Developing - Thunderbolt Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Here's my question. I want to start with an app or two, but ultimately want to make it to roms, themes, etc. My computer however is a bit on the low end. 1ghz dual core, 1gb ram. Decent storage though 250gb. Is this not enough, sufficient, or great. Thanks in advance
Posted from my 1.34ghz, Infected, Themed Out, Lightningbolt.

when your phone has a faster clockspeed than your desktop, it is time for an upgrade.

Bigandrewgold said:
when your phone has a faster clockspeed than your desktop, it is time for an upgrade.
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Click to collapse
Except clockspeed is not the almighty determinant of cpu power that years of marketing would lead you to believe. That CPU could still run circles around the phone CPU for various architectural reason I won't get into because it's too much to explain and no one will likely be interested. However, 1ghz is slow, especially if you're going to be using a Java based (that is, built on Java) IDE like Eclispe or Intellij IDEA. I've used Intellij IDEA on my 2 core Atom netbook when I'm not around my desktop and it's just painful (and Intellij is faster than Eclipse). Java anything eats RAM like a fat kid eats skittles and drags your CPU like you're running a race with him on your shoulders. Intellij IDEA eats up around 600mb of RAM being open and Eclipse is around the same.
That amount of RAM is also low as well. Your system is already using at least 50% of that + whatever more for your GPU if you do not have a separate GPU.
Can you use that computer to do some basic application tutorials, theme and do small mods? Yeah sure. Will it be annoying to do so? A little, as things lag and you probably don't realize it as you're used to that system.
If you're going to compile Android from the source, then that computer will never work out. Android source needs around 8-16gb of RAM for 2.3.x and 16-24gb for ICS. A 4 core CPU such as an i5 or i7 is also recommended.
You could build a decent computer from parts made for compiling for probably 700-900 excluding a monitor. One for just apps and anything else for probably 500-600.

Yeah definitely time for an upgrade.
I dev on my laptop. It's a Toshiba Satellite L675D-7104:
AMD Turion II Dual Core 2.5GHz cpu, 4GB RAM, 500GB HD, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200, dual booting Windows 7 Home Premium and Fedora 16.
It's a decent mid-range computer, nothing too special. It does the job as far as building ROMs. It can build from source, but takes a pretty long time.

Thanks folks. I will be dispatching my computer promptly, office space style
Posted from my 1.34ghz, Infected, Themed Out, Lightningbolt.

haliwa04 said:
Thanks folks. I will be dispatching my computer promptly, office space style
Posted from my 1.34ghz, Infected, Themed Out, Lightningbolt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No need for that, I use old computers for linux test boxes quite a bit as you don't need that much to run it with just the command line. I'm sure someone will take it off your hands if you put it on Craigslist or give it to the thrift store.

Related

[Q] Are both cores used all the time?

