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New PPC/Linux PDA Reference Design From IBM
kinema writes "It looks like IBM has released a new Linux/PowerPC based PDA reference design called e-LAP ("embedded Linux application platform"). It features a PowerPC 405LP, 30MB SDRAM, 32MB NOR Flash, 64MB Disk-On-Chip Flash, 240 x 320 color LCD, Stereo speakers, Microphone, USB (both host and client ports), a 3000 gate Xilinx FPGA, SDIO slot and last but not least a TCPA security chip. I for one would love to see some good PowerPC based PDAs on the market."
I for one would love to see some good PowerPC based PDAs on the market.
Why? Aren't PowerPC chips more expensive? Is there a major benefit that I'm not seeing? Why wouldn't they run a Linux version on it with a regular PC chip and be able to sell the device cheaper?
Wow, great to see IBM getting into the PDA market. For those who don't remember, they pretty much set the gold standard in the laptop industry, and we still live with the benefits today. But while this sounds like a good toy for geeks, I have to wonder about some of the choices made in the design of this device.
PDAs typically use processors designed specifically for embedded environments. They're built from the ground up for low power consumption in preference to blazing speed. The PowerPC is exactly the opposite, as anyone who has sat down at a recent G4 can tell you -- these things scream.
Furthermore, Linux is specifically architectured for the server market, which is why it's seen so much success in the enterprise. Trying to tweak it to run on a PDA is an excercise in feudalism. The choice could also be bad news for Linux, as people will start to think of the OS as suitable for only small devices.
It's a good idea, but I'd like to see them take a more sensible approach.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Good to see more options out there in general. But I wonder if this means we might see an OS X version from Apple.
How does the power consumption of this type of ARM chip compare to the Arm, StrongArm, XScale and Dragonball CPUs?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Just another product to boycot.
TCPA + DRM = crippleware
I prefer my Zaurus anyway. I can surf the net via
802.11, I've got a big ass 256MB MMC card.
And some some apps I serve off my LinuxPPC (Apple 9600) Server. I built my own amplified stereo speakers. No TCPA or DRM technology embedded in it.
And it's plenty fast enough to stream mpeg2 and mpeg4 video off my server!
If IBM removes the DRM technology maybe they'll
get some market share. But anything with TCPA and DRM technology is just crippleware in my eyes. This would probably start a home brew revolution.
We should stick together any never but any hardware that supports DRM.
This PowerPC-based PDA is as close as we're going to come to an Apple handheld for a long time!
Why?
Has Apple announced it's not going to make a PDA? They've got laptop expertise from the ti-book, small portable commodity electronics expertise from the iPod, etc.
Could be "scratch space", or for future DRM as you point out. I like to think it'll be for more though.
Someday I'd like to see FPGAs in all sorts of things. The classic (albeit somewhat silly) example I like to use is you're driving down the road and you go through a puddle of water which disables your car's computer. So you download the controller core from GM's (or whoever's) site, load it into the FPGA on your PDA, and use it to drive to a service shop.
Kind of a contrived example, but my ultimate point is that with pervasive FPGAs, and perhaps some kind of pervasive "universal connector" wired to the FPGA, you can reconfigure a device to do things it wasn't specifically designed for.
Blue sky thinking aside, I can think of other uses for it, such as the "cell phone" model where you alternatively use it for digital and analog control stuff by reprogramming it. That way you only need one part in the device instead of two, and it makes interconnection circuitry simpler.
You might also program it to be a DSP-microprocessor today (for maybe the media player or something), and then reprogram it to be the cell chip for a Treo-like device tomorrow.
That kind of thing...
Don't think, though, these are PDAs. These are not really Palm competitors. These are true development platforms for handheld computing solutions. Also, the killer app on these is the web browser. Opera 5 (and I'm playing with a beta of 6) is incredibly fast and feature rich, especially compared to PokeyIE on PokeyPC or anything on the Palm (though I haven't seen OS 5.0 to be honest).
I love taking my Zaurus to a HotSpot (like T-Mobile's at the ubiquitous Starbucks) surfing, SSH'ing, web serving (from the unit), and...well...playing Scrabble ("Word Game").
Maybe Scrabble is the killer app...Anyway...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
A thought about lower power consumption as it relates to price:
;-)
Say an Intel Mobile P4 costs $X and runs at a certain speed (not MHz, but actual performance). However, when you unplug it to run on batteries, performance drops in half, to save battery usage.
Say a PowerPC chip costs $(1.5 * X) and runs at the same speed while running on AC power, but when you unplug it and run on batteries, it doesn't cut performance because power usage at full speed matches the P4 at half speed. So, you get the same battery life from both, but the PPC costs more. When both chips are running at full speed, they're the same speed, but when the P4 is at half speed to conserve batteries, the PPC is much faster.
Now, use a slower model of PPC that costs less to produce. Drop the price down to match, and (when the P4 runs at half speed to get decent battery life) the PPC is faster.
In a laptop, speed while running on AC power may be important, so yes, the PPC may be more expensive for the same speed. But in a PDA, that's not important at all, so the PPC has the advantage.
This is why Apple has started pushing laptops this year. There may be faster PC laptops while plugged in, but while unplugged, PowerBooks are either much faster or have much longer battery life.
Disclaimer: I don't actually know what I'm talking about and anything I said that looks like numbers was completely made up arbitrarily.
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Can it play Ogg Vorbis files?
Running Linux on PowerPC? Why not?
One of the issues with Ogg support, as I understand it, is that until recently there wasn't a good Ogg decoder that didn't require floating-point operations, and many embedded chips don't handle float. The PowerPC handles float just fine.
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I'm hoping the FPGA will be a resource that can be allocated just like memory. That would make it a great solution for implementing DSP-based . A media player could reserve the FPGA, load the MP3 codec into the FPGA and start feeding it the compressed bitstream. When a different bitstream comes along (let's say Ogg?), clear out the current codec and pop in the new one. Meanwhile, your processor load stays close to zero because all the number-crunching is going on in programmable hardware!
DRM software could use the FPGA in conjunction with the TCPA chip for access control. However, the TCPA chip has much less nefarious uses as well, such as hardware encryption/decryption and secure key storage to name a couple. If a newer, better encryption algorithm comes along, it could be implemented in the FPGA, making this platform extremely future-proof.
I wish IBM the best in this. It sounds like a truly marvelous platform.
Actually, in power saver mode the PowerPC family of processors varies its timing to try and save energy. If you do something demanding (say a lot of IO involved in DVD playback) the processor stays in its most 'awake' mode. If you start to use less processor power (have increasingly more no-op cycles) then it starts to slow down timings and turn off function units. Start to need more power and it starts to ramp back up. The biggest problem is that somtimes you need a lot of cycles in a sudden burst after doing nearly nothing for a while, and this takes a bit of time to wake up all the way.
All in all a much better solution than the 'if I am unpluged then drop to half performance' routine uses by the non-mobile version of the P4 that is used in high performance PC laptops.