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-   -   Minor CPU Overclocking on N810? (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=29105)

InF3Kt4 2009-05-21 19:10
Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
I'm rather a bit of a noob with this device, but I am familiar with most of the in's-and'out's of CPU overclocking. I was snooping around some of configurations and hidden files on my N810 last night and found certain things that seemed to regulate how the N810 operates and makes use of the CPU. What I commonly found was many files stating that the Clock speed was "400000" (400GHz), and was wondering if modifying this value a little higher (such as "460000" as a test value) would actually cause the N810 to clock-up the CPU a bit, or if it would require a Reflash (if not burning it out), or if any difference would be noticeable at all.. Also, I found other config files in the same area that had different governor values as well as incremental clock values ("125000 250000 355000 400000" if im not mistaken), which I think it associates to different clock states such as on-demand, powersave, null, and performance modes.

I found these files in "/sys/devices/system/gpu/cpu0/cpufreq" using midnight commander.

The configuration files listed are:
cpuinfo_cur_freq (lists the current frequency the CPU is operating at. Usually displays as "400000" unless there is a heavy load, then somtimes its drops to "355000")

cpu_max_freq (always displays as "400000")

scaling_available_frequencies (lists the various clock speeds for the different cpu mode settings)

Theres a governor file that seems to associate with the scaling frequencies.

scaling_cur_freq The current optimal frequency the CPU appears to be scaled to

scaling_driver Always set to OMAP (obviously..)

scaling_max_freq Displays as "400000" in correlation to the "scaling_available_freq" maximum listed value in the file

scaling_min_freq Correlates to the lowest listed value in the "scaling_available_freq" file.


**So I just posted that to give an Idea of the values im asking about, in terms of what i may or may not be able to tweak. Basically im wondering if there is a way that modifying these basic values will actually alter the clock speed and overall performance of my system. The reason I want to speed up my system is that Theres a couple things that I would like to run certain applications such as Debian LDXE, VGBA, and certain pages in browser that bog down the system alot, and I haven't really found any reliable and accurate way to boost performance on the system. So I was thinking that these files and values looked very similar to the things you would alter in overclocking the FSB of a normal PC, or overclocking a GPU.. Just thought I would ask so as to avoid turning my IT into a PW (paperwieght lol).

attila77 2009-05-21 19:37
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Considering people are overclocking other ARM processors quite regularly (google around for GP2X overclocking), it should be possible from a hardware standpoint, the kernel/software is a different question, though, not sure if it's easy enough to do via procfs or sysfs, or if the powersave functionality will play nice with a higher clock rate. As for bricking, the risk is always there with almost any overclock. A few lockups are almost certain, but if you go too high for too long it might get permanent :)

Bundyo 2009-05-21 19:54
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Consider also the fact that N8x0 are already overclocked to 400MHz as of Chinook. The original speed was 330MHz i think.

qwerty12 2009-05-21 20:23
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
They were downclocked to 330 - the original is 400.

(Nokia switched to the 400/133(?) CPU/DSP OP mode in OS2008's kernel as opposed to 330/200 in OS2007.)

InF3Kt4 2009-05-21 20:59
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
does the GP2X apply to overclocking the ARM processor in the N810 itself, or is that ARM in general? (I.E. Windows Based PDAs such as the IPAQ)

GeneralAntilles 2009-05-22 00:10
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
The N8x0 cannot be safely overclocked. Something to do with cache or memory timings that would fry stuff. Igor elaborated about it in a thread somewhere.

InF3Kt4 2009-05-22 00:15
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Okay. So is there any way to increase the performance of the N810 at all? Im still a noob with it so I'm not too sure how I would go about doing it..

overfloat 2009-05-22 00:57
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by InF3Kt4 (Post 289084)
the Clock speed was "400000" (400GHz)
I wish my n800 ran at 400GHz

InF3Kt4 2009-05-22 02:19
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by overfloat (Post 289148)
I wish my n800 ran at 400GHz
haha yeah i realized that i put GHz instead of MHz... That would be pretty much amazing if it could run at that speed haha.. The ultimate computer system.

lpph 2009-05-22 02:27
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Also, overclocking will increase power consumption. Battery life will decrease and may heat with all the n810.