Just as the question states. I know the second core will sleep when not needed but say you launch an app, does the second core help load the app? The reason I ask is because I'm curious about the raw speed difference between the atrix and inspire. Now compairing the inspire running at 1.8 and the atrix seemingly stuck at 1 per core (I'm not saying the atrix wont ever be OCed but I'm just talking about what's currently available). I'm just curious if the second core will help the first with tasks. If it doesn't would that make the inspire technically way faster (obviously battery life may be an issue but this isn't a battery compairo)?
Thanks for any insight
I think you should start by knowing that overclocking ARM prroccessors gives little yield.
XOOM at 1.5 ghz scores only 500 better than a non-overclocked xoom on quadrant.
I'm going to try and simplify the answer for you.
Will BOTH cores be used? Maybe. First off, is the app itself optimized for dual core, or does it even need dual core / multithreaded capability.
Secondly, and I think more importantly, what is the rest of the phone doing. So, let's say you fire up your favorite app, the phone is still doing stuff in the background. Maybe it's checking email. Maybe Google Latitude is checking your location and updating. The point is - the other core will still be around to offload this work.
Now, WILL it go to the other core. Maybe. Maybe not. I do work on some big Sun machines, and have seen them use one or two out of 64 cores, even with massive loads and each core being used 100%, it refused to balance the load amongst CPU's.
Hope this helps.
mister_al said:
I'm going to try and simplify the answer for you.
Will BOTH cores be used? Maybe. First off, is the app itself optimized for dual core, or does it even need dual core / multithreaded capability.
Secondly, and I think more importantly, what is the rest of the phone doing. So, let's say you fire up your favorite app, the phone is still doing stuff in the background. Maybe it's checking email. Maybe Google Latitude is checking your location and updating. The point is - the other core will still be around to offload this work.
Now, WILL it go to the other core. Maybe. Maybe not. I do work on some big Sun machines, and have seen them use one or two out of 64 cores, even with massive loads and each core being used 100%, it refused to balance the load amongst CPU's.
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yea that's exactly like I figured, I was kinda going off Windows/Intel multi core setup. Even after dual+cores have been out for quite some time 95% of programs made still don't use more than one core (Most of those remaining 5% being very CPU intense programs PS, Autocad ect.). But I get what you mean, the one core will be dedicated to what your doing and not sharing cycles with anything else because core 2 is working on whatever pops up. So basically the Atrix might be a little slower at doing things BUT it will always stay the same speed with less/no bog.
Techcruncher said:
I think you should start by knowing that overclocking ARM prroccessors gives little yield.
XOOM at 1.5 ghz scores only 500 better than a non-overclocked xoom on quadrant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying Quadrant suck as it does with most phones or OCing the Xoom (and Atrix) wont really do much?
I already built an apk for testing CPU usage on both processors... When I get some free time, I'm going to turn it into a widget... Here's what I noticed:
Because of the current OS and less dual core support for apps, the phone kind of kicks certain tasks into using the 2nd processor. The APK i built reads the '/proc/stat' file and i've noticed that when the 2nd processor is being used it actually shows up in the file as 'cpu1'. However, when it's not being used the 'cpu1' line does not exist and you can default the 2nd processor usage to 0%. It seems like performing core OS tasks (like installing apps) kick the 2nd processor into use, which is what you can expect since froyo supports dual cores.
Like everyone says, I'd expect to see more dual core usage on 2.3/2.4 (whichever motorola gives) and when more apps are designed to kick certain threads onto the 2nd processor.

Dual cores jumped the gun?

This is actually the second time I'm opting for a single core device (first being when I got my samsung captivate instead of the moto atrix which would have required a 1 month wait)
My logic has been that it took a long time for dual cores to really be worked into laptops/desktops well therefore I probably wouldn't miss too much with a single core tablet if I wasn't multitasking a lot.
So after reading http://www.anandtech.com/show/4463/the-htc-flyer-review/8
I've really began to wonder.. while I don't doubt the programming skills of the android creators or anything..
How much multi core optimizing is really going on? I have no doubt that the Tegra 2 processor can mop the floor with a single core in a lot of areas.. But, on the flipside.. the higher clockspeed seems to have quite a few advantages.. And outside of multitasking or apps that are seriously threaded well.. Seems like the benefits of dual core are a bit over rated..
You might not have threaded apps, but you would presumably multitask a bit on your phone, so one core can run a browser and the other core something else, etc.
Still, I don't think single cores are yet outdated, simply because none of the non-gaming apps really load one core that much anyway. If you wanted to crunch numbers, you'd use a PC. And if you're gaming on your phone, you wouldn't be multi-tasking.
Its just the way things work. Hardware always leads software that can actually take advantage of it by 6 to 18 months. That's why if you keep buying the next big things , you never actually get to use the new features. It's a marketing ploy a lot of times.
porcupineadvocate said:
You might not have threaded apps, but you would presumably multitask a bit on your phone, so one core can run a browser and the other core something else, etc.
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Click to collapse
That's the thing, there isn't much "something else" going on most of the time. Background synching of email and a few other apps; downloading a big file. What else? Most apps just get suspended in memory, and don't need to be actively "running". Multi core may make switching a bit faster, but that's really it, until we see apps optimized for multi cores.
Back to the OP's question, in a similar discussion on multi cores, one person on these forums mentioned that hardware always precedes software. I have to agree with that point. Hardware manufacturers will always sell what is on the bleeding edge, because specs and marketing buzzwords (which dual or quad core have definitely become) will always sell hardware. But software developers just want there apps to be compatible with the majority of the hardware being used. If most people have single core Android devices (huge majority do, right now), there is little motivation to spend the resources making the apps optimized for multi cores.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
I think a lot of people forget that if all you want to do is browse the web/email.. Even a computer that is old will still work well enough for basic task.. Example I'm typing this from a single core emachines that is a 2 ghz athlon processor.. My parents haven't upgraded, because it still works and still moves relatively fast for basic task.
Plus, there is a misconception that two 1 ghz processors = 2 ghz total clockspeed.. but, doesn't quite work like that..

