Comments on: Editorial: Low End Handhelds Running Palm OS 5 Unlikely
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manufacturers ignore this market at their peril
I can't believe they even make 33 MHz ARM's. That would be like Intel making a 200 MHz P4. Who would buy anything that slow?
RE: Fair Warning
An up to date CPU architecture to run on a low load server would be better than buying a faster one.
Remember, if you're reading this you've probably got no idea about what most of the market want. I work in an organiser dedicated store for a living, and we sell far more m105s and m125, than Sony Clies.
You answered my question, Ed
http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6256
Basically, I asked since there was discussion of ARM processors at slow speeds and that since people were expecting the Palm low-end unit to run OS 5, why were people expecting the SJ20 and SJ30 to run OS 4.1? This answered that by saying that the slower ARM processors will pretty much not be incorporated into pdas anytime soon. Well thanks for at least giving your opinion on the matter.
Haha, Ed I see that everytime you write something that is the least bit opinionated and predictive you write, "I have a horrible track record for predictions..." Don't sweat it, nobody of real importance (meaning excluding trolls) will flame you if you made an inaccurate prediction.
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If early to bed, early to rise makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise, does going to bed late make you sick, poor, and dumb?
x-scale prices
Intel's PXA250 Xscale processor is priced at $39.20 and comes in a 17 x 17-mm, 256-pin ball grid array. The PXA210, packaged in a 225-pin thin BGA, is priced at $17. Both are sampling now, with production set for the middle of the year.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?A19133A61
The Super VZ will run at 66MHz, more than twice as fast as the current VZ processors, and will cost $14 each in volume. The Super VZ will be a transition processor for manufacturers that don't want to switch over to ARM-based processors but do want to keep costs down.
The MX1 [ARM chip] will run at 140MHz to 200MHz and will cost $19 each in volume. This chip will put Motorola on par with the performance of Intel's StrongARM processor, which is found in handhelds that run on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-268281.html
Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
As we always tell the occasional PPC troll visiting PIC: Mhz's don't mean a thing.
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
So a slow, complex CISC chip should run the same as a fast, lean RISC chip, since the RISC chip has to do 4 or 5 things for every 1 thing the CISC chip does...
Oh dear. I've gone crosseyed...
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
If you look back at the Intel 286 and compare it to a 386 of the same 16Mhz, you'll know that the 286 is significantly faster.
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
A RISC processor will also generally require more memory, since there are more instructions required for a given operation, meaning the device will require more memory for equivalent benefit. This means more cost.
Cheers,
Brad (hardware guy stuck in the land of software)
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
RISC = Macintosh, Sun, Unix, Etc...
CISC = IBM, Windows 95....XP
CISC has ALWAYS been the more POWERFUL processor of the two BECAUSE of the REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET. IE, you get more power with less instructions!
That's one of the reasons why Unix is used so much in reseach environments, why Macintosh 500Mhz machines compile faster than 1.4Ghz PC's, etc...
Another thing to consider.... the average Unix kernal containts about 7 million lines of code
Compaired to
Windows - about 100 to 250 million lines of code
Hmm,
Which one is more COMPLEX and which one executes programs more efficently???
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
- RISC or CISC has nothing to do with OS'es.
- The 486 33Mhz vs 33Mhz Dragonball point again illustrates Mhz doesn't say anything.
"A RISC chip will have to have faster clock to be comparable to a CISC processor, all else being equal."
- Arguments ?
"A RISC processor will also generally require more memory, since there are more instructions required for a given operation"
- This is where you are wrong
The idea behind RISC is this:
Take for example a simple equation like this:
C=A+B
CISC would do this:
ADD A,B
MOVE B,C
RISC would do this
ADD A,B,C
i.e. less, but more powerful instructions, on average taking up less memory.
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
But AMD has showed us how MHz aren't all. One thing that measures performance a little better is IPC (Instructions Per Cicle). If you can exec more instructions per clock cicle than other similar processor at the same MHz, then you will win. And this is much more easy in RISC because simple instruction have less dependences, less deeper pipelines in case of dependence fault, etc. And all this in a simple CPU design because you don't need complex decoders, not ALU's, etc. And a simple CPU desing also wins in that it can be clocked higher than a complex cpu.
