Dog-ish ARM performance?

Hi,

I have a chance to repurpose some wireless displays for an application, here. Presently run WinCE 5 (?).

I believe there is a PXA270 @ 300MHz under the hood.

But, the performance appears *abysmal*. Should I attribute this to MS's typical ineptitude at extracting performance from processors? (I have no first-hand experience with WinCE but to assume it follows boldly in the MS tradition :< )

I don't want to invest time reverse engineering the devices only to discover the underlying iron is the actual "problem".

(highest performance task envisioned would be streaming video to the display)

Any pointers on a suitable place to compare apples and oranges in terms of performance criteria?

Thanks!

--don

Reply to
D Yuniskis
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An Intel XScale PXA270 shouldn't suck that badly however as with anything it depends what the rest of the system design is like.

There is one big thing, you must tell the compiler that it's compiling for an XScale as there is a set of conditional instructions which are used for return from functions, which unlike other ARM implementations, XScales take as long to not execute as to execute. Telling the compiler that it's compiling for an XScale will cause it not to generate these instructions.

If you are needing to stream compressed then uncompressing on the device then I'd give up on these devices and find a Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9 based tablet that you can hack.

-p

--
Paul Gotch
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Reply to
Paul Gotch

I wouldn't currently have any control over that as the device is just running "existing code" (though I will make note if I opt to pursue this iron).

Sadly, "The price is right" :

Reply to
D Yuniskis

Hi Paul,

[followup]

Apparently the device contains a 2700 to handle/assist with the display. I believe these have some (crude) acceleration capabilities... (?)

I'll poke around and see if I can find a tool to (effectively) give me the "probe()" results for the hardware (never played with WinCE before and not real keen on investing much in it now! :> ). It may be easier to just peel the thing apart and poke around inside (though I am always fearful of mangling antennas, displays, touchpanels, etc. in the process)

Reply to
D Yuniskis

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