I looked at that Google Earth app. It was really stupid and useless, unless you want to "play with the globe." There are some games that put it to good use though, and I think that OpenGL is what separates the iPhone from other stuff (even if they have OpenGL, like say WM, its not universal).
It's not as much use as the inbuilt Google Maps app (yet), but the fact that you _can_ actually run it shows something.
Also missing is drivers for the hardware Java interpreter (Jazelle) but this is due to a licensing issue if I remember correctly.
How could the Java interpreter be utilized? I would think this would be a huge thing, since Java is very common, but a JVM would be too big/intensive for the N8x0.
How could the Java interpreter be utilized? I would think this would be a huge thing, since Java is very common, but a JVM would be too big/intensive for the N8x0.
Going OT here. A Java VM can obviously run on the machine as we've had some non-gui JVMs released.
Jazelle is difficult, mainly because ARM won't release any details of how to get it to work, it would be good to have more than guess work about the Jazelle coprocessors and how to setup the environment.
Anyway, if you want to talk about Jazelle please start a new thread, this one is supposed to be about the PowerVR.
just came across this very long discussion which took a while to wade through.
Long ago I was an embedded developer, before linux existed, and used to write deveice drivers usign in-circuit-emulators to debug them. Quite often the documentation on the chips involved was out of date, incomplete, incorrect or even completely wrong. Usually, what I relied on was a working example. The worked example might have no error checking, be relatively crude, be a bit buggy, but it was often the best documentation you got!
Now, I've never written a device drive for linux, so I can't tell anyone how hard or easy it'd be to write a video driver for the chips in question, but what I can say is that (probably) if we had the summary guide to the video chip's registers and a worked example of how to set it up for each function it can do, then we could probably have a basic but useful working driver.
Once the right people get their hands on some code which makes the video do interesting stuff, they would get confidence and learn more. At the moment it's a "black box" which has been disabled, so noone knows what promises it might hide.
Anyone remember the Amiga and HAM, and the "copper". I remember writing hacky copper "assembler" code to put horizontal stripes of colour on the screen and getting an insight into what could be done. HAM mode was an experimental thing that was nearly removed from the chips, it was left in to be be lazy, and became one of the Amiga's successes! This is a lesson to Nokia: don't assume because *you* think something's useless that other people might have no use for it!
Maybe the video accelerator, if it can't be used directly for generating video, could have other purposes like decoding/pre-rendering stuff, or even non-video math acceleration! Take a look at Nvidia's "cuda" for ideas: http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_get.html
Thank you for both wading through the discussion and for sharing your insight
This is exactly the kind of reasoning and spirit I have had all year, this device has so much untapped potential.
As I am discovering it can do more and more every single day I am constantly surprised that I am able to perform tasks and achieve results I didnt think were possible.
I would like to find a way for us to discuss this spirit and attempts at building upon it without so much forum noise, is there a way to setup a small mailing list for this kind of hardware poking?
Usually, what I relied on was a working example. The work[ing] example might have no error checking, be relatively crude, be a bit buggy, but it was often the best documentation you got! ... if we had the summary guide to the video chip's registers and a work[ing] example of how to set it up for each function it can do, then we could probably have a basic but useful working driver...
This is, of course, what everyone seems to want. "Give us what you've got, even if it is buggy and incomplete," We say, and Nokia replies, "But we can't!"
I was assuming that Speculatrix was referring to working source code, rather than a working binary that had to be reverse engineered.
The driver Nokia have is binary only (and can't [are there possible ways around this...?] be released because it's a single binary, rather than a GPL-compatible wrapper + binary component), ImgTech don't release source.
I looked at that Google Earth app. It was really stupid and useless, unless you want to "play with the globe." There are some games that put it to good use though, and I think that OpenGL is what separates the iPhone from other stuff (even if they have OpenGL, like say WM, its not universal).
Side Note: Why has Google not released Earth for Android? Kinda makes no sense...
I think hardware capability differences is one of them. They also probably want to avoid looking like a monopoly.
