out keyboard that can be pulled out and replaced with a game pad? This could seriously set the device apart and interest a lot of homebrew and small game shop developers because the playing field is so fair and level on this platform. I think gaming on the moko should be considered a VERY serious proposition indeed. - Robert Markus Bossert wrote: Somehow I just remember how nice Tie Fighter looked on my computer back in 1994 - or 1996? With a full fledged VGA resolution. And gouraud shading. Mhmmm. If wine happens to run on the om? :-D ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On 6/5/08, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 05 June 2008 18:05:47 Mark wrote: Robert Schuster theBohemian at gmx.net wrote on Tue Jun 3 18:10:18 CEST 2008 Hi. flexd schrieb: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh lally.singh at gmail.com babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. There are many reasons to have FOSS drivers. The ability for non-kernel non-gfx people to change them is very low priority. But the kernel and gfx people care much more. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! Yeah and for this a free/open driver is a precondition. Regards Robert If that were true, the Neo/Freerunner wouldn't exist. It's quite obvious that for the foreseeable future some compromises are unavoidable if you want a usable, worthwhile device. Not at all obvious to me. :M: I agree with Michael. The only reason I want a Freerunner, is because it is open. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 6/5/08, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree with Michael. The only reason I want a Freerunner, is because it is open. Open's great. But Open+Powerful would also be nice. I can't be the only one itching to use a GPU as a parallel coprocessor on this list. *sigh* so far it's only CUDA (AFAIK) that's even touching mobile devices. Man I wish we had a handspring-type connector and some little modules for this kind of stuff. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Lally Singh wrote: On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 6/5/08, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree with Michael. The only reason I want a Freerunner, is because it is open. Open's great. But Open+Powerful would also be nice. I can't be the only one itching to use a GPU as a parallel coprocessor on this list. *sigh* so far it's only CUDA (AFAIK) that's even touching mobile devices. Man I wish we had a handspring-type connector and some little modules for this kind of stuff. Well, why don't we FIRST help them make this a smashing success of such proporitions that it will make manufacturers sit up and take notice? Everyone has seen what the EEEPC has done, and now everyone and their dog now have a subnotebook with a linux distro on it in the span of what, 8months or so? Hell, Acer of all companies just announced a majour Linux push on their laptops .. THE LAST company on the face of the planet I expected to do so. AMD opened up the ATI gpu spec sheet recently - I have no idea if ATI has any inclination to get into making gpus for these sorts of devices, but if they did we potentially have one very real manufacturer that already drinks the coolaid that could potentially step in and fill the need if it can be demonstrated that the open platform is the way to go. I appreciate what everyone is saying, but the success of the moko isn't only dependent on the manufacturer doing their best to get as powerfull a device out as possible, it depends on us early adopters having vision to see what this is, why it is SO IMPORTANT and help build buzz around it. Mokos success is our success which is success for freedom - one device and one model at a time. I just think there is a danger to focusing on the negatives instead of positives here in terms of buzz - nothing is EVER perfect in any way so its a matter of seeing the glass as half full. - Rob ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: quick question - would you prefer a qvga lcd (save a bit of cost) since we'e going to need to software-drive all graphics - the fewer pixels you have to fill, the better for speed. i'm really tossing up if the speed of qvga is worth the loss of resolution. i'm just not sure. Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. you haven't been to japan lately. a whole host of their phones are 834x480... in 3.2 screens! totally nuts! -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, 5 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0200 Tom Cooksey [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: Well... yeah, that's kindof the reason for the initial post! I must have misunderstood previous posts as I was convinced the glamo was itself attached to the CPU's SDIO interface. You can understand where I was coming from now! :) Right. Shame the cpu doesn't have more cache so it has a better change of getting on with something else while the DMA occurs. Thanks for clearing things up. It's good to hear that the problem isn't because of any particularly bad decision on OpenMoko's part. Renews my faith a little. :-) glamo is a fairly old graphics cpu and design. frankly it was designed for qvga - at best. it CAN do vga, but that is beyond its intended use. we have pushed it much farther than smedia intended it to be - even smedia is amazed at the bus speeds we get to the glamo - they have never seen it so fast. glamo turned up primarily for 2 reasons. 