Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#2Well that's embarrassing.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#3shame the BCM2835 won't be open sourced anytime soon...
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#4Not really embarrassing, no one is comparing the power consumption. Apple could easily go to a more powerful GPU if their battery power allowed them. But I think the current 4S GPU is the one that fits for the current battery technology.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#5The ARM11 cpu is too old, I wish they used at least a Cortex-A8. ARM11 has a virtually addressed cache with aliasing issues that requires all sorts of hacks in linux kernel, it will require old compiler flags and lacks other ARMv7 features. It's the cpu from 2005. I wonder what the price difference would be if they used an A8.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#6The ARM11 cpu is too old, I wish they used at least a Cortex-A8. ARM11 has a virtually addressed cache with aliasing issues that requires all sorts of hacks in linux kernel, it will require old compiler flags and lacks other ARMv7 features. It's the cpu from 2005. I wonder what the price difference would be if they used an A8.
There are some similar cool open hardware projects sponsored by TI. They have better specs, although their prices are quite a bit higher. I don't know if it is because they do lower volumes, the chips cost more, or price just wasn't as much a concern when they were designed.
The beagleboard-xm has an A8, 4 usb ports, and 512 ram for $150, the related beaglebone has arduino like pins and an A8 for $80, and the pandaboard has an A9, 1gb ram, and wifi for $180.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#7Well that's embarrassing.
Why would a phone need a GPU comparable to that of a device that's supposed to work connected to a desktop monitor?
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#8Wow, that makes this thing a lot more interesting to me, if true. So many designs these days pair monster CPUs with underpowered GPUs it's almost embarrassing (especially as Apple continues to show that powerful GPUs are important for a good user experience). The 256 MB of RAM will be very constraining for any app trying to use all that power, though.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#9Well that's embarrassing.
Why would a phone need a GPU comparable to that of a device that's supposed to work connected to a desktop monitor?
The iPhone 4S' display runs at 960x640, which is about 67% of a "typical" TV:s 1280*720. The Pi is intended for connection mainly to TV:s as far as I've understood it, and clearly the iPhone's display is not very far from such "desktop monitors" in terms of number of pixels.
If you compare to an HDTV:s 1920x1080 though, the iPhone lands at around 30% so then it becomes less of a problem for it to have a less capable graphics subsystem.
Of course, the Pi is designed for non-battery operation too, which kind of makes the comparison a bit unfair to begin with.
Re: Raspberry Pi's GPU double the performance of iPhone 4S
#10shame the BCM2835 won't be open sourced anytime soon...
So far as I can tell, this significantly limits the hack value of the Raspberry Pi. Sure, it runs Linux... whatever version was current when it first shipped. Considering Ubuntu and Fedora both ship new releases every six months, a year and a half or two years into the future and what you can do with the Raspberry Pi will be limited to what outdated binary packages you can find, or what software you're prepared to compile yourself on a tiny embedded processor.
I guess $25 isn't exactly a high price to pay for six months to a year of messing about, but it seems a sad fate for an otherwise remarkable piece of hardware.