Is it easy to get started coding assembler for the N900?

is there anything that needs to be taken in consideration when coding assembler for Maemo5 (...full hardware access? backgroundtasks? other conflicts?)

which tools is most suited for assembler (developer environments, etc)?

I'd say that it's just as easy to use assembler on the N900 as on any stationary computer. Read up on ARM assembler and off you go, nothing special at all.

Out of curiosity, what would you want to create that's not possible in C? C with some inline assembler is a nice mix in my experience. Modern compilers are very good at optimization if this is the issue.

Totally agree, assembler "good old times" stopped years ago.
But I think he wants direct access to hardware internals-acceleration, am I wrong?
The language is not the problem. The drivers are the problem.

I might be wrong but I think you can't access NEON features with C compilers and you need to use assembly for them. It provides great acceleration in matrix/vector calculations.

So, inline assembler in a C program then.

And, I might be wrong but, the compiler generates assembler that is assembled into object code so arguing that the compiler can't do something comes across as a bit off target.

im very inexperienced.

ive only coded a little asm on x86, and a little computer each student had to build at school 10 years ago (based on Z80+RAM chips if i remember correctly) - that was supposed to control a matrix printer.

...anyway...

yes, i was meaning everything in general, incl. hardware internals acceleration.

there are only 2 reasons i want to use assembler.

1. Speed - i rather sacrifice compatibility in exchange for speed when coding for the N900 - why i needed to know if the OS makes some restrictions thats good to be aware of.

2. Reverse Engineering - if i get much more experienced, i want to take a look at the PowerVR driver (and some other drivers) to see if theres a reason that VSync dont work as it should on the N900. by comparing the N900 SGX driver to other phones SGX driver with the same chipset (Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, Iphone 3GS, etc) there may be some way to hack the driver to get better a better framebuffer in RAM, and activating VSync ...for that i will need alot of experience and find the Code that handles transfers to the framebuffer - and somehow force vsync, instead of realtime rendering.

also reverse-engineering can be good to optimize the most hogging parts of the kernel and system background tasks.

EDIT: PS. with reverse engineering i will probably need a disassembler to be able to understand the machine code, but i guess such already exists


but i need to get started somewhere and i know its a far way to go if i want to get that good... i remember the author of ZSNES (fastest snes emu for x86) developed it as a asm project (and some c and c++) while learning assembler at the university.

I've also spent some time writing assembler for a Z80 processor. 1.2MHz and 16KByte of memory felt blazing at the time.

Unless you're planning to do extensive mathematical computations, you'll have trouble hand coding anything that's faster than what the compiler can generate with somewhat sane levels of optimization. Modern compilers are very good at this and the N900 is not like the Z80 with very limited resources where you need to tweak everything.

There has been statements made from NOKIA about Vsync and it pretty much was summed up in "It won't happen.". If you were to find a way to make it happen, that'd be awesome.

What would there be to do to get "a better framebuffer in RAM"?

As far as I know, the kernel is open source, including patches for using the hardware in the N900. So, no need to reverse engineer anything. What would you want to make better in the kernel?

Yes, there are disassemblers for ARM code.

Happy hacking!

Another possible project would be to use the C6400 DSP. This DSP was top of the line a few years ago (2003), and still boasts substantial processing power to run various codecs.

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