1. we added wifi - and we just didn't have any other (good) interfaces (we can sit and discuss spi all u like right now - but lets hold that thought). so we needed to use up our sdio port for... wifi - but where will we stick the actual sd card? glamo came with its own sd interface - bonus, so we get that back again. 2. refresh. we run a vga screen. 640x480x70x2 - 41mb/sec ... JUST to refresh the screen. we lost 41mb/sec of memory bandwidth just to keep the screen displaying on the gta01. vga was by far pushing what the soc can do. literally that is a huge amount of the bandwidth we had left (as its reads only and we clock @ 100mhz for the bus clock on the gta02, it's be about 20% of memory bandwidth gone). the glamo removes that drain and gives u back bandwidth... but at another cost - the glamo's own bus and the extra work to write acceleration to keep as much on the glamo as possible. we definitely don't do everything we can on the glamo - but there is only so much time and development effort to go around. as such we only really knew what the glamo was like once we had it going reasonably, and by then - it's too late. glamo is in. it's not going away as there just is no alternative. so solutions could be: ditch vga, go to qvga, thus dropping mem bandwidth loss to 10mb/sec (1/4 of what it was), and now have to drive only 1/2 the pixels in software. end result would be much lower dpi, but much smoother and nicer performance. but then go all the cries of i must have vga!!! (though i wonder just how many people have good enough eyesight to really tell the difference). if we want to live in the realms of such high resolution, imho, we need to look very carefully at a high-end soc with good on-board graphics acceleration, but that would have put the freerunner on hold as a product for a looong time. so you would all still be waiting and waiting. no one would be talking of production runs right now! :) -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:04:27 -0700 Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: at vga.. forget mame and games - they will be doing fullscreen updates. at vga... no chance (of any decent framerate). if you don't believe me... try it when you get one! :) at qvga though - maybe. also a lot of arcade games are for qvga res... or older ones are at least... You know, you are jokingly commenting about this ... ... but i'm fully setting mine up as a mame emulator. I think that while initially moko is positioned for the technically experienced, I believe we have a device here that can trully do something unique - become a portable general computing and gaming device. Why not? Why can't we have a moko with a fold out keyboard that can be pulled out and replaced with a game pad? This could seriously set the device apart and interest a lot of homebrew and small game shop developers because the playing field is so fair and level on this platform. I think gaming on the moko should be considered a VERY serious proposition indeed. - Robert Markus Bossert wrote: Somehow I just remember how nice Tie Fighter looked on my computer back in 1994 - or 1996? With a full fledged VGA resolution. And gouraud shading. Mhmmm. If wine happens to run on the om? :-D ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Tuesday 03 June 2008 09:06:35 Carsten Haitzler wrote: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) Sorry, just how open is the current glamo driver exactly? IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). OpenMoko insisted on having open source drivers, and the only hardware vendor which would let them do it was SMedia. So we get this massively underpowered graphics processor - but that's ok because OpenMoko can release the source code to the driver! Except SMedia wont let OpenMoko realease any technical info about the chip. So, in fact, the glamo driver can only be developed by people employed by OpenMoko and only after they sign an NDA. The Xglamo may be open source, but it is not, nor can it ever be, a community project. Now look at the other options OpenMoko could have gone with. Well, _the_ option of cource would be to have used a half-decent SoC, one with an integrated GPU such as a Freescale i.MX or TI OMAP, even an XScale would have been better. You'd then get a PowerVR GPU (same as used in the iPhone), which already has Linux drivers. What's more, OpenMoko would get the source code for the drivers, under NDA from Imagination Technologies. The only restriction would be that OpenMoko couldn't release the source. But that's no different to the glamo, given that only OpenMoko employees can work on it. We would also have had a decent processor, one with a more up-to-date instruction set than the nearly 10-year-old armv4t. So there may not have been Cortex A8s around 2 years ago when GTA02 development began, but there were plenty of options. Why on earth did OpenMoko stick with an aging CPU and an almost useless GPU when there were so much better options? And please don't say BOM, I refuse to believe the combined price of the 2442 and glamo is cheaper than e.g. an i.MX31 or OMAP2420. Cheers, Tom PS: Very sorry for the rant, I just had such high hopes for OpenMoko and am just fustrated with the hardware design decisions. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: | On Tuesday 03 June 2008 09:06:35 Carsten Haitzler wrote: | the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an | interest :) | | Sorry, just how open is the current glamo driver exactly? Pretty open (apologies if the first one wraps): http://git.openmoko.org/?p=kernel.git;a=blob;f=drivers/mfd/glamo/glamo-fb.c;h=16e9d2e4aa0a4ff01a4efa080e7233696cb1f3b7;hb=eb6932e9617f9ad3161957490de8011482b83d24 http://git.openmoko.org/?p=xglamo.git;a=tree | IMO, OpenMoko's choice of using the the glamo was a big mistake (Connecting it to a | shared, 4-bit bus was probably the _biggest_ mistake). Huh what? It's a 16-bit memory bus, maybe you mean 2^4 ;-) When I actually use the thing I don't notice much sluggishness. Your best bet is to eyeball one, I think you'll find it isn't the issue you think it is. - -Andy -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkhG84gACgkQOjLpvpq7dMp3xgCfQXQOIjCwwAoHCEuUJTVofGev wYIAn0tNKAuxKTmZV2Ae5A9gZ0PBoFEr =hFEC -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7430768.stm http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/nvidia-launches-tegra-hopes-to-change-the-smartphone-mid-game/ The Tegra line will be all-in-one, integrated systems on a chip, containing an 800MHz ARM CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, HD video processor, and controllers for all other aspects of core operations (memory, USB ports, communication) -- in a package about the size of a dime. The range will come in two varieties to start -- the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650. Both chips can run games like Quake 3 with full filters and anti-aliasing at rates of more than 40 FPS, and will support 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD or CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV outs. It's still ARM based, so it should work with OM. It'll run Android if you want, and may end up with a slightly smaller phone, as it integrates the GPU. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
The cost is probably on the order of paraplegia. And I wonder about the power requirements -- there haven't been significant advances in battery technology lately. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Tue, 3 Jun 2008, flexd wrote: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! You get the phone. It crashes. You report the bug. Opensource developers tell you it's the nvidia driver, we cannot do anything. Then what? Thank you openmoko for your stance on using ONLY opensource drivers for open hardware specs. I want the ability to change everything, but having a different cpu/gpu driver isnt exactly a high priority. Ofcourse this would be great, but a closed driver will do fine if my phone can have specs as good as that! It won't. Vendor lock will lead to closed phones. If I wanted that, I would already own an iphone. Paul ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 08:54:20 -0400 Kevin Dean [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: With Nouveau, wouldn't it give a future device video performance that equals or surpasses the current XGlamo? who says that the chip even resembles the desktop ones in terms of how it can be driven? just because it bears the same brandname does not mean it has the same register api etc. etc. :) not to mention that the hardware specs as such are not open - nor even available under nda for the purpose of writing open drivers - which leaves the long painful road of reverse engineering and taking what you can get - if/when you can get it... if ever... :) again - without the details and specs it's all speculation... and without them... it's not open :) On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:06 AM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7430768.stm http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/nvidia-launches-tegra-hopes-to-change-the-smartphone-mid-game/ The Tegra line will be all-in-one, integrated systems on a chip, containing an 800MHz ARM CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, HD video processor, and controllers for all other aspects of core operations (memory, USB ports, communication) -- in a package about the size of a dime. The range will come in two varieties to start -- the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650. Both chips can run games like Quake 3 with full filters and anti-aliasing at rates of more than 40 FPS, and will support 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD or CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV outs. It's still ARM based, so it should work with OM. It'll run Android if you want, and may end up with a slightly smaller phone, as it integrates the GPU. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! I want the ability to change everything, but having a different cpu/gpu driver isnt exactly a high priority. Ofcourse this would be great, but a closed driver will do fine if my phone can have specs as good as that! Regards Kristoffer Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7430768.stm http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/nvidia-launches-tegra-hopes-to-change-the-smartphone-mid-game/ The Tegra line will be all-in-one, integrated systems on a chip, containing an 800MHz ARM CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, HD video processor, and controllers for all other aspects of core operations (memory, USB ports, communication) -- in a package about the size of a dime. The range will come in two varieties to start -- the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650. Both chips can run games like Quake 3 with full filters and anti-aliasing at rates of more than 40 FPS, and will support 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD or CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV outs. It's still ARM based, so it should work with OM. It'll run Android if you want, and may end up with a slightly smaller phone, as it integrates the GPU. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) yeah.. sounds nice.. shortly after hell has frozen over and nvidia started supporting any free and or open driver development at all ;) btw.. did you see any total power ratings anywhere? guess why they are missing... anyways... kind regards -- Joachim Steiger Openmoko Central Services ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:51 AM, flexd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. I'm not a programmer, but I have to fully disagree with you. Carsten IS a hacker, and I trust that if the source code where devouring children that he'd make it public. If not him then Zeke, or if not him... Me not being able to program it doesn't mean that someone else who cares can't. That's a level of trust that I gain from Free Software, and I'd not change that. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! I want the ability to change everything, but having a different cpu/gpu driver isnt exactly a high priority. Ofcourse this would be great, but a closed driver will do fine if my phone can have specs as good as that! I think about that more and more (I traded a quad core Opteron system with 10 GB of RAM for an Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 so that I could use the GPLed Intel 3D driver (before I leanrned that GLX was technically non-free). The more I think on it, the more I realize that a non-free firmware on the system mainboard actually scares me a bit MORE than a non-free application in userspace. Not only that, but how in the HELL can you call a project Openmoko with a tagline of Free your phone and then turn your back on openness and freedom? Regards Kristoffer Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7430768.stm http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/nvidia-launches-tegra-hopes-to-change-the-smartphone-mid-game/ The Tegra line will be all-in-one, integrated systems on a chip, containing an 800MHz ARM CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, HD video processor, and controllers for all other aspects of core operations (memory, USB ports, communication) -- in a package about the size of a dime. The range will come in two varieties to start -- the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650. Both chips can run games like Quake 3 with full filters and anti-aliasing at rates of more than 40 FPS, and will support 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD or CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV outs. It's still ARM based, so it should work with OM. It'll run Android if you want, and may end up with a slightly smaller phone, as it integrates the GPU. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Hi. flexd schrieb: Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) skrev: On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 23:12:30 -0400 Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] babbled: the day nvidia comes with open drivers for this... we can begin to take an interest :) To be honest, (i myself do not really care if the drivers are open or not, i do not have the require level of geekyness to change them :p) i couldnt care less if the drivers are open or not. There are many reasons to have FOSS drivers. The ability for non-kernel /non-gfx people to change them is very low priority. But the kernel and gfx people care much more. Aslong as we/someone could run a opensource OS on it, such as OM, i'd love it! Yeah and for this a free/open driver is a precondition. Regards Robert signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Hi. thomasg schrieb: And for those who think android will bring hardware support for new devices to the FOSS-world: forget about it. Google doesn't care about open source if it's not used to save costs. They didn't even release their own from-scratch-software as opensource - hell, they use _wine_ to run it under linux. Android isn't about freedom. It's about saving license fees, nothing else (and they did some effort to make it as easy as possible for closed source and vendors). Thats it. Regards Robert signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
+1 Just the kind of thing I want to hear. On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Robert Schuster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi. thomasg schrieb: And for those who think android will bring hardware support for new devices to the FOSS-world: forget about it. Google doesn't care about open source if it's not used to save costs. They didn't even release their own from-scratch-software as opensource - hell, they use _wine_ to run it under linux. Android isn't about freedom. It's about saving license fees, nothing else (and they did some effort to make it as easy as possible for closed source and vendors). Thats it. Regards Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Wow, I didn't know that. Google does contribute to various open source projects, but they sure as hell don't seem to drink the punch. Thanks for the info, that completely defines my view of Android. And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. - Rob Rahul Joshi wrote: +1 Just the kind of thing I want to hear. On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Robert Schuster [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi. thomasg schrieb: And for those who think android will bring hardware support for new devices to the FOSS-world: forget about it. Google doesn't care about open source if it's not used to save costs. They didn't even release their own from-scratch-software as opensource - hell, they use _wine_ to run it under linux. Android isn't about freedom. It's about saving license fees, nothing else (and they did some effort to make it as easy as possible for closed source and vendors). Thats it. Regards Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
