CPU Podule


monty

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Nov 12, 2007
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Assuming (and its a big assumption) that the rumours of / wishes for some sort modular Pandora 2 design are true, I would like to propose an idea. I suspect its been discussed before, in which case just point me in the direction of previous scornful rebuttals.


On the ARM powered Acorn RiscPC from the late-90s you had 'podule' expansion slots. One podule available for these slots was the PC Card. This was a very basic x86 computer on a chip which could be run from within the normal operating system, sharing memory with the main computer. It ran Windows in a window.


If the Pandora 2 were to expose a similar sort of expansion slot, and if the design accomodated expansion cards (they could attach to the back, for example) then a similar 'podule' could be theoretically produced sometime after launch. With a fairly rubbish, underclocked, low-power x86 we could easily move into running all Windows 98 games natively at full speed. Obviously it would hit the battery life hard, but as its an optional extra, what does that matter? Plus, this wouldn't the only possible podule, of course.


I know that the possibility for expansion is largely in the hands of the ARM SoC makers, but, assuming something suitable comes along, does anyone see a flaw in this?
 
Only flaw is, that it would need its own heatsink and could double the size of your Pandora.


Also I think it would be a hardwaredesigners nightmare ;)
 
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Like Tesla and oil, OP are not going near X86.


Something like the OMAP5 will be able to emulate PCs really well, coupled with no doubt an Android as well as solid Linux OS, you should be able to get pretty much any game via emulation or via Android.
 
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Like Tesla and oil, OP are not going near X86.


Something like the OMAP5 will be able to emulate PCs really well, coupled with no doubt an Android as well as solid Linux OS, you should be able to get pretty much any game via emulation or via Android.

And we're all looking forward to that. OMAP5 on a larger LCD screen makes shlee a happy man.
 
Seeing how well runs qemu with the actual hardware an OMAP5 might be able to run a lot of games from the win98 era or even early windowsXP games.
 
Seeing how well runs qemu with the actual hardware an OMAP5 might be able to run a lot of games from the win98 era or even early windowsXP games.

but well, somebody needs to do some opengl/directx to opengles wrapper still, what is really not an easy task. Else the power will be wasted because you need to run games in softwareemulationmode and some games even need hw acceleration.
 
Like Tesla and oil, OP are not going near X86.


Something like the OMAP5 will be able to emulate PCs really well, coupled with no doubt an Android as well as solid Linux OS, you should be able to get pretty much any game via emulation or via Android.

Fair enough. Probably for the best, given how fast ARM appears to be improving.

the only reason for x86 would be being able to run windows, which really isn't a selling point round here

Running Windows for its own sake isn't really the point, selling or otherwise. Windows is a necessary component for playing many very good x86-native games. But, as has been pointed out by Craig, the advance in ARM hardware should address the need to run it natively.
 
Not sure if related, but first thing that popped into my mind when reading this was: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68


Basically a CPU/GPU/supporting components on a heavily modified PC-Card (completely different interface, connector is only commonality), such that the Pandora 2 could be basically a dock shell, allowing easy upgrades of the CPU and hardware in case of advancements in technology. I think this has been discussed at length before, but don't really want to look up the old threads.
 
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