A Quick Blog Entry About Gp2x Performance..


skeezix

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I get asked some of these quesitons a few dozen times a day, and it comes up in IRC a lot, etc.. so I thought I'd rant out a bit.

http://www.codejedi.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi/t....blog?seemore=y

Now, lets see how much I get flamed ;)

jeff

Posted here, so you needn't hit the link:

Tech: A simplistic comparison of the GP2x and [X]
Tue, 04 Oct 2005

A lot of people are planning to move over to the GP2x handheld console - be they former or current GP32 (the companies prior device) owners or people coming completely in from the green. As a GP32 owner and fan this is great news -- GamePark (now GamePark Holdings) are fairly clueless in a lot of ways, but (like Commodore!) they know to keep prices low to the ground and encourage third parties to get into the mix. (Yes, you read right, a company who actually encourages you to rip open their devices knowing you'll enjoy it, tell all your friends, and need to buy another when you kill your SMC slot.. right Squidge?)

Anyway, for now, I'll try and avoid going over what a GP32 is in any great detail, and what the GP2x will be... except to summarize something I've been saying a lot lately. So now I can just point to this posting and say "see there" :) Oh, and that the GP32 'scene' is a lot like the old Amiga and Atari ST and Commie scenes were -- its _fun_.

The past

The GP32 is well loved by its fans as being the top emulation machine around right now, despite its rather anemic specs. An ARM CPU with no FPU (and that can usually only clock up to 160MHz or more) attached to 8MB of RAM and an SMC slot - not much and all off the shelf.. but it does feel pretty good and offers controls that don't cramp you up (I'm looking at you, Tapwave.) It offers a really sexy bright screen (too bad its sideways in RAM!), and a really simple SDK thats free and Free courtesy of the Free Software Foundation and gcc (again, I'm looking at you Tapwave!), though it lacks the sexy black finish and touchscreen (again, looking at you with sad eyes, Tapwave!) Due to the ease of coding and familiarity of tools, the GP32 quickly became 'the' machine to port homebrew games and emulators to.. it was easy to do, fast to do, and the result was loved by the scene members and really.. the emus are a total blast. Course, only a few dozen developers are active at a time but this helps create mystique and makes for a tight friendly scene of people hacking away and helping each other. (And thank god for gp32x.de and Evil Dragon!)

The present

The GP32 is pretty much unheard of by most gamers and coders, since its created by a small Korean company and distributed only through little importers such as Lik Sang, GBAX and various individuals. Good kachet, but not so good for sales. Naturally, people have hacked away at their Palm OS and Pocket PC PDAs, and done wonders on the GBA and Sony PSP consoles. The PSP could be king (and really is a _great_ emulation platform right now) were it not for Sony constantly trying to suppress the scene and homebrew development - eventually, users will have to decide between getting new games, or sticking to old games and homebrew, and thats just not cool. But for now, the GP32 is the king of open handheld game consoles, and the PSP is tops for handheld consoles with bastard intentions.

The GP32 has no special hardware and is relatively limited, but works well due to the dedication of its developers and scene. The Tapwave Zodiac was a better machine in almost every sense, but the company business model just couldn't hold up against the tide that is Sony and Nintendo. The Zodiac, over the GP32, sported 200MHz (a little clockable as well) processor with fast architecture, a bright touchscreen with a 2d GPU for scaling, smoothing and blitting, and rechargable battery and enormous pile of RAM. The Zodiac was pretty good kit for emulation and homebrew, but the companies choice to back a commercial compiler suite pretty much made homebrew non-existant.. so the GP32 remained king.

The PSP on the other hand is easy to develop for due to the hard work of the PSP SDK team (among others) and is also based on gcc-and-friends. With a fast CPU (333Mhz!) and aggressive chipset as well as full 3d GPU, its a sexy piece of machinery. No touchscreen, but long rechargable battery life, a gorgeous bright display, analog and digital controls.. its a great emulation platform -- and lets face it, theres millions out there so lots of potential admirers for your homebrew. Too bad Sony is out to get the scene...

Nintendo's DS is another good solid platform; a little harder for people to homebrew with since they need to first acquire a special adapter to enable homebrew to occur (ie: additional cost and effort), and a little harder to develop for.. its still a popular machine due to the dual screen and touchscreen action. Like the GBA (though superior to the GBA in every way), the NDS doesn't have a beefy processor so no serious emulation will occur (ie: Amiga etc.)

