Pocket Quake II on XScale - The FPS??? Question to Dan East

[James S]

The lack of an FPU

[Guest]

Just lost the message, restarting:

I have just spend a few hours at the ARM, Intel, Superscape and Krohnos and Java websites, brushing up my knowledge. And I have found some interesting 3d stuff.

There is an FPU for the Arm and Intel, along with the MBX 3D core for the Arm (a major coup) and a Vectore maths unit (very usefull in 3D) for the Arm 11 series. The problem is these are optional customer requested items. Meaning it will cost the PDA manufacturer more. The only standard options are the integer DSP and the SIMD instructions. Intel plans MMX instructions for the pocket xbox arm they are working on with Microsoft. The newer Arm chips have 64 bit busses with the 11 model having a quad 64 bit bus?? The cores can also come with larger caches and lots of embedded memory. This could make good for a low cost 3D machine using 200Mhz processor, large internal full speed embedded psram??, and 3D core etc to out perform a 1 Ghz Xscale in 3D (or a 1 GHZ PC in software rendering).

I have found a paper at Intel on how to optimise 3D graphics for the integer Xscale. The paper includes a very helpfull bibilography of other papers on how to optomise 3D graphics, including a book on optomising for the Arm, and a master xscale graphics document. Arm also has two documents on 3d hardware. The companies probably have other documents hidden somewhere.

I found out that the Superscape did a lot with the design for the Mobile 3D Jsr-184 Api for Java. There swerve 3D product includes support for this and Krohnos's OpenGL ES. Though the games still don't look the most detailed, but it is still eraly days. They offer full author and client software. The author software looks really good and includes 3d editor.

I also found a article on how Smasunf got and Arm9 chip to go to 1.2Ghz, though 1 Ghz looks like the maximun limit for a commercial version of that chip.


Well been up all night I'll leave it at that.

Wayne.

[Guest]

I have just remembered another thing that would help 3D routines on the Pocket PC. Apart from hidden polygon removal (done in PowerVR), there is polygon reduction based on distance. Shiny, that made MDK use so few Polys beatifully, developed a Game called Messiah the 3D engine was designed to automatically and intellegently reduce polygon numbers the further objects were away, and increase Polygons for more powerfull systems. I think that the quoted reduction, might have been, reduced to 1/6th. Their system used mathematical models to store the shape the Polygons are rendered on. But a well designed volume rendering system would do most of this automatically. I'm aiming for 64+ cycles per full featured screen pixel for the 3D renderer of my OS myself, so I think it's worth the look.

I also remotely remember somebody mentioning, years ago, an alternative Quake Renderer that used integer maths to run faster on K6's.

Has anybody with electronic engineering knowledge considered doing a 3D Card for the PocketPC's using storage cards/USB2(when available)? The PowerVR MBX core uses much less bus bandwidth and may (without seeing the figures) be suitable. A complete MBX ARM chip with lots of memory could cut this further and act like a coprocessor accepting graphic commands. This could even help MIP's/SH machines run ARM code games by running off the card while using the Pocket PC for OS/cient services. Just an idea.


Wayne.

[Guest]