BUT, I'm not an expert and I'm talking of my experience with a Ipaq. There are apps for windows mobile that can downcloak CPU to increase battery life. An app like that may exist for n810 and also can be modified to do both over and downcloak, but I say it again I am not an expert. Also, I don't own a N810, but I think I will have one soon.

overfloat 2009-05-22 02:57
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lpph (Post 289162)
Also, overclocking will increase power consumption. Battery life will decrease and may heat with all the n810.

BUT, I'm not an expert and I'm talking of my experience with a Ipaq. There are apps for windows mobile that can downcloak CPU to increase battery life. An app like that may exist for n810 and also can be modified to do both over and downcloak, but I say it again I am not an expert. Also, I don't own a N810, but I think I will have one soon.
It should be done automatically on an on-demand basis. If you want to force one of the preset speeds (up to 400mhz) the easiest way is to use the advanced power applet.

Benson 2009-05-22 03:15
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Actually, IIRC, Igor said that most devices probably could take some CPU overclocks, or potentially a DSP overclock with the CPU fixed at 400, but that any overclocking-induced crash related to DSP/CPU communications could leave the system in a state unrescuable with tools available outside Nokia.

Basically, before you start overclocking, you want a cold-flashing setup, which to my knowledge nobody outside of Nokia has actually done -- there's a lot of information out there, though, so with a little work that should be doable. (Flasher-3.0 supports it, you just need to make a cable and get everything talking right...)

maacruz 2009-05-22 18:18
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Benson (Post 289169)
Actually, IIRC, Igor said that most devices probably could take some CPU overclocks, or potentially a DSP overclock with the CPU fixed at 400, but that any overclocking-induced crash related to DSP/CPU communications could leave the system in a state unrescuable with tools available outside Nokia.

Basically, before you start overclocking, you want a cold-flashing setup, which to my knowledge nobody outside of Nokia has actually done -- there's a lot of information out there, though, so with a little work that should be doable. (Flasher-3.0 supports it, you just need to make a cable and get everything talking right...)
What about this?
http://www.bu3sch.de/joomla/index.ph...serial-console
Would it work for a cold flash?

bunanson 2009-05-22 19:53
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by overfloat (Post 289148)
I wish my n800 ran at 400GHz
Did you call Nokia for a waranty replacement? I would,

bun

qole 2009-05-23 06:22
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
In my own personal curmudgeonly opinion, the CPU speed is not the problem with the N8x0. The lack of hardware graphics acceleration is the problem. They're playing Quake 3 on our chipset (the OMAP2) over in Symbian world.

Also, in my own grouchy little opinion, the poor read-write speeds of the available storage technology (the built-in flash and the current crop of affordable [mini]SD cards) is also a huge factor in the apparent sluggishness of the system, overshadowing the CPU speed like an apartment building beside a bungalow.

Munk 2009-05-23 06:45
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
I remember the thread a long time ago with Igor talking about this. However, I always have been one to overclock all of my PDA's and desktop CPU's, GPU's. If someone here is able to make a kernal that theoretically would run the CPU/DSP at 433/166 or whatever it mathematically ends up being, I wouldn't mind being a guinea pig.

Matan 2009-05-23 07:38
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qole (Post 289367)
In my own personal curmudgeonly opinion, the CPU speed is not the problem with the N8x0. The lack of hardware graphics acceleration is the problem. They're playing Quake 3 on our chipset (the OMAP2) over in Symbian world.
They are using smaller screens - the OMAP was designed with a maximum screen size of 640x480 in mind, so this is all the video ram available on board. If you use system ram for video ram you get a huge performance hit (about 33% on OMAP1 in my tests), due to the low memory bandwidth of the OMAP.