The Future

So I would argue that the near future of mobile emulation essentialy boils down to two main contenders - the Sony PSP and its 'now it works, soon it might not' mentality, and the GP2x which hopefully will adopt the mighty GP32 community.

So how does the GP2x stack up?

The GP2x is another machine built mostly from off-the-shelf componentry.. no touchscreen but another big and bright screen like seen on the existing GP32 'BLU' (backlit) models. This time she'll have lots of RAM (64MB seems to be the goal), which puts her in the same boat as the venerable Zodiac - enough RAM for SNES and NES by far.. but also enough for Amiga, Atari ST, and even Neo Geo CD (oh baby!).. even enough for emulating a number of classy Capcom arcade games and the like. Gamepark has always been pretty good with controls, so we expect the GP2x (to be released soon) to have good controls, and this time a SD/MMC slot instead of the long out of date SMC card system.. media will be cheap and fast.

The point

But as we all know.. emulation is about processing power, and the GP2x could shine here.. but not right away. The GP32 faired pretty well on its lowly 160MHz or so, but everyone wanted more. With the PSP we see that 333MHZ can do pretty well (especially with a GPU behind it), but I've long said the sexy point is about 400MHz and up (maybe even 600). The GP2x takes a twist - rather than offer a single piece with high speed, it will offer two 200MHz processors with some specialization in function. (Clocking may be possible, but we won't know until we see the machine.)

What does this mean?

(This is why I made this post -->) A direct port to the machine will run about as well as any other 200MHz machine, such as the Tapwave Zodiac. The machine has the potential to work really well, with the dual processor arrangement.. but it will take some work for developers to port a single-threaded application to a multi-CPU arrangement to actually use that second CPU effectively; in fact, we can assume most applications will be single-CPU based and run at 200MHz, while a few others will use one CPU for heavy lifting all the time, and use the second CPU for 'bursts' to save on performance (say, for audio generation or screen scaling, while the main game engine does its business.) After a bit of time, the second CPU will be used more heavily, and after even more time I'm sure both CPUs will be working double time.. but right up front, it'll act like a 200MHz machine.

But for those developers who take care, it could really pay off. Lets just hope Gamepark provides some cache for the chips, and arranges the system bus so as to minimize contension between CPUs. Otherwise we lose a lot of performance hopping on and off the bus..
 
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(In case you missed it.. this is trying to be relatively truthful and fair, without fanboy biases. I'm platform agnostic, but wanted to say the PSP is pretty good at things, but avoid it due to Sony. The GP2x will likely rule, but not right away. I'm trying to be careful to let people know that _likely_ (no one knows for sure) the GP2x won't perform like 40MHz or more until after some time has passed. A lot of people here and elsehwere seem to assume the GP2x will right away be able to run full speed SNES, PSX and CPS2 emus.. but it almost certainly will not. Not _right away_.)

jeff
 
Bravo :D

I totally agree with your assessment. If people have a little patience with this machine, I think they will see great things running on it in the future.
 
Sounds fair enough...good summary of the whole dual processor mess.

I know you can't say for sure, but do you think a simple port of Castaway would run fullspeed without biting into the second processor?
 
It runs pretty well at 200MHz; on the PSP (333MHz) she runs really well, throttling most of the time. She runs already pretty well on the GP32, so it'll do nicely on the GP2x and once I bump display/audio/etc to the second chip.. it'll fly.

I've got a few other projects up my sleeve though ;)

jeff
 
I agree totally, but I also think that programmers should lean to use multiple processors as it is the future. I use Gentoo Linux and have a Pentium 4 with HT, it's amazing how much faster apps run with multiple processors, err, the ones that can use it anyway. Compiling is much faster, and doesn't really need HT capabilities, just has to know I have two processors, but that wouldn't really apply to the GP2X.

Over all I have to agree with GPH, they looked at a multiprocessor model compared to a single processor model, and the way things are now the multiprocessor looked better for the future. I think the multiprocessor model will prove to be more than a fad as it's been tested over and over in super computers.

I wish that they would have put a 3D capable GPU in it, and a touch screen so I could run Opie or GPE, but this is a game machine, and can do fine with what it has. It may take a little longer, but once it gets there it will be much better at what it does over other systems.

