[missing_K-W]

What I find amazing is that the PB with a single core GPU can outperform the graphics capabilities of ios and android which currently run dual-core gpu's

Dead Space is just a teaser of what the NDK will allow on the platform

QNX HH's and the PB with multi-core gpu's are gonna run circles around Android and ios..

Maybe in 2017....ios and Android will be optimized for multi-core....just maybe

QNX>ios & Android

I am just stating how the performance of PB's single core gpu is very impressive compared to the competition
's offering of dual core gpu's

My name is missing_K-W and I am a RIM fanboy!

[howarmat]

pretty sure that apples GPU kills both android and the PB. have a look on the anandtech site

[xsacha]

Have you played Dead Space on iPad 2?
Don't kid yourself. iPad 2's GPU kicks this one (and every other one) off a cliff. It's quite overkill.

[missing_K-W]

pretty sure that apples GPU kills both android and the PB. have a look on the anandtech site

This is in reference to the PB running a single core vs multi-core gpu .....not gonna look good on Android and ios when QNX on BB's start running multi-core gpu's

Looking forward to 2012....ios and Android aren't optimized for multi-core.....Tablet OS and QNX BB's are however

[s219]

What I find amazing is that the PB with a single core GPU can outperform the graphics capabilities of ios and android which currently run dual-core gpu's

You're off by about a factor of 8X-16X in the wrong direction if comparing to the iPad 2's GPU -- it spanks the PlayBook so soundly, it's not funny. Even the iPad 1 with an older single-core GPU is competitive with the PlayBook.

This is in reference to the PB running a single core vs multi-core gpu .....not gonna look good on Android and ios when QNX on BB's start running multi-core gpu's

Looking forward to 2012....ios and Android aren't optimized for multi-core.....Tablet OS and QNX BB's are however

Nice try with the backpedaling. But you're making two poor assumptions. First, the competition doesn't stand still. While RIM released year-old GPU hardware in the PlayBook, Apple leapfrogged them dramatically with the iPad 2 hardware. Right now RIM's track record is not great in this area.

Second, you're wrong about "optimization" for multi-core in so many ways. OS level multi-processing capability happens at the CPU level, not the GPU. GPU optimization happens in the graphics driver and in the OpenGL frameworks in the SDK. RIM is starting from scratch there (QNX has a heritage, but RIM didn't start using OpenGL until about ten seconds ago in industry time).

Going back to OS level multiprocessing capability on the CPU, there's currently nothing in BlackBerry Tablet OS that is any better for multiprocessing than the other OSes out there (in fact, it may be at a disadvantage for practical multiprocessing). Remember, iOS descended from Mac OS X, which is a BSD UNIX OS with a long history of multiprocessing. Android is based on Linux, which has a long history of multiprocessing. Both are used extensively on supercomputers for parallel computations. QNX is not (it runs traffics lights and power plants for the most part).

I am glad you're excited about Dead Space, and it's great to see on the PowerBook, but cripes, it's not even close to being state of the art for OpenGL on mobile. Get your facts straight.

[missing_K-W]

You're off by about a factor of 8X-16X in the wrong direction if comparing to the iPad 2's GPU -- it spanks the PlayBook so soundly, it's not funny. Even the iPad 1 with an older single-core GPU is competitive with the PlayBook.




Nice try with the backpedaling. But you're making two poor assumptions. First, the competition doesn't stand still. While RIM released year-old GPU hardware in the PlayBook, Apple leapfrogged them dramatically with the iPad 2 hardware. Right now RIM's track record is not great in this area.

Second, you're wrong about "optimization" for multi-core in so many ways. OS level multi-processing capability happens at the CPU level, not the GPU. GPU optimization happens in the graphics driver and in the OpenGL frameworks in the SDK. RIM is starting from scratch there (QNX has a heritage, but RIM didn't start using OpenGL until about ten seconds ago in industry time).

Going back to OS level multiprocessing capability on the CPU, there's currently nothing in BlackBerry Tablet OS that is any better for multiprocessing than the other OSes out there (in fact, it may be at a disadvantage for practical multiprocessing). Remember, iOS descended from Mac OS X, which is a BSD UNIX OS with a long history of multiprocessing. Android is based on Linux, which has a long history of multiprocessing. Both are used extensively on supercomputers for parallel computations. QNX is not (it runs traffics lights and power plants for the most part).

I am glad you're excited about Dead Space, and it's great to see on the PowerBook, but cripes, it's not even close to being state of the art for OpenGL on mobile. Get your facts straight.

It boils down to how efficient and how the NDK's of each platform will allow hardware interaction...

Mico-kernel vs monolithic in embedded devices will allow for QNX to utilize the cpu and gpu much more efficiently...allowing for future BB products to out perform in relative terms that of the competition....

I believe you are a little mistaken about multi-core support...QNX has support for up to 32 cores...more with DMP...

Android and ios both do not multi-task very well...and will not in the forseeable future...RIM's NDK for the PB will bring the multi-tasking power of QNX on BB and make for a very powerful single application

RIM may be new to OpenGL support, however RIM has the means and resources to provide a vastly superior support of OpenGL as the platform evolves...QNX Software Systems supports the state of the art in OpenGL....it's only a matter of time before this is exploited extensively in RIM's NDK's for QNX BB platform

Neither ios or Android have support for SMP

iOS descended from Mac OS X, which is a BSD UNIX OS with a long history of multiprocessing. Android is based on Linux, which has a long history of multiprocessing. Both are used extensively on supercomputers for parallel computations. QNX is not (it runs traffics lights and power plants for the most part).

