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Doom has been ported to an earbud

doombuds.com

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Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#81

Post by the_fall »

nehalem wrote: post #15

Whenever I see another supposedly menial device including enough general purpose hardware to run Doom, I wonder whether I should think of that as a triumph of software over hardware or an economic failure to build cheaper purpose-built hardware for things like sending audio over a radio.

> economic failure to build cheaper purpose-built hardware for things like sending audio over a radio.

You're literally just wasting sand. We've perfected the process to the point where it's inexpensive to produce tiny and cheap chips that pack more power than a 386 computer. It makes little difference if it's 1,000 transistors or 1,000,000. It gets more complicated on the cutting edge, but this ain't it. These chips are probably 90 nm or 40 nm, a technology that's two decades old, and it's basically the off-ramp for older-generation chip fabs that can no longer crank out cutting-edge CPUs or GPUs.

Building specialized hardware for stuff like that costs a lot more than writing software that uses just the portions you need. It requires deeper expertise, testing is more expensive and slower, etc.

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#82

Post by serf »

direwolf20 wrote: post #76
AlecSchueler wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The materials that go into a chip are nothing. They really aren't. Every material that goes into every chip needs to be sourced from various mines around the world, shipped to factories to be assembled, then the end goods need to be shipped again around the world to be sold or directly dumped. High power, low power, it all has negative environmental impact.

Which materials are they and how would you suggest doing it with fewer materials?

ultra pure water production itself is responsible for untold amounts of hydroflouric acid and ammonia , and most etching processes have an F-Gas involved, and most plants that do this work have tremendously high energy (power) costs due to stability needs/hvac.

it's not 'just sand'.

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#84

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

branon wrote: post #4

How are the PineBuds Pro, anyone have them? The Pine64 IRC network doesn't have a channel for PineBuds discussion so I haven't had an easy opportunity to ask.

Mine have been great. Full disclosure, I deliberately don't use ANC... in fact, I may have installed firmware that doesn't have it. So I can't comment on that. But just as Bluetooth earbuds, they do their job.

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#86

Post by pibaker »

nehalem wrote: post #15

Whenever I see another supposedly menial device including enough general purpose hardware to run Doom, I wonder whether I should think of that as a triumph of software over hardware or an economic failure to build cheaper purpose-built hardware for things like sending audio over a radio.

You should see it as the triumph of chip manufacturing — advanced, powerful MCUs have became so cheap thanks to manufacturing capabilities and economies of scale means it is now cheaper to use a mass manufactured general purpose device that may take more material to manufacture than a simpler bespoke device that will be produced at low volumes.

You might be wondering "how on earth a more advanced chip can end up being cheaper." Well, it may surprise you but not all cost in manufacturing is material cost. If you have to design a bespoke chip for your earbuds, you need to now hire chip designers, you need to go through the whole design and testing process, you need to get someone to make your bespoke chip in smaller quantities which may easily end up more expensive than the more powerful mass manufactured chips, you will need to teach your programmers how to program on your new chip, and so on. The material savings (which are questionable — are you sure you can make your bespoke chip more efficiently than the mass manufactured ones?) are easily outweighed by business costs in other parts of the manufacturing process.

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#87

Post by lgvld »

Insanity wrote: post #23
npsomaratna wrote: post #22

On a tangent: I remember reading John Carmak saying that as game engines became more complex, he had to relinquish the idea of writing all the (engine) code himself, and start to rely on other folks contributions as well (this was in an interview after the release of Doom 3). I wonder what his feelings are in this age of AI.

John is now on a mission to make AGI a reality. I’d say given his own investment there, he’s probably positive about it. Just speculation on my part of course. Also, “masters of doom” is such a good book. Recommend it for anyone who wants to peek behind the scenes of how Carmack, Romero, and iD software built Doom (and Wolf3D etc).

Yes such a fantastic book. I thought about it recently while reading this article about the three teenagers who created the Mirai botnet, same vibes, you would probably like it: https://www.wired.com/story/mirai-untold-story-three-young-h...

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#88

Post by nicoburns »

nehalem wrote: post #26
varjag wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earbuds often have features like mic beam forming and noise cancellation which require a substantial degree of processing power. It's hardly unjustified compared to your Teams instance making fans spin or Home Assistant bringing down an RPi to its knees.

No doubt, maybe should I have emphasised the "general" part of "general purpose" more. Not a hardware person myself, I wonder whether there would be purpose-built hardware that could do the same more cheaply – think F(P)GA.

> I wonder whether there would be purpose-built hardware that could do the same more cheaply

Where are you imagining costy savings coming from? Custom anything is almost always vastly more expensive than using a standardised product.

Re: Doom has been ported to an earbud

#90

Post by cortesoft »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #72
dubbie99 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The materials that go into a chip are nothing. The process of making the chip is roughly the same no matter the power of it. So having one chip that can satisfy a large range of customers needs is so much better than wasting development time making a custom just good enough chip for each.

> The materials that go into a chip are nothing. They really aren't. Every material that goes into every chip needs to be sourced from various mines around the world, shipped to factories to be assembled, then the end goods need to be shipped again around the world to be sold or directly dumped. High power, low power, it all has negative environmental impact.

That doesn't contradict the point, though. The negative impact on the environment is not reduced by making a less powered chip.
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