The MIPS cpu is very didactically and you can see there a very very simple risc cpu. There's lot's of resources about it on the net and it exposes the great features of the RISC idea, that is in ALL the new processors core (p4, k7, k8) and the only alternative now to RISC isn't CISC but VLIW found in transmeta and itanium.
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
That was supposed to be :
RISC has ALWAYS been the more POWERFUL processor of the two BECAUSE of the REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET. IE, you get more power with less instructions!
sorry
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
Here is the basic difference between the two architectures:
CISC
Clock cycle 1: CPU moves an instruction into register
Clock cycle 2-X: CPU “sets up” the circuit it needs to execute instruction
Clock cycle X+1-X+N: CPU moves any data needed for instruction to execute into registers
Clock cycle X+N+1-X+N+J: CPU executes instruction
RISC
Clock cycle 1: CPU moves an instruction into register
(RISC does not have to setup instruction)
Clock cycle 2-X: CPU moves any data needed for instruction to execute into registers
Clock cycle X+1-X+J: CPU executes instruction
RISC executes in theory N clock cycles faster than a CISC
Of course there are all sorts of other factors, size of data bus, clock speed of data bus, ...
A good example of the “other factors” was mentioned before when someone was talking about comparing the speed of their 16 mhz 286 to their 16 mhz 386. The problem there was that the 386 was a 32 bit processor running on a 16 bit data bus requiring two clock cycles to move one word where the 286 was a 16 bit processor so it could move one word in one clock cycle.
But back to the RISC vs CISC architecture issue, Moor’s Law comes into play here, CISC system designs start to resemble RISC chips because the first thing you do when you have more transistors and you want to speed up your CISC chip (at the same MHZ) is you dedicate more transistors to each instruction, there by reducing the N mentioned above needed to setup the instruction to execute. Think about the speed difference between an AMD 486 and an Intel one…
Ok so that is my two cents worth.
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
RISC is Reduced Instruction Set Computing
CISC is Complex Instruction Set Computing
Examples of CISC: 80x86 including Pentiums, Dragonball
Examples of RISC: PowerPC, ARM, MIPS
RISC is not Reduced Instruction Computing. It does exactly the opposite of what some said above. It has very few instructions in the *instruction set*, so it is a highly efficient, but very minimalistic instruction set.
CISC tries to speed things up by having more complex instructions that does several things at the same time, but since it is hardware optimized, hopefully it would be fast.
Think of it this way: if you have a box, and you fill it up with sand... obviously it is quite efficient. Now fill it up with pebbles, you waste quite some bit of space (less efficient). RISC is like the sand... very efficient instructions in the instruction set but each does very little. But if the programmer or compiler uses the instructions only as necessary, then it would do well. And because the reduced instruction set has very very simple to execute commands, it permits a much, much faster computer (in clock cycle), which helps go faster.
RISC was supposed to replace CISC. It has not truly happened, but the point is kinda moot as Intel introduced a lot of RISC ideas into the later 80x86.
Regardless, I think it is true to say that you need more clock cycles in a RISC to be competitive to a CISC. The CISC is like a big rock... it does a lot with each instruction. (so add a,b,c is CISC-like... not RISC). RISC on the other hand does very little with each instruction, but can do them very quickly (so add a, b; add a, c is RISC-like).
RE: Are you riding the Mhz's craze now too Ed ? :)
Winter??
Knowing palm, that should read "next summer"
RE: Winter??
RE: Winter??
> shouldn't 6-9 months be this winter?
Don't start arguing semantics. I'm talking about Winter 2003. That's the next Winter that is going to happen, which makes it "next Winter" to me.
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News Editor
RE: Winter??
RE: Winter??
I'm not arguing that the rewrite isn't well behind when it ought to have been out, like last year. However, the morons who were responsible for that have been fired and the new crew has their heads on straight and is meeting their deadlines.
RE: Winter??
RE: Winter??
RE: Winter??
_________
alchemist
RE: Winter??
RE: Winter??
Unlike the OS that came with Apple's early PowerMacs, the OS code in PalmOS 5 does not contain any 68000 instructions, AFAIK. I strongly doubt that it contains any of the old Kadak OS kernal. It's all new opcodes (maybe without much new fuctionality though...)
RE: Winter??
Do we care?
OS5 will be good for the mid and high end multimedia devices. But if there's not too much difference compared to the current Sony models, there is no need to upgrade.
Won't it be confusing to have OS4 and OS5 devices on the market at the same time? No one else keeps an old OS for sale around when the new OS comes out. It's just not common.
RE: Do we care?
Well, they are Windows 2000 machines selling over Windows XP which is the latest. It doesn't matter.
A good idea.
Until the majority of the apps are written in native Arm code, a low-end Arm device would be a mistake. Imagine a person buying a cheap Arm Palm, then attempting to run an older Dragonball game on it in emulation? Can you imagine the reviews? It's best that Palm keep the Arm devices in the high-breeds until the majority of the software (including in retail stores) is updated to Arm code.
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James Sorenson
RE: Do we care?
> same time? No one else keeps an old OS for sale around when the new
> OS comes out. It's just not common.
Microsoft sold Windows NT and Windows 95 at the same time for years. When Apple switched from 68000 to PowerPC, several companies continued to sell 68000 Macs running an old version of the os for months. It is more common than you think.
RE: Do we care?
I don't want a pocketpc.
RE: Do we care?
Even today XP Home and XP Pro are different. Then there's the other flavors of XP that M$ are adding. Perhaps the palm os needs to be named differently instead of numbers.
Just my 2 cents.
RE: Do we care?
So, I will stay with my just bought m130 for a while... :-)
_________
alchemist
If so, what would the cheapest OS 5 device price point be?
(I'd personally add "virtual graffiti, Headphone jack and gamepad controls" to the mix as must-haves, but that's just me. I want a port of Advance Wars!)
Yes, I realise this isn't looking like Oslo. Forget Oslo for now.
What is the price point looking like now?
Maybe you could make it cheaper by ditching the expansion slot and adding more RAM?
Jon Acheson
"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."
RE: If so, what would the cheapest OS 5 device price point b
RE: If so, what would the cheapest OS 5 device price point b
Upgrade
Oh yeah, Ed what PDA have you got?
http://piersbell.tripod.com/
RE: Upgrade
p.s. I have several handhelds from several manufacturers.
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News Editor
RE: Upgrade
RE: Upgrade
SONY ROCKS!
RE: Upgrade
I can tell you what PDA he doesn't have; a Pocket PC! ;-)
RE: Upgrade
I think the more interesting question would be: Which PDA you use most often?
I already assumed that Ed has a wheelbarrow of PDA's, but I'd like to know which one he carries around all the time.
Jim
Where's the Beef?
Or do you think OS 4.x will continue to "upgrade" into 2003 with some enhancements??
RE: Where's the Beef?
For example, knowing that many customers are willing to pay a premium for sleek m500-shaped units, Palm could continue to offer them with whatever upgrades they can manage, at least until they can squeeze an ARM into that formfactor. A good tenative product lineup for early 2003 would be as follows:
"low end" <$100 OS4 units,
"premium" OS4 units for $300ish,
and the "super-duper multimedia bells'n whistles" OS5 models for $400 and beyond. Using those three price points as milestones, they can fill the in-between areas with whatever they wish to. Personally, I'd like to see the 66 mhz dragonball make the rounds within Palm's lineup but I have a feeling that ain't gonna happen.
I envision OS4 units sticking around for at least another 6-9 months, probably longer. If anything, Sony's SL100 series, regardless of screen quality, has at least shown that the low-end is in desperate need of some aggressive R&D/price wars so hopefully this will end up bringing some new users into the Palm fold. Perhaps Palm could/should do some sort of "show us your college ID and get a steeply discounted m1xx unit" program? All the college kids I know either don't keep an address book at all, or use their cell phones...
RE: Where's the Beef?
m1xx series......>puke<.......
My buddy is insisting that he WILL NOT drop more than $100 on a PDA. I'm ashamed to have to recommend the m105, but I'm not (currently) aware of any other choice, other than to investigate E-Bay.
I was really hoping that Sony $150 model was gonna be good, but supposedly the screen looks like crushed *******.
RE: Where's the Beef?
ham,(ham radio operator,N4WSH). bug, (I have a restored 66 VW Bug) = hambug :-)
RE: Where's the Beef?
Agreed, they could sell it for $50 and make a killing. Of course it would also kill the M105 which is the same functional unit with a smaller plastic screen.