Thanx,
Stan
 
A touchscreen we can live without (though it has interesting potential in NDS; show me Civilization!), but a snappier CPU and GPU Id like. Obviously MP and HT are where things are going (Im a fan of satellite processing myself), but for a lower end game machine.. Im not sure this is the best approach for _average early dev_. (ie: Limited dev pool, so most ports will be limited up front. If it was pure 400, then everything would get the speed boost right away. Also, theres inherent loss in threading with negotiations and sub-optimal load sharing and such, usually. So to perform _well_, its a lot of work for devs, and no clue if Fenix will handle it well (where a lot of newer devs are spending their time.)

Course, on the other hand, theres a bunch of us who do it every day, and a pile of new develops coming on board.. so things will be exciting.

Really, were all just moaning until we get toys to play with ;)

jeff

Goddamn, firefox has a bug where it forgets shift-state and control-state, so right now I cant use apostrophe or slash, or copy-paste. Garg.
 
skeezix posted on Oct 4 2005 at 09:54 PM said:
Goddamn, firefox has a bug where it forgets shift-state and control-state, so right now I cant use apostrophe or slash, or copy-paste. Garg.
Always wondered what was doing that... Thanks for clearing it up! :D
 
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skeezix posted on Oct 4 2005 at 06:53 PM said:
.. Lets just hope Gamepark provides some cache for the chips, and arranges the system bus so as to minimize contension between CPUs. Otherwise we lose a lot of performance hopping on and off the bus..


Well unfortunately that is all set in stone as the hardware is done (cache, bus etc.). What you see now is what you will get. There is a little cache in the CPUs though.

Do you think it will be hard for you to get exited about a "weaker" system such as the GP2X after working on the PSP? It sounds like you long for more power like PSP and are still dissapointed in the GP2X CPU choice. While I agree that 400 MHZ would have better it is too late. What do you think do you think you will be able to "get into it" on the GP2X? Or will you be always thinking of the greener pastures of the PSP and wishing for more power?
 
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What makes you think I'm not excited about it? You've got to stop making assumptions about me again.. here I state some facts about PSP (despite my not having turned it on in a couple weeks), and you assume I'm pro-PSP and anti-GP2x?

/me weeps

jeff

I'm platform agnostic; I like communities, I like delivering apps to make peopel smile, and I like brightly lit backlit screens with linux kernels (I've been using BSD and Linux since they arrived.)

Did you read the post? I think it has a numebr of glowing comments about the gp32 and gp2x, though I'm (as I said) trying ot be fair to be who have none of the systems etc.

"As a GP32 owner and fan..."

"GP32 'scene' is a lot like the old Amiga and Atari ST and Commie scenes were -- its _fun_."

"The GP32 is well loved by its fans as being the top emulation machine around right now"

"Due to the ease of coding and familiarity of tools, the GP32 quickly became 'the' machine to port homebrew games and emulators to.. it was easy to do, fast to do, and the result was loved by the scene members and really.. the emus are a total blast."

"But for now, the GP32 is the king of open handheld game consoles"

(and thats the first 1/3rd of the article.)

*garg* I hate having to defend myself in your eyes all the time.

And yet, you're a mystery, since you kicked in to help me get a gp2x :)

/me doesn't understand :)
 
skeezix posted on Oct 4 2005 at 08:54 PM said:
What makes you think I'm not excited about it? You've got to stop making assumptions about me again.. here I state some facts about PSP (despite my not having turned it on in a couple weeks), and you assume I'm pro-PSP and anti-GP2x?

/me weeps

jeff

I'm platform agnostic; I like communities, I like delivering apps to make peopel smile, and I like brightly lit backlit screens with linux kernels (I've been using BSD and Linux since they arrived.)


Jeff That is not really what I meant. I know that you are not that way. I know you take my post that way but it is hard to explain. I am not saying that you are pro anything, honest.

I may be wrong but I almost get a vibe that you are kind of thinking from a devs view that essentially the GP2X is really not much different from a GP32 and are a bit dissapointed. I know *I* would be thinking that if I were you actually. The GP2x has the same screen, basically the same speed, similar controls, even looks similar. You have already been there, done that. The PSP on the other hand is new, it is more powerful, it has a much bigger community, is easy to dev for etc. I sense your exitement for it, you really like the PSP, alot. Again it is not bad, and I am not complaining or saying that you are anti- GP2X. In a way you would be right to be a bit dissapointed, as you probably don't have time to be trying to mess with the second core and optimising hours on end for it etc. In that case the GP2X really *is* only a GP32 with a couple more buttons. I know that devs like to play with the newest most interesting and powerful hardware out at the time and the PSP is it. There is nothing wrong with that either.

