[Arm-netbook] uh-oh....

[Gordan Bobic]

On 12/29/2011 12:37 PM, lkcl luke wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Gordan Bobic<gordan at bobich.net>  wrote:
>
>> What's the Volari's idle power draw like? While 1-2W is still a lot on
>> top of a recent Cortex A9 it might just about be borderline good enough.
>> Can it do 1080p decoding in realtime?
>
>   gordan, when i said it was 2D i really wasn't arseing about :)  it
> does *nothing* but a few 2D drawing primitives (hence the low power
> consumption).
>
>   so it's a bit more sophisticated than a framebuffer.  err... that's it :)

Sounds like a basic early '90s "accelerated" graphics cards. Hardware 
cursor and hardware rectangle fill but nothing else. Fine for normal 
business use. If the bandwidth to the frame buffer is sufficient and the 
CPU can handle the decoding, you could have the CPU write straight to 
the frame buffer memory. With a bit of DMA trickery and re-mapping, you 
could even pre-render frames to avoid drop-outs, and re-point to the 
pre-rendered frame every time.

Does anyone know if a NEON equipped ARM can handle real-time video 
decoding at a sufficient speed?

Gordan