Things we need to take into consideration when treading new grounds


Its a solution. Dont like it? Stop complaining.
It's not a solution. You have no idea what browser I use, I could have be using IE. It is Firefox, although Firefox becomes slow when you add more extensions, so I need to keep it minimal.

If you would go back and read the posts. All I did was ask nicely for Shenmue and xiongxioi to not double post in the future. Grench is the one who brought an argument from another topic into this one by attacking my request.

-God Ginrai
 
The 2 things to take into consideration first should be R&D budget & planned release date for a hardware project like P2.

Realistically speaking we're probably looking at a release date of Q1 2015 at the earliest, a plan may be made for an earlier release but based on how these things go and the necessity to be super careful with money my gut feel is it would be hard to bring a P2 to market earlier than Q1 2015.

I've no idea what the R&D budget for P2 is but if ED could give some order of magnitude then it would help with threads like this.

As part of the examination into the suitability of x86 the first thing I'd do is buy one of the forthcoming tablets which are based upon a SoC which can be bought 'off the shelf'.

Actual use of the tablet will give a pretty good indication of battery life & CPU /GPU power for something in a P2 form factor. In my eyes this would be vastly preferable to relying on reviews / benchmarks.
 
The 2 things to take into consideration first should be R&D budget & planned release date for a hardware project like P2.

Realistically speaking we're probably looking at a release date of Q1 2015 at the earliest, a plan may be made for an earlier release but based on how these things go and the necessity to be super careful with money my gut feel is it would be hard to bring a P2 to market earlier than Q1 2015.

I've no idea what the R&D budget for P2 is but if ED could give some order of magnitude then it would help with threads like this.

As part of the examination into the suitability of x86 the first thing I'd do is buy one of the forthcoming tablets which are based upon a SoC which can be bought 'off the shelf'.

Actual use of the tablet will give a pretty good indication of battery life & CPU /GPU power for something in a P2 form factor. In my eyes this would be vastly preferable to relying on reviews / benchmarks.
There are two approaches of project scoping.

1. get the product out first then collect feedback and make improvements on the next product.

2. maintain close touch with their consumer base and try to push out the most demanded product in a timely manner.

The first approach is traditional, and usually easier to pull off. However, it also causes manufacturers to lose touch and thus become A-holes of the biggest caliber.

The second approach seems to be the future of product scoping and quality control. However, it needs the contractor to know its business very well and can make adjusts rather than blindly following traditions.

We don't know much about what we can get our hands on at the moment.

However, we do need to have a vague idea about what x86 P2 should be about. What's its selling point and how to make that stand out.

We do need to keep a set of assessment criterias in mind.

720p 4 to 5 inch ips screen, better wifi and blue tooth support, a new keyboard layout, a new case and possibly prettier colour scheme, usb support and so on.

This is our short term goal, we need to get a set of important criterias, no need to specify how much score x86 p2 needs to achieve, just a set of criterias that we all acknowledge.

This is not only crucial for us to proceed to the next stage, but also will forcus the power of our community. Say even if intel or AMD would not happily give ED their chips, we can start a partition and strive for that.

After conducting the feasibility study on both ARM and x86, we would then have a clear direction on where to go next.

Just as a side note, Even though Mediatek is infamous for its closeness, it has provided its full documentation and drivers to sony. Just as I predicted (no one believes me at that time), they want to enter into the mid to high level of consumer electronic market. If we want sourcecodes, documentations, we can start a partition and tell them how many people are willing to use their chips in a $600 umpc rather than some $120 android knock-off. That would potentially send them a stronge message. However, that's after we can present them a decent business case to make them understand our seriousness.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The 2 things to take into consideration first should be R&D budget & planned release date for a hardware project like P2.

Realistically speaking we're probably looking at a release date of Q1 2015 at the earliest, a plan may be made for an earlier release but based on how these things go and the necessity to be super careful with money my gut feel is it would be hard to bring a P2 to market earlier than Q1 2015.
Yea, I was thinking about that being the earliest time a P2 would come to market as well.

I've no idea what the R&D budget for P2 is but if ED could give some order of magnitude then it would help with threads like this.
I don't know if ED should be giving out information like that. I don't know if ED should trust anyone other than those working closely on the project with the amound of funds.

-God Ginrai
 
ED should give us at least a ballpark estimate so that we can better know ehat to look for. For example, HDMI has some rediculously high (10,000 a year iirc) royalty. If we have the money, that might be a good feature. But until we know if the money is there, it isnt worth discussing
 
ED should give us at least a ballpark estimate so that we can better know ehat to look for. For example, HDMI has some rediculously high (10,000 a year iirc) royalty. If we have the money, that might be a good feature. But until we know if the money is there, it isnt worth discussing
That bit we can gether on our own, those are widely known. However, I don't have contacts in mediatek, samsung and such, so I can't do any estimations on those.