League Of Legends/Ubuntu?

Just a quick question from someone who is new to this kinda scene, just curious if anyone knows if its possible to run LoL on my eee pad prime (not using a remote rdc though) if i installed linux and used wine would this work? (or are there any other possibilities)
Looking at the minimum system requirements:
Minimum System Requirements
2 GHz processor
1 GB RAM (Windows Vista and 7 users will want 2 GB of RAM or more)
750 MB available hard disk space
Shader version 2.0 capable video card
Support for DirectX v9.0c or better
Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (Mac OS is currently not supported)
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Click to collapse
I really don't see being able to play this game on the Prime, especially via Wine.
Only processor speed will be questionable. We do have quad core though. Once we overclock even higher, 2ghz will be easily obtained, it will be possible. That will be dependent of how well a dual boot of Ubuntu will be. Right now it runs alongside android so it shares CPU power etc...Once we dual boot, then ubuntu will have full access to whatever CPU/gpu power it needs. Then it'll just be a manner of getting LoL to load/install on it. Those other specs prime already has or better. PRIME is a beast. Alot more powerful than people may realize. Especially now that we already overclocked to 1.6ghz without even a custom rom or bootloader unlocked. It'll only get better from here. I'd say we doing great, developement wise, in Prime first month of usage. OVERCLOCK, root, ICS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux(Backtrk5), added drivers, themes, n so on.
The problem here is you will be trying to run an x86 game on ARM. I'm not sure if x86 emulators even exist to the required standard to even attempt this, but even if they do then you'll likely need a machine with way more power than the prime. Probably 3-5 times at least.
Emulating is very resource demanding.
Thanks for the replies everyone im looking forward to seeing what the prime can do in the near future, i do really enjoy having one, i cant wait untill everything runs perfect with it (rdcs with keyboard bindings for the dock, alt/esc and left/right click working properly) thanks again everyone

Parallella super computer, compiling android?

