Pocket PC xscale optimized?

[linmias]

Hi!
Does anyone know if the pocket pc 2002 on the Dell Axim is an optimized version for the Xscale processor , or a generic distribution?

[NMkiD]

Its the same version as any other PC 2002 device, whether its an arm or an xscale, hp, toshiba or dell, however the operating system itself isnt even really xscael optimized...

[ceej13]

I'm hoping that Microsoft will make PPC 2003 XScale compatable. that way older processers can use the new OS. Or make 2 versions like PPC 2003 ARM and PPC 2003X that way it won't take up much space in the ROM to create an 1 OS for all PDAs.

[ARM Hacker]

Heh.. the XScale is ARMV5te compliant, its not like there is "ARM" and then there is "XScale". From an architectural standpoint there is no difference. XScale is an ARM processor just like the Pentium III is an X86 processor.

Its like saying that the Pentium4 and the Athalon are not architectually the same. They are the same. They can both run the same code.

But Micro-architecturally they are way different. This is why there is Pentium4 optimized code and AMD Athalon optimized code.

Same thing with the XScale. The PocketPC OS however, is not only not optimized for XScale, its also written for an older revision of the ARM architecture. So it doesn't take advantage of things that ANY ARMV5 processor would have, because its ARMV4.

PocketPC 2003 should be ARMV5 optimized. I doubt that it will be XScale optimized though (optimized for things like XScale's pipeline, the way its cache is laid out, etc). Microsoft wants to be "processor agnostic" so they don't want to do any kind of optimizing for any specific processor. This is of course totally the opposite with Windows where they optimize for each of the major architectures. Its even dumber still when you consider you can't 'buy' PocketPC the OS on the shelf like windows, each copy of PocketPC is burned into ROM and it is specially complied for each unit ANYWAYS because they all have SOME kind of different hardware.

[commoved]

The more I read about the Intel chip, the more I think Intel is pushing a smoke screen. When their 400 MHz chip came out, everybody expected it to be a lot faster. It wasn't. So the word went out that PPC isn't "optimized" for the Intel chip. When people got tired of hearing that, the word was that the 100 MHz bus is holding the Intel chip back. Personally, I think Intel had a lot of bugs in their chip that let it work fine if advanced features are turned off (like, for example, write-back cache).

There's nothing wrong with the Ax, or the Intel chip. It's just a lot of "stuff" to explain why a 400 MHz chip is no faster than the competition.

[ARM Hacker]

Well, its a lot to explain yes. But in reality its no different than when then Pentium 4 came out @ 1.4 and 1.5ghz and it was SLOWER than a PIII 1.13ghz. Take those same systems today that were used in those benchmarks in 2001, and you will find the Pentium4 is WAY faster running modern software.

There are all sorts of reasons why things could run faster, memory, bus speed, cache size, cache algorithms, processor errata, poor software, etc.

Its just that the software being fixed is something that could have easily been done by MS and would have given everyone a fairly substantial performance increase. The bug fixes are coming, the faster bus speed is as well. Its like a puzzle with all the pieces coming together.

At the very least it should educate people that clock speed has nothing to do with performance.

Also when everyone talks about how 400mhz is no better, they don't realize the other benefits of XScale. Battery life. Cost of manufacture (i.e. cheap Dell PDA's, not $600 anymore). SOC technology is a big part of what makes XScale good.

[linmias]

Thanx guys for all your information. Maybe we need to start a campain to make Microsoft deliver optimized Operating system code and application code (mediaplayer etc) for the Xscale.

/Michael