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Are Pocket PCs Starving?


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  #1  
Old 05-06-2002, 11:16 PM
Jason Dunn
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
http://www.cewindows.net/faqs/pocketpcstaving.htm

Chris De Herrera has written a column on Pocket PC data speeds. It's an interesting topic since as we move into the realm of 400 mhz CPUs, can the other components on the Pocket PC keep up? I've always found it rather surprising that for a RAM-based computer, Pocket PCs are pretty slow.

"The bus width in combination with the bus speed has a dramatic effect on the performance of computers. The bus width defines how many bits or bytes of data that can be read from the ram of the computer into the processor. The bus speed defines how fast the data can be read from the ram to into the processor. So think of the bus width as the number of lanes on a highway and the bus speed as the speed limit. Right now the StrongARM and XScale CPUs use a 100 mhz bus speed. Also the designs of the Pocket PC that are currently available use a 16 bit bus. This means that the maximum bus speed is 200 megabytes per second."

I'd be interested in hearing some of you highly-technical users chime in with your own opinions. What hardware elements need to be improved in order for us to see radical speed improvements? I personally think the video sub-systems are dragging things down - without any true hardware acceleration, the CPU has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Just wait until that ATI mobile chip arrives in a Pocket PC...
 
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  #2  
Old 05-06-2002, 11:37 PM
Paragon
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Just wait until that ATI mobile chip arrives in a Pocket PC...
AS in the ATI chip mentioned here http://paragon0.tripod.ca/ATI1.html



Dave
 
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  #3  
Old 05-06-2002, 11:56 PM
paulv
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Default Pocket Windows Speed
Jason,

I reckon much of the issue is in the coding of Pocket Windows. There's so much of an effort to make sure that Windows is tackling a million threads that the poor old processor doesn't get much time to actually run user programs.

Given that even my Jornada is 206MHz that's a lot of MIPS and yet Pocket Excel (which is a lot more compact than the regular version - and it runs from Ram) doesn't run as fast the full version used to on my old P-120 desktop (previous computer).

I think that the design of these PC's are seriously dodgy. I'd be interested in finding out if Linux runs at a similar pace or whether it thinks a 206MHz processor is fine - maybe one of the IPAQ owners can say.

I reckon that the programmers are victims of having multi-MIPS available and have forgotten how to program tight code.
 
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Old 05-07-2002, 12:10 AM
Jason Dunn
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
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Originally Posted by Paragon
Uh.....huh... :-) Where did you get that information/screen shot from?
 
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Old 05-07-2002, 12:18 AM
Paragon
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paragon
Uh.....huh... :-) Where did you get that information/screen shot from?
Well while you were lounging around in Mexico some of us were digging around to see what we could find.

Dave
 
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  #6  
Old 05-07-2002, 01:09 AM
Timothy Rapson
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It may be hard to notice with the new X-Scales as they will change support chips, motherboards and more along with the CPU. I have been reading that the Toshiba e310 is running some stuff 3 times as fast as other PPC 2002 models. Better graphics support chips?

I think the reason for the slowness of PPCs doing regular stuff is that MS built in so many walls to keep programs from corrupting data when they mess up. They got beat up so bad on the first version of CE (and it was just awful. I never bought a first generation CE model because I could virtually never find one at a demo stand that wasn't locked up to try it.) so they really protected the data in PPC 2000-2002.

The 400 MZ Ipaq may really run Pocket IE like a desktop.
 
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Old 05-07-2002, 01:23 AM
seanturner
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Is the iPaq bus speed really 100Mhz? If so, that will be enough to accomodate anything you're gonna throw at it till you reach processor speeds of around 800Mhz. Unless you're doing VERY graphics intensive applications, I can't see you needing anything more. But I do have a hard time believeing the bus speed is 100Mhz. I had assumed it was like 33.
 
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Old 05-07-2002, 01:57 AM
sweetpete
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paragon
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paragon
Uh.....huh... :-) Where did you get that information/screen shot from?
Well while you were lounging around in Mexico some of us were digging around to see what we could find.

Dave
Hmmm ... that looks awefully similar to the specs I saw on Infosync for the new HP WDA 575 (less the graphics chip info). http://www.infosync.no/show.php?id=1752

This looks to be an awesome device. I do wonder though if the Jornada will survive the merger... :cry:
 
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  #9  
Old 05-07-2002, 02:15 AM
Paragon
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Default Are Pocket PCs Starving?
Quote:
Originally Posted by sweetpete
[

This looks to be an awesome device. I do wonder though if the Jornada will survive the merger... :cry:
I think it is a little yearly to see decisions like that made. I would think they would like to get the two companies merged before they start publicly announcing product cuts. I have heard a rumor recently that HP will announce the new Jornadas on May 15th IF that is the case then they would have to have thousands of them on hand now, so I doubt they would throw them in the dumpster just yet.


Yes it is the specs for new HP 575 WDA.... so it seems

Dave
 
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  #10  
Old 05-07-2002, 02:52 AM
entropy1980
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Here's a thread at PDABUZZ that talks about it
http://forums.pdabuzz.net/showthread.php?threadid=37600
looks legit enough....can't wait!
 
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