Please don't take it in a bad way, really. I was just curious of your feelings with regards to that.
 
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skeezix posted on Oct 4 2005 at 01:54 PM said:
*bleep*, firefox has a bug where it forgets shift-state and control-state, so right now I cant use apostrophe or slash, or copy-paste. Garg.

Must be windows-FireFox bug, not happening on my Gentoo box with FireFox, and doesn't do it on my ibook running FireFox either. I'm using 1.0.7 on both, are you using the 1.5 beta?

Thanx,
Stan
 
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(stream of cosciousness follows)

I don't really get impressed by hardware too much; its like this.. we were all promised flying cars 30 years ago, but we don't have them yet. As far as I'm concerned, technology doesn't change very fast.. yet people keep saying it does. We're still using essentially the same OS we've all been using for 20 years, for instance.

The GP2x is _not_ enough of a change from the GP32 in most respects.. really, its GP32 1.1, and _not_ GP32 2.0. It _should_ have some more goodies.

At the same time, its necessary changes, so maybe it is a 2.0 -- getting rid of SMC is huge (right now I've got 4 SMCs that are all buggered up and unworkable, and trhey're bloody expensive), getting a good kernel in thereis huge (to me; replacing the kernel with my own OS isn't a top priority, like it is for Squidge :) Good controls is good (so far GP32 is probably one of the best, better than PSP even for digital controls).

So GP2x isn't revolutionairy at all; its evolutionairy.

Thats okay. I'm not a hardware guy. I'm a coder -- if it provides what I want to do my development, I'm happy.

Maybe I dont' express it well but I'm pretty excited about the GP2x.. not in the hardware sense (I'm a little let down.. like really, does it have anythign innovating in the hardware?).. but socially.

Its running Linux, and BSD and Linux are close to my heart; with these OSes comes a certain mindshare.. expertise in the public, and a culture (the whole MIT dev culture etc), and the interest of the outside world is pretty big (notive how fast it got onto slashdot etc).

I really love the GP32 -- its community and all that is good stuff, but the GP32 was one of the first really open platforms. The GP2x is _poised_ to blow that sort of thign open -- to go public. GP32 was private... how many of us are there? But the gp2x is more in the public eye, because of the Linux tie in.

Suddenly nerds all oveer the world are salilvating.. we can get out there. (This also worries me.. maybe the GP32 scene can't handle an influx of arrogant slashdotters ;)

So its yet another fun platform, thats easy to code (makes me happy), and really coudl get out there and sprea the faith (makes me happy).

So as a social experiment this is very good stuff. Of course, GPH, being GP, blew the first step already -- by chosing to adopt all of these things and embrace Linux, they're using thousands of other peopels code and adopting the atrmosphere. Will they return the favour and follow the law and release their code changes? Or will they not release their kernel changes, and violate the license that is actually causing their potential success? That worries me.

Besides, on a personal level, I don't get 'excited' like other people. Somewhere along the line when I was a kid I decided I wouldn't let things scrae me, and I woudl try and act The Righty Way and Do Good, and in that same pass I don't get 'frothing excited' like other people do. My wife hates it.. Its like I'm on permanent prozac or something.. I am nearly incapable of being unhappy, but by the same token, I nevert get really excited either :p

jeff
 
Eolair posted on Oct 4 2005 at 10:51 PM said:
Change to Opera. It's completely free now ;)
Free maybe. But good no.
 
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Don't know if anyone have mentioned this because I'm to tired to read all posts so I skipped a few.

GP2X may have only 2 200MHz CPUs but don't forget they they have 2D acceleration so for 2D games they will really shine compared to a 400MHz CPU without 2D acceleration. This is why GPH didn't put in a 400MHz CPU. It's right there in their FAQ had you bothered to take a look.

http://www.gpx2.com/support/support_sugest...bunho=1&part=02

"We inform you that 400Mhz without 2d accelerator would rather be lower than 200Mhz."
 
Well, of _course_, but we'd rather it was 400Mz with a GPU, too. You know how many 200 MHz devices are out there nowadays? :) Guess ohw fast my phone runs ;)

jeff
 
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