On Fri, Jul 09, 1999 at 10:59:58AM +0100, Steve Woodford wrote:
> Nik Clayton wrote:
> 
> > I'm considering buying the Empeg in-car MP3 player
> > (http://www.empeg.com/).
> > 
> > The technical info at http://www.empeg.com/tech.html says that the unit
> > uses a 220MHz StrongARM S-1100-DA.  The NetBSD ARM page says that NetBSD
> > is compatible with the ARM processor, which is great.  I just wanted to
> > double check that it's compatible with this particular ARM processor.
> 
> However, there is no COMPAT_LINUX for the ARM architecture so Empeg's MP3
> decoder software, et al, won't run under NetBSD. You also can't just use
> something like "mpegplay" from the Ports/Packages collection either as they
> depend on fast floating point. Since the StrongARM has no hardware floating
> point, performance will suck big time. There are several fixed point MP3
> implementations knocking around, but I haven't seem them in source form. (I
> assume Empeg's MP3 algorithm is fixed point).

If the EMPEG player is using an SA1100, as the tech page says, then the MP3
decoding is probably being done on the AMP (Advanced Media Processor), this
is effectively a co-processor which can be loaded with it's own program and
told to go away and do it's stuff independently of the main processor. I
think that this is how Acorn had a machine decoding 2 full MPEG2 streams in
real time with a software-only decoder around when the SA1100 was launched.

Ian.