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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AndyFC on November 12, 2008, 08:29:40 PM
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I went to teh MAG bash in Coventry (brilliant event, thank you to all the organisers) a few weeks ago and one major thing struck me during a demo of OS 4 on the SAM, during a part where the presenter mentioned that a new SAM board is coming out with more PCI slots.
Why are we stuck with PCI slots and the limited array of graphics cards? Surely an AGP slot or PCI-X wouldn't be too hard to implement now, or am I missing something?
Edit: Sorry, I meant PCIe (PCI Express), just the wrong abbreviation.
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In case you haven't noticed: AGP is dead and PCI-X is rapidly losing life as well (don't think there ever was a single PCI-X gfx card).
PCIe is the way forward with the industry currently moving from PCIe 1.x to 2.0.
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Yes, so AGP is dead, and that supersceded PCI, so surely PCi for graphics cards is dead too?
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Modern graphics cards are normally PCI-e (PCI-express). For stuff like soundcards and network cards PCI still is the norm.
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I was trying to point out that AGP wouldn't put you in a much better position than PCI (except for the 2nd hand market).
OTOH, a AGP to PCI adapter can be fairly simple if the firmware/chipset support such and either use single slot PCI or two (bridged) busses - but that would lower flexibility or raise costs.
PCIe is a technology that is not easily implemented in CPLD and would require substantial additional logic/codecs, so in small volume markets it's no choice, unfortunately.
Additionally, another major problem of a niche market is the availability of drivers, so supporting current hardware is not realistic anyway. When looking at price / performance trade-offs, PCI is a rather reasonable choice as long as there's any hardware available.
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For stuff like soundcards and network cards PCI still is the norm.
Well, the market for soundcards and NICs has grown comparatively small with virtually every sold mainboard sporting onboard components. It'll probably shift from PCI to PCIe within the next two years.
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pci slots will be around for ages, pci-e is just a superset of pci. agp is nothing but a 4x pci slot. so it shouldne bt much more hassle but agp slots limit you to ... agp cards only.. pci slots let you put in anything pci.
pci isnt going anywhere (in a world that still ships psi and rs232 connectors on mobos).
at least with pci-e its more than just gfx cards (unlike agp).
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AGP was something like a crutch for eliminating the then PCI bottleneck. PCI, AGP and PCIe look extremely similar from the software side, but electrically they differ largely (PCI/AGP) to completely (PCI/PCIe).
Unlike PCI, AGP is not a bus but a point-to-point interface, so it's impossible to build a simple adapter without bridge logic.
PCIe is also point-to-point, so it allows substantial upgrading of the slots (or rather ports) while still allowing full downward compatibility for older cards - this has always been a problem with PCI and obstructed faster development. PCIe is developing much faster than PCI and probably will be around even longer than its predecessor.
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No documents -> no drivers..
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The problem has been the lack of chipsets.
In a way, you could even say that AGP put bullet holes in many of the efforts to resuscitate the Amiga 199x-through-yesterday. They took a long time to arrive and there were never a plethora of such on the market.
Now that PCIe will be the "one true bus" for a while, if PowerPC-land can survive the next few years it should be easier to design systems that don't have to come out completely obsolete.
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So the main inhibitor is development cost for a PCIe bus, and there is little point developing for AGP.
Out of interest, I looked on the price comparison site kelkoo.co.uk for Graphics Cards and it cam eup with 15 PCI cards, 18 AGP and 331 PCI Express cards (Radeon 9250 for £31 from Micro Direct for anyone with OS 4.1 btw).
On the other hand I suppose that we Amigans are used to limited-availability hardware.
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AndyFC wrote:
Why are we stuck with PCI slots and the limited array of graphics cards? Surely an AGP slot or PCI-X wouldn't be too hard to implement now, or am I missing something?
Enough people have already said that AGP is on the way out. With the Amigaone, its 2x AGP slot means that newer AGP cards aren't supported anyway, but PCI graphics cards are.
BTW, I'm working on supporting better cards (http://hdrlab.org.nz/radeonhd-driver/).
Hans
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The CPU chip used on SAM440 does not have PCIe built-in. Some other PowerPC chips do. If they use such a different chip on a future SAM design, then we're in luck. Otherwise they could use a bridge chip to get PCI to PCIe.
Now, the graphics cards are x16 slots, having 16 PCIe lanes. The biggest PCIe port on any SOC PowerPC CPU I know of is x8, such as Freescale's 8641d. AMCC may have one with x8, nto sure, I remember them having some x4s somewhere. Many are x4 or x1. You could still connect and use a graphics card to a smaller port, but you'd only have the performance of the x4 or x1 port it's connected to. I'm perfectly happy with that. I believe AMCC also has PCIe2 on one of their newest chips, which doubles the data rate on a single lane, so their x4 version 2 may be roughly equivalent to Freescales version 1 x8 port, but you need the graphics chip to support PCIeV2 top benefit from that, I think some do this now.
Now, the board vendor needs to decide if it's worth doing that. Do the customers that would keep them in business need or want PCIe? Or would the added cost make the board unattractive to them? The Amiga market today alone isn't going to keep them in business for very long... They may want to give us PCIe slots but cannot make a successful business of it. Or they may have something in design that we just haven't heard about yet.
You could use one of these in a PCI slot to have the equivalent of them putting it on the motherboard:
http://www.semiconductorstore.com/cart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=5927#details
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For today Amiga hardware like Sam and Mediator are, PCI is fine solution. Procesor is very slow and beter grphic have no point.. If it have point then again PCI is not problem. Problem are drivers for newest PCI grphic cards..
Like this: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/news/article.php/3758081
http://www.albatron.com.tw/English/Product/VGA/pro_detail.asp?rlink=Specification&no=253
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@AndyFC
What were you expecting, a multi media desktop? :crazy:
Dammy
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A design based on the 8640 (the single core version would be most suitable in an Amiga context) coupled with an AMD SB750 southbridge would bring a quite nice machine:
- One (or two) e600 core with altivec running at 1.25GHz
- PCI Express x16 slot for graphic cards (8 lanes connected)
- 4 Gigabit Ethernet connectors
- Up to 6 SATA 3.0 Gbit/s hard disk drives, with RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1 support
- eSATA
- 1 IDE channel for HyperFlash module
- Up to 14 USB ports (12 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 1.1)
- HD Audio
- Infrared receiver/transmitter port compatible with IrDA standards
- Super I/O (not really needed with that many USB's?)
Make it as a Micro-ATX motherboard. A perfect little cost effective two-chip desktop!
With the dual core version, you could even have two operating systems running at the same time! :-)
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amiga_3k wrote:
Modern graphics cards are normally PCI-e (PCI-express). For stuff like soundcards and network cards PCI still is the norm.
It's really only a minor point but actually, modern IBM compatible boards are coming with few if any PCI slots anymore. PCIe is quickly becoming the norm for even addon sound cards.
Asus, Creative both have PCIe cards out. Of course with built on 7.1 audio many people don't even have a sound "card" anymore.
I love that AmigaOS 4.1 has a home now but I'd hope that future boards would eliminate things like the FPGA and add PCIe slots instead.
-Nyle
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coupled with an AMD SB750 southbridge
Is this possible? I know the Uli Electronics M1575 southbridge was intended to be used with AMD northbridge and was a standard PCI-Express endpoint, but Uli told me the M1573 was NOT a standard endpoint and thus could not be used with PCI-Express switches and things like that for an MPC8641 based design at the time. Does anyone know better than this? Wasn't clear if it could work connected directly to the CPU's PCI-Express port, it may have or may not have.
What is A-Link Express II? as seen in block diagram at:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/9910/amd_790gx_chipset_with_sb750_arrives/index.html
Is the SB750 a standard PCI-Express endpoint device? If not, it may not be usable in your concept. I tried finding out this for the SB600 but never really did find an answer. Considering that M1573 was NOT, other A-Link devices also might not be. I was realy disappointed when Nvidia bought Uli. They became impossible to talk to at that point. :( Does anyone know if M1575 is still available/sold by Nvidia? They don't bother to answer my queries from an "embedded system platform designer".
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/46155_sb600_rrg_pub_3.03.pdf
kindof sounds like SB600 is not generic PCI-Express, sounds like it's specifically designed for AMD northbridge chipset.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_chipsets
says: "Note 1: A-Link Express and A-Link Express II is essentially PCI-Express x4 lanes, so that any PCI Express capable southbridge can be used (such as ULI M1573/M1575)." This may bea unidirectional situation, where PCI-Express standard devices work onteh Alink bus, but it's not clear that Alink devices work on standard PCI-Express bus. OK, "bus" is wrong word for PCI-Express, but I'm not going to go back and fix my mistake here. :p
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_14603_14620%5E14623,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/42119_sb600_ds_3.05.pdf
If AMD's Alink southbridge chips can work as standard PCI-Express endpoint devices, compatible with a switch, I'd be very interested to know.
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The Sam has built-in VGA. It's not like it's a gaming platform anyway, so why worry?
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I love that AmigaOS 4.1 has a home now but I'd hope that future boards would eliminate things like the FPGA and add PCIe slots instead.
problem is, many embedded industry customers like having FPGAs around. If that's who's paying the bills for this board development and keep Acube and friends in business, then that's how it's going to be.
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Wasnt the SAM's chip originally designed for an interactive toaster anyhow :-)
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@billt
That's at least my understanding. Regarding the ULI 1575, that one is being used in Freescale's "HPCN 8641/8640 Development board" (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MCEVALHPCN).
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Regarding the ULI 1575, that one is being used in Freescale's "HPCN 8641/8640 Development board".
I'm curious how to get the chip or if they bought some some time ago and have them on a shelf somewhere. And US$5000!!! Yikes! Oh, another distributor only charges US$4000. