Underlying tech in the Evo 3D - qHD, 3D, dual-core SMP

[jdsingle]

Thanks for correcting me guys. The iPad is a good example. However, I have had both the first iPad and now the iPad 2 and I still have yet to see any real differences in speed. I understand the benefits of dual core but in most real world cases, the benefits are not easily detected by the user.

There is your mistake. Highlighted in bold. Anything with an 'i' preceding it will only be as strong as the weakest link.

Well, if this thing isn't out within a month I am SOL. My phone on big red will be lucky to see 5 more weeks of use before it dies. If there isn't the Sensation, Kingdom, or 3D out by this time next month plus or minus a week, I may have to stick with big red.

 

[Sauske]

Based upon the specs, the Kingdom sounds like another rock solid HTC phone on Sprint.

Though, it seems like an Evo alternative, and not in the same class as the Evo3D. So for everyone that thinks 3D is a "gimmick", here you go...

I do wonder is Sprint will make the Kingdom part of the Evo line.

Gimmick -

 

[EarlyMon]

Honestly, I see no need for another Apple flame war. It's a worthy device, I outlined its strengths to give equal time, the question was answered - let's move on.

Gimmick - the word can have good or bad connotations - but at its root, it's just a made-up word like widget. Let's be sure we're all 100% on the same page when using this word - last thread that did got locked.

We have no need of bad feelings here - it's a phone, it's not our mom, and it's not out yet - skepticism can be a healthy thing.

 

[RichboyJhae]

Honestly, I see no need for another Apple flame war. It's a worthy device, I outlined its strengths to give equal time, the question was answered - let's move on.

Gimmick - the word can have good or bad connotations - but at its root, it's just a made-up word like widget. Let's be sure we're all 100% on the same page when using this word - last thread that did got locked.

We have no need of bad feelings here - it's a phone, it's not our mom, and it's not out yet - skepticism can be a healthy thing.

Your EVO is so dumb, it climbed a glass wall to see what was on the other side.

 

[Emmexx]

Don't know if this is the right thread to post this on, but a 26 min vid of the E3D had the question asked about the screen. The lady responded it was by Sharp and uses the Parallax barrier. I grabbed the link I thought would explain best.

Sharp's 3D LCD: how's that work, then? ? The Register

 

[EarlyMon]

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-3d...-charge-while-connected-hdtv.html#post2657833

You linked that vid, there. I'm going to have to look thru that again, missed that before.

edit - Yep, she says at 12:16 it's from Sharp and confirms it when asked.

Your article is from 2004, but I checked, and indeed last year Sharp announced they'd improved that version of their tech sufficiently to fit it into mobile applications.

http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/100402.html

The two Nintendo screen suppliers are Sharp and Hitachi - so the 3DS is strongly suspected of using the Sharp display in posts across the net.

Given that Sharp produces "retinal display" phones in Japan, there's no doubt they're perfectly capable of producing qHD in this size with full RGB resolution. (Final nail in that coffin.)

http://androinica.com/2010/11/sharp...-androids-in-japan-galapagos-003sh-and-005sh/

~~~~~

Sharp produced the first commercially available LCD TV and they know what they're doing.

Reports suggest they're back up to full production, even in Sakai, their 10th generation fab that was originally to fund in conjunction with Sony (2009) but has since basically fallen thru.

I don't know what the 3D will be like, but the color on this thing might be downright great.


~~~~~

We've abused this thread - me too - so I'll clean this up and move things around.

 

[EarlyMon]

I've tried to give back the topics to the threads about when it's going to be released, and who want this or the Kingdom.

Did my best with the moves, apologies if this confuses or upsets anyone.

We're starting to diffuse 3d/dual-core tech into every thread possible - hard to resist with a dual-core, 3D phone!

