ARM: True 3D Netbook Gaming in 2010

[Thurin]

even if windows runs and the processor does well and bests all of the current mobile cpus, this doesn't ensure proper gaming in any way. At least not without a proper gpu to go with it... and since the current mobile gpus are both not the strongest nor the coolest solutions,
I believe we are still a ways off..

but good initiative nonetheless.

Greetings from Europe,

Mike

 

[mitch074]

Well, some game makers already have Linux ports of their games - whether they made it public or not. Id software's engines are open source, and Blizzard has a Linux client for WoW that they keep secret (they just say it exists).

Now, imagine this: a $200 laptop come out, using a SoC with enough power to run successful games with nice graphics; priced like a console (DS-like), able to do gaming, but with a keyboard and the ability to run a web browser and an office suite (OpenOffice.org is being ported to ARM); it also sports an OS that is supported by a multibillion company, with free versatile APIs (say, Chrome OS) and which uses a stable, known basis (the Linux kernel).

Back to efficiency. ARM is a processor design that does very well at branching; it has as many general purpose registers as x86-32, but doesn't "waste" transistors on stuff like 'real-mode' 8086 nor 286 backward compatibility, nor does it have a 386 instruction set (which was a CISC-like design) that requires a complex instructions decompiler (ARM is a RISC-type 32-bit processor).

You won't compress an XviD movie in software mode on an ARM core at any meaningful speed; however, the ARM will run the AI of any game at very good speeds (graphics are left to the GPU). And, if you make use of CUDA or OpenCL to access the GPU core with its 64 shader units, you'll be able to compress your XviD movie faster than a 2 GHz Core 2 could.

Now, the biggest problem: who would dare selling an efficient, cleverly designed, inexpensive computer, and not incur Intel's nor Microsoft's wrath? That rules out every PC hardware maker currently in existence.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]virtualize_your_life[/nom]If the ARM CPU supports virtualization reasonably well, it could install Windows just fine, they could take a very minimal stripped down Linux kernel running Virtualbox and run Windows with no problem. They certainly could do it without violating the x86 licensing BS.[/citation]
Unfortunately ARM designs so far aren't that hot at emulating x86. I've been following a forum of developers for a Texas Instruments OMAP3530 (Cortex A8-based, 600MHz) platform and last time I checked Qemu allowed x86 code to reach speeds comparable to a 486 at best. Using WINE under a Linux kernel doesn't work because WINE is x86 only, apparently. Things may have moved along since I've looked, though, but don't count on virtualization giving you an XP-capable smartbook. It might have to do with the RISC nature of ARM having to do more work to match the CISC nature of x86: you can theoretically simulate any computer on any other computer, but it'll most likely be very slow if you're simulating a "bigger" one on a smaller one.

[citation][nom]__-_-_-__[/nom]ARM is already many steps behind nvidia tegra[/citation]
Tegra IS an ARM chip.