Does anyone know if the computer spoken about here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...a-supercomputer-for-everyone?ref=home_popular would be able to compile android if it were running linux??
You would need to get all the tools for teh build system running for arm. I'm pretty sure most of it has been done (gcc, python, bash) because there is a ubuntu built for the arm cpu. The specs on that thing even say it will come with ubuntu on it,. I'm not sure if the jdk is done yet for arm.
I think you're gonna hit a wall with 1GB of ram easily. The operating system youre using will probably take up 1/4 to 1/3 of it. Go around and look at the requirements to build projects like firefox and openoffice. Last time I saw it, firefox needed like 3GB of ram for the linker. You can get a huge SD card and use it as swap space, but thats gonna slow down all those 64 cores. Next up is the disk interface. It has usb2, which is capped at 480MB/s [citation needed]. It doesn't benefit you at all that your cpu can build a bunch of source files at once if it gets bottlenecked at reading those source files from and writing the object files to the hard drive.
I say you probably will be able to get it to build android, but it wont be lightning fast, or really even remarkably fast. By the time you buy that thing for $99, and a keyboard, mouse, usb HDD, SD card, HDMI monitor, and whatever else you need to actually use it, you could have bought a "traditional" computer that has SATA and > 1GB of ram.
noneabove said:
Does anyone know if the computer spoken about here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...a-supercomputer-for-everyone?ref=home_popular would be able to compile android if it were running linux??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it will not.
Compiling isn't a task suitable for such a parallel computer. Compiling is mostly I/O intense, not CPU intense, hence you would not gain anything here, even if you'd be able to distribute the compiling task to multiple cores, which is by itself not a trivial task if we are talking about more than a handful of cores.
Also, you don't need a project like this to run a parallel super computer. You can run in parallel on modern graphics cards today. E.g. get a NVIDIA GPU and start using CUDA, and you'll get the idea what it's all about.
Parallel supercomputing is more suitable for specific CPU intense task such as FFT, flow analysis, brute forcing crypto, neural nets and such, where you've got a relative limited amount of data in comparison to the amount CPU needed.
As has been said, much return (financial and performance) and less work to implement with CUDA.
example of the outrageous performance of a system CUDA:
with a password cracking software, with a core i5 was 125 000 operations / s ... to enable support Cuda software, has become more than 8 million / s

Under Clocking PC to Reduce Heat

I am currently running Remix OS for PC Hacked Edition 2.0.205 on a Toshiba Satellite Radius 12 (P25W-2300C-4k) 2 in 1 notebook. When booted into Remix the fans are generally running all the time. I though reducing the CPU would help with the heat and therefor reduce the fan use. I did something similar in Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 and it works perfect. The notebook has a Core I7 Dual core 6th gen CPU so I should be able to reduce my clock by half without any problem. When I downloaded an oveerclocking app from the play store my only options were 400Mhz and 3.0GHz, there were no speeds in between. I tried another app and found the same thing. Has anyone else tried to under or over clock their CPU in Remix and found the same issue, only seeing two possible clock speeds?
Thanks
After testing out a bunch of the overclock apps in the play store I found one that seems to work. For anyone interested it is called 3C CPU Manager. I am only able to underclock my CPU because the kernel of Remix OS doesn't seem to support overclocking.
This is a fairly major issue with RemixOS and the myriad of hardware running it currently. With such a small team working on it, I imagine it's impossible to enumerate all the hardware configurations out there, especially legacy. Personally, I just fried another chip on RemixOS, a Nvidia quadro fx 3600m, out of a dell precision m6300 (rather upsetting), tinkering around and running the hacked edition as well. These cards were suspect due to solder issues anyway, but I believe it had a lot more life left in it. I never noticed until it was to late in my case, the fan's on my system weren't enumerated/activated whatsoever, until a hard shutdown-reboot, and the fabled blue lines of death it has now. I'd be especially careful with watching your cpu/gpu temps, and doubly cautious on which programs/games you decide to run through remixOS, as I have no doubt with the plethora of apps available, there are many floating around that can run your card in way's it was never intended.
Thanks for the info, I am only interested in underclocking my notebook rather than overclocking it. It just happens that the apps used are typically called overclocking apps. With how hot Remix runs on my notebook I wouldn't even consider overclocking. Remix currently runs at 1 GHz max (CPU capable of 3.1GHz) using the app I listed above and my fans come on far less than they were before. I am fairly certain underclocking worked for a few reasons, my computer doesn't run as hot, the fans are not running 24/7 and validated the clock speed using ZCPU and cpuinfo in /proc. In addition to the extra power draw from the fans, I was also worried about the fans failing from running so much. Replacing a fan in a desktop is one thing, replacing a fan in a compact notebook like mine is well, not so easy. Sorry to hear about your card, I would be quite upset if my notebook/graphics chip fried. Hope yu don't mind i'm going to use your info to update my article. Will give credit due
I saw my notebook CPU running most of the time >80 C in Remix OS. It never happens in Windows or Linux. Isn't that it is related to the underlying structure of Android on x86?

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