Do you consider the newer Sony 66 mhz to be "low end" OS 5
do you think others will release OS 4 and 66mhz machines in 2002/3. If so, these could in fact be considered the "low end" OS 5 machines.
RE: Do you consider the newer Sony 66 mhz to be ''low end'' OS 5
That's like saying Windows 95 is a low-end Windows 98... It's OS 4, or 5, not 4+ and 5- which are equal...geez
RE: Do you consider the newer Sony 66 mhz to be ''low end'' OS 5
Yes, I think we'll see $200 and lower handhelds running OS 4 with the 66 MHz DragonBall next year. They'll be better at running OS 4 apps than a cheap OS 5 model. They'll help keep the low end going until ARM is practical for that cheap.
p.s. Windows 98 was a bug fix version of Windows 95
RE: Do you consider the newer Sony 66 mhz to be
It's like of like saying that at a 500Mhz Pentium 3 laptop is like a "low end" Pentium 3 laptop (the "high end" laptop being 800 mhz. Similarly, the 800 mhz Pentium 3 laptop, could be considered a "low end" version of a 1ghz Pentium 4 laptop.
The "crack" poster sounds like "nice" person. Hence now all the "quotes" make sense.
a 66mgz on quickbits is really a ''low end'' OS 5 PDA
market share goes to co. w/ low end OS5
RE: market share goes to co. w/ low end OS5
Get your facts straight!!
There are no U.S. Pocket PCs that use AAA batteries. Goodness!!
RE: market share goes to co. w/ low end OS5
Whatever . . .
RE: Whatever . . . WHAT-EVER! DUH!
Hmm, how much is the current iPaq going for????
The iPAQ Pocket PC H3950 = $649.99
The Jornada 728 = $999.99
The Pocket PC e740 = $599.99
The Jornada 567 Pocket PC = $499.99
The Toshiba e310 = $399.99
Seems like I've seen these prices AT these prices for the past 3 months....
Oh yeah.... like NO ONE is going to pay $500 for a new Palm OS5 PDA
Why not? This is the CHEAPER than the average Pocket PC PDA? If Joe Consumer is willing to buy a PPC for between $500 and $650, then why wouldn't Joe be willing to buy a Palm OS PDA for less than that? Chances are he will. Yeah, YOU may not, but someone WILL and Palm (and M$, iPaq, HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc.) knows this as well.
Kirk: "Kirk to Enterprise."
Spock: "Spock here."
Kirk: "Captain Spock, damage report."
Spock: "Admiral, if we go by the book, like Lieutenant Saavik, hours would seem like days, and days seem like months."
Kirk: "I read you, Captain, let's have it."
Spock: "The situation is grave, Admiral. We won't have cheaper PDA prices for at least six months.
Normal brain function and logical thinking have temporarily failed on this BB. Some restoration of deductive reasoning and normal brain logic may be possible, in two days, 'by the book', Admiral."
Kirk: "Meaning you can't buy a Pocket PC as 'powerful' as a Palm PDA?"
Spock: "Not at present. The situation appears grim."
DV: "Luke, give into the dark side..."
LS: "I'll never own a Pocket PC! Never!"
--"STII:TWOK(with cameo appearances by DV and LS)", Stardate 8130.4
Yeah, I see what you mean... prices ARE dropping by the "hour"....
RE: Whatever . . .
Non-processor-intensive apps?
RE: Non-processor-intensive apps?
Large spreadsheets are for laptops, not handhelds. Its just not feasable on a small screen.
Databasing solves this better, in my opinion.
RE: Non-processor-intensive apps?
RE: Non-processor-intensive apps?
Uh - rather than simple word processing, try using a spreadsheet for what it's intended to be used for - MATHEMATICAL CALCULATIONS...and you will quickly see that m515/DTG often has a brain freeze while "Calculating".....you get the equivalent of the "Hourglass" signal.
RE: Non-processor-intensive apps?
Stick to databases. They're much more effective.
Wait for PalmOS6
I'd also be worried that, despite protestations to the contrary, PalmOS6 may end up not working well on PalmOS5 hardware--there are too many variables for Palm to make a believable commitment.
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
I will laugh when people run out and buy an OS5 device and realize that it is virtually the same as their current machine.
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
m5xx form or Sony makes T6?? with the same collapsable graffity as NR series, i'll switch to x-scale ppc around
Xmas(IF the dark side comes up with a smaller brick--e310 is still too big for my taste) . My palm m500 is getting old and i want color with hi res and a faster performance...