I've been one of worst offenders on this, but if anyone wants any other posts moved here, PM me or just post a link to what you want moved in here.

~~~~~~

By the way, I saw this claim that the vid recording in 1080p (2D) is at 24 fps, while in 720p (3D) it's 30 fps.

http://www.joy2day.com/mobile-world/htc/htc-evo-3d.php

 

[you2]

Ok thanks. It didn't look super crisp but that might have been the font or camera. However the lady (can't remember her name) said quite a few positive things not only about the phone itself but sprint's attitude in how they were going to treat customers. I.e, it sounds like they are not going to be nearly as draconian as either verizon or at&t if what she said accurately represents corporate policy and it doesn't change; which for me is a huge turn off with those two companies.

OK - I did some searching, and came up with this Sense 3 demo.

Pop this out to full-screen 720p - and when the camera and the demo gal aren't moving around - screen looks very clear in 2D.

YouTube - HTC EVO 3D Sense User Interface Demonstration

From time to time, there's a sort of Fresnel-looking pattern on parts of the screen - I suspect that's just a video artifact from filming the display, it acts like an artifact - not part of the display itself.

 

[EarlyMon]

At this resolution, with the 3D part going transparent, and made by Sharp, I expect this to be an eye-popper.

Hate AT&T, love sprint.

 

[novox77]

i was the one who started some speculation (at least on these boards) that the Evo 3D could use PenTile (and also use that chance to reiterate my disgust for the tech, even on AMOLED-based screens). And yeah I based my speculation on Atrix's LCD-based qHD PenTile display.

I knew Evo 3D was different (S-LCD), but just like cramming a ton of megapixels into a camera while using shitty pixel sensors like on the Evo 4G, the Evo 3D's qHD could have taken the easier (cheaper) way out to achieve qHD. Also, I can actually think of an advantage of PenTile when it comes to 3D displays.

Anyhow, this video that Early posted above was sharp enough for me to conclude that there was no usage of PenTile on the Evo. Rejoice.

 

[EarlyMon]

Then there was the whole sidetrack that I was responsible for that it might not be a parallax barrier display.

Kudos to Emexx on squaring that one!

 

[Emmexx]

Then there was the whole sidetrack that I was responsible for that it might not be a parallax barrier display.

Kudos to Emexx on squaring that one!

Glad to be of service Thanks for moving the posts around too. I figure that could be a bit of a pain. I try not to muddle things up when I post, but sometimes I just don't know where else to go with some info. Heh, I suppose I could have started a new post, but, well, yeah, I didn't. So yeah, thanks and sorry for any confusion.

By the way, yeah, that resolution and the screen itself, as I'll primarily being just using 2D, backed by this hardware, looks like it is going to be simply amazing!

 

[jdsingle]

Whoa. Nice work you guys. Taking blame for your actions. I call that accountability. Seriously though, phone needs to be here in 5 weeks. I'll be pretty stoked if it records 30fps in 720P.

 

[Acei]

Just the guy I'm looking to talk with!

I've charged that published benchmarks are not always valid because people quote them out of context - or what it is they do is not clear to end users and that it takes expert, objective help to interpret benchmark results properly (hence my crack that Smartbench doesn't walk on water earlier(*)).

Can you share - or provide links on your site to - info that might help us understand how to understand what your benchmarks mean and how to interpret the results?

~~~

(*) I used to write benchmarks for vector performance and compiler optimizations, back in the day, that were adopted by Cray Research; some of that old code made its eventual way elsewhere - and from that viewpoint, I feel qualified to say no benchmark walks on water, without it being personal to you, the author in this case.

I agree that no benchmark will exactly duplicate user experiences but as long as you know how to interpret the results benchmark produces, I believe there is a value (otherwise I would not have produced Smartbench in the first place )

What a co-incidence - I also worked on compiler optimization, in my case, for an earlier version of Sun's SuperSparc architecture which at that time, was mainly focused on multi-core and super-scalar architecture. It involved modifying GNU GCC compiler that produces more optimized binaries for this particular architecture.

To give you a general idea, Smartbench 2011 has 5 independent mini-test suits. Pi, Mandelbrot and String tests focus on stressing CPU, while Tunnel and Jellyfish focuses on stressing GPU. CPU tests were re-written for v2011 so that the workload is split equally between 4 threads, hence it will consume up to 4 cores if they are available.

Pi test is just that - it calculates Pi, using 4 separate threads but combines the results. Very tight loops of integer and floating point calculations are used, so there is a good chance that this test will run entirely within L1 cache.

Mandelbrot obviously plots the famous Mandelbrot graphs but I intentionally divided the screen into 4 squares, so that each area can be updated independently by separate threads. This one uses much larger loop, but still focuses on integer and floating point calculations.

String does series of tests on strings - assignments, comparisons, copying and regular expression parsing. Strings used are quite large - my hope here is to completely fill up L1 cache so that it would test CPU to memory interface more thoroughly.

Tunnel test looks simple but I've intentionally increased the load by splitting each wall into many smaller triangles. This was done to make sure no devices hit near 60fps limit. Tegra 2 processors are only doing around 30fps or so in this test. Uses various OpenGL calls that are common in games of today.

Jellyfish, again uses many semi-transparent cubes with textures on it. From what I've seen, some devices do better on Tunnel test, while others do better on the Jellyfish test.

As you can see, what I want to do here is to create more mini-tests that mimic some of the common tasks/operations that phones need to execute. More mini-tests will be developed over time. You will see some new ones in v2012. This is one of the reason why I used the year as a version number - once more mini-tests are added, I need to create a new baseline for the test results, hence all previously captured test results are no longer comparable to the new ones.

Productivity Index is simply an average of 3 CPU benchmark results, normalized to HTC G2 (1000). Games Index is again, an average of 2 GPU benchmark results, again, normalized to HTC G2 (1000). If you get 2000, that means you completed the test twice as fast as 800MHz G2.

Not sure if this answered any of your questions. If you have any more, I will gladly respond.

My apology to everyone, this post is sorta off the track.

 

[novox77]

It's funny... when you hear the developer of a benchmark describe the details of each test... and if you have the background knowledge to know the complexity of the math and programming involved....

and then to hear people make such extreme simplistic judgments like phone x is better than phone y because x got bigger numbers without the appreciation of what's actually happening in the background....

maybe it's not funny. just sad that there's such a huge knowledge gap between author and users. one of the sad truths of the world.