QNX is deployed in Cisco's router's...So I believe QNX has been deployed in much more taxing environments then ios or Androids ancestry has ever been

[greatwiseone]

Going back to OS level multiprocessing capability on the CPU, there's currently nothing in BlackBerry Tablet OS that is any better for multiprocessing than the other OSes out there (in fact, it may be at a disadvantage for practical multiprocessing). Remember, iOS descended from Mac OS X, which is a BSD UNIX OS with a long history of multiprocessing. Android is based on Linux, which has a long history of multiprocessing. Both are used extensively on supercomputers for parallel computations. QNX is not (it runs traffics lights and power plants for the most part).

.

It all goes back to the argument between microkernel v. monolithic kernel architectures (I know Mac OS X was built on top of microkernel, but it's not really a microkernel OS). Some people (QNX) thinks microkernels are better (for stability, etc.), whereas others think monolithic kernels are much better (e.g. Linus Torvalds). I'm not a programmer and can't really say which is better. From what I can tell, there are pros and cons to both architectures.

However, just saying QNX runs "traffic lights and power plants" clearly shows you haven't done much digging into what QNX actually does. We are not talking about any power plants, but NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, where reliability of the systems are key. It's used in Cisco's most data intensive routers, the Canada Arm, surgical equipment, and millions of cars. You don't hear about them because it works in the background and doesn't mess up. This is a good read on where QNX's OS is being used:

Customers

[FourOhFour]

QNX is not (it runs traffics lights and power plants for the most part).

I still remember back in around '95 downloading the QNX demo on a single floppy disk that could do internet, web browser, etc. This was back when win95 was just coming out and didn't even ship with a TCP/IP stack

[s219]

However, just saying QNX runs "traffic lights and power plants" clearly shows you haven't done much digging into what QNX actually does. We are not talking about any power plants, but NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, where reliability of the systems are key. It's used in Cisco's most data intensive routers, the Canada Arm, surgical equipment, and millions of cars. You don't hear about them because it works in the background and doesn't mess up. This is a good read on where QNX's OS is being used:

Customers

I did a lot of coding for QNX on embedded systems many years ago. Its forte has always been in embedded systems and control systems because of its capabilities and its ability to run in a lightweight environment. This puts it in a much different category than desktop or mainframe operating systems in terms of multiprocessing applications. For the kinds of things developers do in software on tablets, there is a much closer relationship to traditional "computing" uses of multiprocessing on Linux/UNIX than what has been done on QNX for embedded hardware over the years. That is a very important distinction.

I give QNX full credit for its core competancies. But very little of that carries over into BlackBerry Tablet OS when we're comparing against legacy desktop OSes like Linux/UNIX and their descendants in the mobile space. RIM is starting from scratch with their OS, and how it succeeds going forward is far more dependent on what RIM builds on top of the QNX foundation and how well their SDK is put together. Very little of it will tie back to the core capabilities of QNX or its heritage on embedded systems.

[s219]

Android and ios both do not multi-task very well...and will not in the forseeable future...RIM's NDK for the PB will bring the multi-tasking power of QNX on BB and make for a very powerful single application

RIM may be new to OpenGL support, however RIM has the means and resources to provide a vastly superior support of OpenGL as the platform evolves...QNX Software Systems supports the state of the art in OpenGL....it's only a matter of time before this is exploited extensively in RIM's NDK's for QNX BB platform

Neither ios or Android have support for SMP

QNX is deployed in Cisco's router's...So I believe QNX has been deployed in much more taxing environments then ios or Androids ancestry has ever been

First of all, you are mistaken about multitasking and multiprocessing on the other OSes. I have run benchmarks on the iPad2 to demonstrate this. As soon as the native SDK is available on the PlayBook, I will run the same benchmark on that device for comparison and we can revisit the topic.

The OS on the PlayBook makes a much more prominent show about multitasking and multiprocessing to the user, but that is merely a visual presentation. The fact that other operating systems do not have the same visual approach doesn't mean that they are not capable of multitasking or multiprocessing. The user interface and the actual multiprocessing/multitasking are independent.

As far as "support", I can natively compile an MPI library on the other two platforms and use it to run MP computations. I can't natively compile anything on the PlayBook's OS right now.

Applications like routers go to support my point about embedded systems in the previous post I made. This has little to no relevance to computing that is done on mainframe or desktop OSes, which are closer to the PlayBook OS than anything in the embedded space. You know the capabilities of the PlayBook and what types of uses/applications it has. It should be obvious that they share a lot more in common with a desktop OS than embedded code running in a controller chip inside a router. And the types of computations developers implement in numerically-intensive tablet software are closer to scientific/engineering computations run with multiprocessing on mainframes and supercomputers than the basic control algorithms used in the embedded space.

To be honest, I think citing examples like routers takes your argument in the opposite direction you mean it to; QNX has been used in robotic toys -- you want to tell us how that makes it better for a tablet, or for multiprocessing, or for multitasking than OSes that are primarily used on desktops, mainframes, and supercomputers? QNX has a long and proud heritage in the embedded space. That doesn't mean the core competancies in that space will make it better in the tablet space.

[sookster54]

Android is very capable of taking advantage of multi-core, it's based on an OS that has had multi-core support since the late 90's.

And IMO the PB's PowerVR GPU is quite good, the iPad 2 uses PowerVR as well but only a slight generation newer.

Also missing_K-W, you're wrong on so many points, mostly about Android, and QNX is found on many engineering equipment and even hospital equipment, and such, not just traffic lights and routers. iOS 4 and older doesn't have SMP support but iOS 5 will, however Android has had it all along since the kernel is based on Linux's kernel and when you compile the source you'll see the SMP option. There's a reason why devices like the Samsung Galaxy S II and other dual core devices are blazing fast over single core, but of course the lack of apps utilizing it is the problem. I don't count tablet's Honeycomb since there aren't sources for it yet and it has a good share of annoying bugs.