x-scale processor

[mrfear]

Hi,

anyone knows how to set the x-scale processor of my ipaq 3950 at 400Mhz in a fixed way.
I will notice the difference in applications like windows media player or others which are really heavy?
Is pocket pc 2002 optimized for x-scale? I have heard that there aren't differences in performance with strongarm..

[Nitestrike]

The X-scale processor is a better processor than StrongARM, both are ARM processors. The X-scale processor was designed to regulate how much power and thus its speed by how much it is being used. A couple years a go Microsoft announced that they would requiring and only be supporting the ARM chip type (e.g. the 32bit x86 chip type, 386, 486, Pentium and Athalons too.), they also sense required 32MB or ROM with flash capabilities. At the time they were supporting The StrongARM, MIPS, and SH processors and wanted to concentrate their coding efforts into a chip that that would take full advantage and capabilities of the PPC OS into the future. This was also the reason for the requirement for the ROM, sense most only had 16MB or less. Now back to the X-scale, no CE 3.0 the base for PPC2K2 OS is not optimized for the X-scale. CE 3.0 has been around longer than the X-scale, CE 3.0 was also used for the first official iteration of the PPC OS (e.g. that in the iPAQ 31xx & 36xx series), before that they were using CE with MS writing apps for it. Microsoft has tested and made sure that there was not much loss in performance compared to the current ARM processor, the StrongARM. As always your performance also dependent on hardware implementation. They are supposedly optimizing the next version of CE, CE.Net for the X-scale, and thus the next version of the PPC OS. I know this was a long round about way to answer this, but too much information is always better than to much in this case

[mrfear]

Thank you for answering me.

I know that the operating frequency of the processor is set automatically in the range 100-400 Mhz.
Is that a way to fix it to 400 mhz?
Is the option of standby period influence the mhz setting?

[Nitestrike]

In short yes, the faster it runs the more power, battery, you will consume. But yes, the power saving features, which do something called stepping*, are what you want to turn off. I'd also make sure that you verified what type of battery consumption you get if you find a way to-do it. I would be really interested in the utilities if you find one. :D I'll look too. The power saving is built into the chip itself, that's it's draw. I'm sure sooner or later some one will write a utility, if they haven't already.


*stepping is were the processor changes it's speed in certain increments based some criteria to save energy. It's not just a strictly an on or off thing any more.