If we are serious about this pandora 2 business, then we need to explore all possibilities and thus pushing out the best possible product under a good price.

But firstly, we need to get our standards clear. We need to set up a few assessment factors, and then picking potential options from those.
 
I've no idea what the R&D budget for P2 is but if ED could give some order of magnitude then it would help with threads like this.

I don't know if ED should be giving out information like that. I don't know if ED should trust anyone other than those working closely on the project with the amound of funds.
-God Ginrai
I'm doing this half seriously; we need to see how far we can go, if it turns out to be any good, then sure having ED's support would be great, but at that time, the feasibility study would be kept from the community.
 
Realistically speaking we're probably looking at a release date of Q1 2015 at the earliest, a plan may be made for an earlier release but based on how these things go and the necessity to be super careful with money my gut feel is it would be hard to bring a P2 to market earlier than Q1 2015.
Yep - anyone who thinks this will go from thoughts to product in 2 Months is fooling themselves.

Something to consider is trying to future proof through the design phase.  I.e. use parts during the design that should be around for multiple years - or have compatible (pin & software) parts in the pipeline for mid 2014+.

The display may be the hardest to ensure pipeline supply for?
 
Yep - anyone who thinks this will go from thoughts to product in 2 Months is fooling themselves.

Something to consider is trying to future proof through the design phase.  I.e. use parts during the design that should be around for multiple years - or have compatible (pin & software) parts in the pipeline for mid 2014+.

The display may be the hardest to ensure pipeline supply for?
Isn't Exo the expert on this? he seems to have everything memoried in his brain.

You definitely have a good point, future proof should be one of the criterias. I add this in.
 
Realistically speaking we're probably looking at a release date of Q1 2015 at the earliest, a plan may be made for an earlier release but based on how these things go and the necessity to be super careful with money my gut feel is it would be hard to bring a P2 to market earlier than Q1 2015.
 
Yep - anyone who thinks this will go from thoughts to product in 2 Months is fooling themselves.


Something to consider is trying to future proof through the design phase.  I.e. use parts during the design that should be around for multiple years - or have compatible (pin & software) parts in the pipeline for mid 2014+.


The display may be the hardest to ensure pipeline supply for?
Another reason to go 1080p
 
Another reason to go 1080p
Not really, we can have enough parts for everyone. As long as we don't use customly made lcds, we should be able to secure a large bunch without too much trouble. One contribution factor to P1's expensive screen is that, at the time P1 was designed, there aint that many high resolution display options on the market.

The future for those electronics in my opinion are:

1. VR support

2. connectivity to other accessories, I think HDMI cables may not be needed in the future when videos are send around wirelessly, but what could that be? Blue tooth is slow, wifi is limited.

3. Support for multiple platforms (this is the strong point of x86), so that when shit hits the fan on android or linux, we still have other places to hide.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yep - anyone who thinks this will go from thoughts to product in 2 Months is fooling themselves.
Maybe not in 2 Months, but certainly in2 Months™... :D

@xiongxioi I'm not familiar with the process involved in shopping for SoCs for a product. Do the companies even hide the prices of the SoC before you sign the NDA?

-God Ginrai
 
Maybe not in 2 Months, but certainly in2 Months™... :D

@xiongxioi I'm not familiar with the process involved in shopping for SoCs for a product. Do the companies even hide the prices of the SoC before you sign the NDA?

-God Ginrai
You have to sign the NDA to get prices, they don't want everyone know about that. In my opinion that is stupid, but this is industry standard.

Small guys like ED usually get ripped off because those big companies don't care about setting up a long term relationship with them.
 
You have to sign the NDA to get prices, they don't want everyone know about that. In my opinion that is stupid, but this is industry standard.

Small guys like ED usually get ripped off because those big companies don't care about setting up a long term relationship with them.
There are some exceptions though, particularly if the company sells in low quantity through a distributor or directly on their website. TI and Freescale for example let you buy some parts online directly, so of course you get prices this way. Intel also sells a lot of parts through distributors and publishes prices on a lot of their parts. In all of these cases it's probably that big customers negotiate lower prices for huge volumes. In the other thread Grench found Intel's Z3770 costs $37 a unit, taking that as a worst case that's not that bad for what you get and isn't really that much worse than what OMAP3530s cost Pandora early on.

Note that not all Intel SoCs even run Windows, for example Medfield and CloverTrail+ didn't and probably Merrifield won't. BayTrail-T is fine though. If people want to run Windows on a Pandora 2, even if it's x86, I'm sure they'll be on their own.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tails? o_ô All that's coming to mind are Miles Prower and Tail Concerto, both which you can get on the Pandora. (Miles Prower is in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles)
-God Ginrai
Tails OS is a LiveUSB distro thqt routs everything through TOR and saves absolutely no data to storage. Nothing gets saved once you log out of a session
 
Back
Top