About your second suggestion - my guess is that it is more about low amount of ram than storage speed. Of course, faster storage means faster swap, so it will certainly improve the situation.

bunanson 2009-05-23 08:37
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matan (Post 289374)
...If you use system ram for video ram you get a huge performance hit (about 33% on OMAP1 in my tests), due to the low memory bandwidth of the OMAP.
....
This is a start....Mind to show us more, like how to do it, UH?
bun

Matan 2009-05-23 08:59
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
You can't do it, since it is an hardware issue. It was up to Nokia to do it, and they decided to use an external video controller, instead of the internal OMAP one. Thus gaining system performance, but losing on video performance.

I know about this, since the company I worked for designed an OMAP based 800x480 device, and we faced the same dilemma.

InF3Kt4 2009-05-24 00:31
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Benson (Post 289169)
Actually, IIRC, Igor said that most devices probably could take some CPU overclocks, or potentially a DSP overclock with the CPU fixed at 400, but that any overclocking-induced crash related to DSP/CPU communications could leave the system in a state unrescuable with tools available outside Nokia.

Basically, before you start overclocking, you want a cold-flashing setup, which to my knowledge nobody outside of Nokia has actually done -- there's a lot of information out there, though, so with a little work that should be doable. (Flasher-3.0 supports it, you just need to make a cable and get everything talking right...)
I thought the bootable flash from computer (what I did to update my FW when I first recieved my N810) basically rendered the N810 unbrickable since you could reflash by connecting USB to PC and then holding the home button down while powering up. Would a CPU related crash prevent this from happening or something?

InF3Kt4 2009-05-24 00:35
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
The basic thing that came to mind with it was remembering back when I used to hack my PSP. The processing speed I used to clock it up to was 333/166 and it could run any game or video file at a consistent 60fps.. But then again, The PSP has a different GPU than the N810. This didn't occur to me at the time I wrote this thread, but it is still an interesting concept to possibly pursue at some point.

Now my main issue now, from what I have been reading, is this. I just bought a new 8Gig SDHC card today, but before I do anything with it, I thought I would ask about being directed to/recieving information about a few things that I have seen elsewhere. I've read a few mentions about people partitioning thier N810, using "swap" (still not sure about exactly what this is), and using thier external card for VRAM, but I haven't found adequate information on how I could do this, or why I would personally need to (my google skills are a bit lacking I suppose). Would anyone be able to shed some light on these things?

Aisu 2009-05-24 01:08
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by InF3Kt4 (Post 289490)
The basic thing that came to mind with it was remembering back when I used to hack my PSP. The processing speed I used to clock it up to was 333/166 and it could run any game or video file at a consistent 60fps.. But then again, The PSP has a different GPU than the N810. This didn't occur to me at the time I wrote this thread, but it is still an interesting concept to possibly pursue at some point.

Now my main issue now, from what I have been reading, is this. I just bought a new 8Gig SDHC card today, but before I do anything with it, I thought I would ask about being directed to/recieving information about a few things that I have seen elsewhere. I've read a few mentions about people partitioning thier N810, using "swap" (still not sure about exactly what this is), and using thier external card for VRAM, but I haven't found adequate information on how I could do this, or why I would personally need to (my google skills are a bit lacking I suppose). Would anyone be able to shed some light on these things?
Swap space is space on a disk used as ram (in Linuxland, anyways). Its slower than actual ram and it reads/writes to your card/disk a lot... I always use the max that my N810 will let me, though. :)

(It uses the internal memory card on the N810, no option to use and external.)

GeneralAntilles 2009-05-24 02:27
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aisu (Post 289494)
. . . it reads/writes to your card/disk a lot...
Swappiness is set to 0, so, no, it doesn't tend to swap a lot unless it really needs to.

maacruz 2009-05-24 09:27
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aisu (Post 289494)
Swap space is space on a disk used as ram (in Linuxland, anyways). Its slower than actual ram and it reads/writes to your card/disk a lot... I always use the max that my N810 will let me, though. :)