No, you got me wrong in some points. I was talking about Picasa, Google Earth and the other Google software. The android SDK is widely open source, so there's nothing wrong about it. They don't have a chance to push a proprietary SDK out, because nobody would ever use it as there is no product yet. But the SDK is only an SDK - it does not and will not contain new drivers that the vendors use for their hardware. It will not be used to deploy a kind of distribution or images like Openmoko (OpenEmbedded) does. It is a SDK to deploy your applications on the platform, be it closed (and you can be sure there: it will be in a wide area) or not, in the terms google or the vendor likes. With the effort I meant, that android uses GPL only where it is absolutely necessary (linux kernel and so) and use own commercial licenses (at least for now, but the promised to release them under an OSS license, believe them or not) and licenses with far less restrictions (MPL, BSD and so on) that allows the vendors or deployers to keep their stuff based on it closed. On the other hand google is really supporting FOSS-software. Best example is of course GSoC what is a really good thing (even if it's clear that it also has a purpose for google, but that doesn't matter in the end) and may not be left out of this discussion. All I want to say: Android is _not_ an alternative to Openmoko - at least not for people that care about absolute openness and freedom. On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:53 PM, Robert Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Wow, I didn't know that. Google does contribute to various open source projects, but they sure as hell don't seem to drink the punch. Thanks for the info, that completely defines my view of Android. And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. - Rob Rahul Joshi wrote: +1 Just the kind of thing I want to hear. On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Robert Schuster [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi. thomasg schrieb: And for those who think android will bring hardware support for new devices to the FOSS-world: forget about it. Google doesn't care about open source if it's not used to save costs. They didn't even release their own from-scratch-software as opensource - hell, they use _wine_ to run it under linux. Android isn't about freedom. It's about saving license fees, nothing else (and they did some effort to make it as easy as possible for closed source and vendors). Thats it. Regards Robert ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Google does contribute to various open source projects, but they sure as hell don't seem to drink the punch. Thanks for the info, that completely defines my view of Android. The kernel still uses the GPL, so they have to respect that. However the new hardware drivers could be done the same way nvidia does it. They said their custom software will all use the apache license. So a phone carrier could take the software stack, close the source, and add their custom bits on top leaving you with a system thats just as closed as the current phones. It will be interesting to see what happens. And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. I think he's talking about other applications. I think picasa uses wine. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux? My god - that beggars the imagination. I think he's talking about other applications. I think picasa uses wine. and google earth No, Google Earth is a native Qt application... Only Picasa uses wine. -- Treviño's World - Life and Linux http://www.3v1n0.net/ ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
Seen this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7430768.stm http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/nvidia-launches-tegra-hopes-to-change-the-smartphone-mid-game/ The Tegra line will be all-in-one, integrated systems on a chip, containing an 800MHz ARM CPU, GeForce GPU, image processor, HD video processor, and controllers for all other aspects of core operations (memory, USB ports, communication) -- in a package about the size of a dime. The range will come in two varieties to start -- the Tegra 600 and the Tegra 650. Both chips can run games like Quake 3 with full filters and anti-aliasing at rates of more than 40 FPS, and will support 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD or CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV outs. It's still ARM based, so it should work with OM. It'll run Android if you want, and may end up with a slightly smaller phone, as it integrates the GPU. -- H. Lally Singh Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science Virginia Tech ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