 

[themuffinman75]

It's funny... when you hear the developer of a benchmark describe the details of each test... and if you have the background knowledge to know the complexity of the math and programming involved....

and then to hear people make such extreme simplistic judgments like phone x is better than phone y because x got bigger numbers without the appreciation of what's actually happening in the background....

maybe it's not funny. just sad that there's such a huge knowledge gap between author and users. one of the sad truths of the world.

Its called the power of marketing!!

 

[novox77]

no, that's not what i was getting at... it's that the end user rarely has the appreciation about what it took to design/build something. The ignorance about the amount of science, engineering, effort required. Average person struggles with percentages. That's what's sad.

Anyway, I think it's awesome that devs give us a taste of what's actually involved. Really puts some things into perspective. For me, anyway.

 

[themuffinman75]

no, that's not what i was getting at... it's that the end user rarely has the appreciation about what it took to design/build something. The ignorance about the amount of science, engineering, effort required. Average person struggles with percentages. That's what's sad.

Anyway, I think it's awesome that devs give us a taste of what's actually involved. Really puts some things into perspective. For me, anyway.

I understood what you were trying to say and in my opinion a lot of the ignorance comes from marketing. The average consumer is usually baited by the marketing and not taking the time to really understand or to learn whats really going on behind the scenes.

 

[MelissaM]

I agree that no benchmark will exactly duplicate user experiences but as long as you know how to interpret the results benchmark produces, I believe there is a value (otherwise I would not have produced Smartbench in the first place )

Why do you think the Exynos 4210 (Samsung S II) is achieving a Smartbench Productivity Score 90% higher and a Games score 60% higher than the Qualcomm 8260 (HTC Sensation)? Both are running dual cores @ 1.2Ghz.

Based on phones out there, how do these benchmarks translate in to real world usage? Or can score differences that large still result in no significant difference in "normal" usage (e.g. gaming, browsing, watching videos, making videos, UI experience)?

There are several dual cores that appear to be coming out over the next couple of months (hopefully) and I change my top picks about 5 times a day.

Thanks.

 

[EarlyMon]

Acei - Great info, and my sincere thanks.

Respectfully, have you considered any DSP benchmarks to get an idea of an aggregate between FP and any side-effects of pipeline bubbling or cache clearing? I'm just noodling out loud here, but possibly suggesting using a series of FFTs, with each iteration doubling the sampling size.

Again, not intended as a criticism, as it sounds like your suite is already quite well thought-out.

(Kudos on your contributions to the SuperSparc optimizations - I no doubt benefited from those! )

 

[jdsingle]

no, that's not what i was getting at... it's that the end user rarely has the appreciation about what it took to design/build something. The ignorance about the amount of science, engineering, effort required. Average person struggles with percentages. That's what's sad.

Anyway, I think it's awesome that devs give us a taste of what's actually involved. Really puts some things into perspective. For me, anyway.

I'm going to have to disagree with this statement. I have no clue about phones because I don't have the time to immerse myself in it. Do I appreciate what it took to build? Probably not as much as some people. Do you appreciate how much work it takes accountants to keep business and taxes going? I'm sure you don't. Generalizations are what's sad. No one knows everyone else and what their forte is.

Back on topic. I'll salivate over 1.5GHz over 1.2GHz any day of the week. That's like asking me if I'll take Cs over Ds. Bigger is better even if sometimes it gets in the way.






JK or am I?

 

[EarlyMon]

Not being a gamer or anticipating a need for maximum performance, I prefer in this case to have optimal performance. I'd rather have the battery savings from 1.2 GHz. No doubt overclocking will come swiftly to meet your needs, tho.

 

[you2]

Ultimately the reason these benchmarks are useless is that the software is still being optimized for the hardware. You cannot underestimate the performance gains in this area. Having said that it appears the hardware is more than fast enough and I am more concern about things that cannot change (quality of sound, quality of the screen, quality of the antenna, battery life (though some optimization can be done here after the fact).

 

[Jensen]

Why do you think the Exynos 4210 (Samsung S II) is achieving a Smartbench Productivity Score 90% higher and a Games score 60% higher than the Qualcomm 8260 (HTC Sensation)? Both are running dual cores @ 1.2Ghz.

Based on phones out there, how do these benchmarks translate in to real world usage? Or can score differences that large still result in no significant difference in "normal" usage (e.g. gaming, browsing, watching videos, making videos, UI experience)?

There are several dual cores that appear to be coming out over the next couple of months (hopefully) and I change my top picks about 5 times a day.

Thanks.

The Exynos is using a newer ARM A9 chip vs the A8 in the dual core snapdragon. The A9 is more efficient clock per clock than the A8. Qualcomm was banking on the higher clock speed of their A8 to compete with the more efficient A9 chips like Tegra 2 and Exynos which were clocked at 1 Ghz.

At the last minute Samsung bumped the clock speed of the Exynos to 1.2 Ghz as well. It will be, by and large, a faster chip in almost all respects than the new Snapdragon.

 

[EarlyMon]

If I'm not mistaken, both the Exynos and 8660 run their clocks asynchronously (read: separate speed control) for each core, whereas the Tegra-2 does not not.