(It uses the internal memory card on the N810, no option to use and external.)
Elaborating a bit more, swap space is used as a storage space for RAM contents, so when RAM is full the cpu can move some of the less used RAM content to swap (until it is needed again) and free some RAM for new programs. This is very useful, as you can work as if you had more RAM than you really have; the problem is, once you have two programs competing for cpu and there is not enough RAM for both, the cpu will have to move them back and forth from RAM to swap, and this will make things veeeery slow.
It isn't an exclusive linuxland concept, since windows uses swap files since win95. Linux can use a file or a dedicated partition for swap space, and can use more than one swap space.
Although the maemo control panel won't let you choose where you want the sawp space to be, it is quite easy to have it anywhere. For example, since I run from mmc (cloned system), I have put an swap file under the system's root (/) directory.

InF3Kt4 2009-05-24 10:01
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by maacruz (Post 289546)
Elaborating a bit more, swap space is used as a storage space for RAM contents, so when RAM is full the cpu can move some of the less used RAM content to swap (until it is needed again) and free some RAM for new programs. This is very useful, as you can work as if you had more RAM than you really have; the problem is, once you have two programs competing for cpu and there is not enough RAM for both, the cpu will have to move them back and forth from RAM to swap, and this will make things veeeery slow.
It isn't an exclusive linuxland concept, since windows uses swap files since win95. Linux can use a file or a dedicated partition for swap space, and can use more than one swap space.
Although the maemo control panel won't let you choose where you want the sawp space to be, it is quite easy to have it anywhere. For example, since I run from mmc (cloned system), I have put an swap file under the system's root (/) directory.
How would I go about doing this?

maacruz 2009-05-24 10:43
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by InF3Kt4 (Post 289548)
How would I go about doing this?
I assume you are asking about running the system from mmc. There are several ways to do it, this is a easy start
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...586#post165586
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ht=ESC+pressed

If you just want to have swap space enabled, just go the easy way and use the control panel.

bunanson 2009-05-24 12:12
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by maacruz (Post 289546)
...since I run from mmc (cloned system), I have put an swap file under the system's root (/) directory.
How to do this, just create a swap file under /root? TIA,

bun

lma 2009-05-24 12:51
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles (Post 289509)
Swappiness is set to 0
1 actually, although there isn't much difference between 1 and 0.

maacruz 2009-05-24 14:02
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
1 Attachment(s)
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunanson (Post 289559)
How to do this, just create a swap file under /root? TIA,

bun
Do not do that unless running from mmc, right?
I also assume you have enough space for the swap file.
First, see this post:
http://talk.maemo.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=289559
Then, where it says
Code:
  # put swap in external mmc
  export OSSO_SWAP=$MMC_MOUNTPOINT
  # ke-recv doesn't honor OSSO_SWAP
  export INTERNAL_MMC_SWAP_LOCATION=$MMC_MOUNTPOINT
you change it to
Code:
  # put swap in external mmc
  export OSSO_SWAP="/" #or whatever directory you want it to be
  # ke-recv doesn't honor OSSO_SWAP
  export INTERNAL_MMC_SWAP_LOCATION="$OSSO_SWAP"
To make it easy, here you have the updated scripts. Just untar as root in /
then reboot the tablet, and use the control panel to enable swap.

GeneralAntilles 2009-05-24 15:36
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by lma (Post 289561)
1 actually, although there isn't much difference between 1 and 0.
Ah, well, it used to be 0.

InF3Kt4 2009-05-24 20:32
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Yeah, running the swap from root. But I'm going to follow the tutorials you linked first so that I can run the OS from MMC, before doing so. That will actually help with the issue of me putting Ubuntu Jaunty onto my N810 as well. If im not mistaken, running from MMC will allow me to be able to partition a larger bit for the full Ubuntu Jaunty since I wont be limited by the 2GB onboard chip, correct?

blaznc 2010-04-13 17:10
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
I am assuming that most people have moved on to the n900, would anyone be interested in trying to overclock their n810 just for kicks? Has there been any progress on this front?

docwebhead 2010-05-08 20:53
Re: Minor CPU Overclocking on N810?
 
Sure! Give me a command to use, and I'll try it out!


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