My 2 cents,
not a ppc troll
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
Is my analogy correct??????
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
Wrong. Programmers (like myself) can take full advantage of the new processor by compiling their code to native "ARMlets", furthermore all API functions will be native ARM, speeding up all API calls considerably. Add to that some extra enhancements to the OS like, for example, audio streams (allowing for complex 16chn audio manipulation) and you realize you DO have something to look forward to...
"Is my analogy correct??????"
So, no. :)
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
Not quite. Developers will be able to include some ARM code in their apps. All the OS APIs are written in pure ARM code, which will really speed up alot of apps. It isn't everything that we hoped for but it is enough that developers will be able to write some seriously impressive apps. You can hold off getting OS 5 if you want but your old OS 4 model is going to look pretty sad in a few months.
You should read this, if you haven't already
www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=3863
RE: Wait for PalmOS6
This will outsell Pocket PC
Nuff Said
RE: This will outsell Pocket PC
Seems like they both suck. They are both just glorified organizers at the moment. We need something different.
Nuff Said
RE: This will outsell Pocket PC
Nuff Said
RISC vs. CISC tutorial
Nowadays, RISC instruction sets often have as many or more instructions as the old CISC one. And the hotter CISC CPU's use a lot of brute force to complete one or more instructions per single clock cycle just like the RISC CPU's. The Intel P4 and the Transmeta Crusoe translate x86 CISC instruction into fixed length RISC or VLIW codes internally, and then completes those at a rate of 1 or more per clock cycle (even though the pipeline in the P4 is 20 cycles long). They all use huge multiple caches to keep the CPU engine well fed.
But the (non-MX) Dragonball chips in current Palm (Sony, Handspring, et. al.) handhelds use the 20 year old 68000 CPU design internally (actually a CMOS redesign that works nearly identically) without any cache, so all the CISC disadvantages apply. It can take 12 cycles or more for a 68000 to do a simple 32-bit ADD instruction of a memory addressed operand. It will often take only 2 cycles for a system with an ARM CPU to complete a similar ADD (if there is a dual cache hit, and the compiler schedules properly, etc.). Now the ARM instruction set is less dense, but usually the same routines in ARM code will take much less than twice as many instructions compared to 68000 machine code. Because of this, at the same clock rate, an ARM CPU with a decent cache subsystem can usually execute an equivalent routine at least 5 times faster than the simple 68000 in the Dragonball. All the current OS 5 certified chips (OMAP, MX1, XScale, etc.) have nice cache systems.
Now when OS 6 comes out with native ARM applications, a 4 MHz ARM based system will be able to run native PIM apps both faster AND using far less power than the equivalent on the 16 MHZ Palm V. You'll be able to run a PalmOS system on a watch battery.
RE: RISC vs. CISC tutorial
It's also interesting to note however, the ASUS batch of XScale PalmOS5 units (Q1 2003) will have a 400Mhz ARM core. Making the OSLO (175 Mhz ARM core) essentially the low-end PalmOS5 device... (after 1 to 2 quarters)
RE: RISC vs. CISC tutorial
No, it doesn't. That's why hotpaw4 said, "when OS 6 comes out with native ARM applications, a 4 MHz ARM based system will be able to run native PIM apps both faster AND using far less power than the equivalent on the 16 MHZ Palm V."
hotpaw4 is saying the same thing ED is, we'll have to wait until OS 6.
RE: RISC vs. CISC tutorial
OS 5 already has support for native ARM applications. And thanks to all API functions being native ARM code too, PIM apps (as all other API intensive apps) already run faster under OS5. It DOES show low-end devices running OS 5 are still very much possible.
RE: RISC vs. CISC tutorial
I think the same could apply here .... that's exactly the reason why a low MHz ARM won't work.
Aren't we forgetting something?
MHz SchMHz
Just about any PowerPC or Athlon owner can attest to that...
The Athlon XP 2000+ is rated to compare [favorably] to an Intel 2.0 GHz CPU even though it's actual MHz rating is a bit less.
PowerPC chips typically perform as well as a Motorola 68xxx at twice the MHz.
Performance is not just about the MHz if you are comparing two completely different architectures!
RE: MHz SchMHz
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Fair Warning
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