Current state of WinCE / Pocket PC

SDL Development
21

I am bit suprised that a gapi version works slower than a ‘normal’ version.
did you use the default GAPI library or the patched one ?
a “Enhanced GAPI Driver for the X50v” was released a couple of months ago.
It was supposed to solve the performance problem with applications like BetaPlayer.
may be it would improve the performance of the SDL too ?

Here is the link about the improved drivers :
http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=57128&page=1

Jean-Gr?goire

-----Message d’origine-----De : sdl-bounces+jean-gregoire.foulon=fr.thalesgroup.com at libsdl.org
[mailto:sdl-bounces+jean-gregoire.foulon=fr.thalesgroup.com at libsdl.org]D
e la part de Todd Lang
Envoy? : vendredi 27 mai 2005 15:41
? : A list for developers using the SDL library. (includes SDL-announce)
Objet : Re: [SDL] WinCE / Pocket PC progress report, SDLCALL

Just to interject here…we applied Arisme’s GAPI work (and other changes)
to the 1.2.8 codebase and compiled a dll for the PocketPC. What we found
was that from the base 1.2.8 codebase the framerate fell about 10% in
240x320 mode. In 480x640 mode, the framerate fell about 90%.

For benchmarks on our Dell Axim x50 and Dell Axim x50v:
x50 (240x320) - Slightly modified 1.2.8: 103 fps
x50 (240x320) - GAPI patched 1.2.8: 93 fps
x50v (480x640) - Slightly modified 1.2.8: 9 fps (emulation kicks in)
x50v (480x640) - GAPI patched 1.2.8: 20 fps

Then, we did an experiment and allocated a 240x320 surface on the x50v.
It surprised the heck out of us by scaling up the surface for us. Very
handy.
x50v (240x320) - GAPI patched 1.2.8: 38 fps

Now, I’m not saying we patched everything correctly. In fact, I’m pretty
sure we didn’t since our code no longer responds to screen taps and
whatnot. But those are our preliminary numbers and the VGA versus QVGA
performance is pretty discouraging. Given that it was hooking in to the
GAPI backend, I was hoping for a framerate increase compared to the raw
SDL framebuffer.

So, I look forward to the work the others are doing to integrate this code
properly. I’m more than willing to test anything if a compiled ARM binary
dll can be supplied.

Todd Lang
todd.lang at kiyote.ca

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22

Would you mind sending the patched sources (as a whole .tgz or
similar) to me. I’d test them with the LuaX framework, then.
Thanks. :slight_smile:

Peter Mackay kirjoitti 27.5.2005 kello 15.19:> Hello,

Just to give everyone an update:

Thanks to Dmitry and Arisme’s hard work, progress on the Pocket PC bug
fix of SDL is going well. I have a small app up and running, and it
seems to catch keys properly.

Once we are confident that our patches work properly and don’t break
other builds I would like to submit a diff file with our fixes. I
would
also like to submit updated project files for Pocket PC, targeting the
Windows CE platforms which are commonly available out there. This
means
not just ARM support, but MIPS, SH3, x86 and emulator too.

After the bug fix patch has been submitted we can work on adding
Arisme’s GAPI video driver.

One thing which I would like feedback on though is one of our
additions
caused by a bug in eMbedded Visual C++'s emulator compiler. At the
moment public SDL functions are marked with SDLCALL, but only in
header
files. The emulator’s compiler does not implicitly carry the calling
convention from a function’s declaration to its definition (whereas
all
other compilers apparently do), causing compile problems with the
emulator target.

Dmitry did the work of adding SDLCALL to the function definitions, and
it seems to compile and work fine under Visual C++ 7 and eMbedded VC++
4. I don’t know about GCC or other compilers. If the changes break
other
builds, then we will have to either find a tidy workaround or just not
support the emulator target. I’d much rather not support the emulator
target, if it will break builds.

Kind regards,

Peter

Yes, I’m happy to incorporate WinCE patches into SDL, as long as they
work correctly and don’t break other ports. My only reluctance would
be that I don’t have any way of testing them myself, so I would
suggest coordinating with the various WinCE ports available to get
one meta-patch that can be added to CVS.
See ya, -Sam Lantinga, Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment

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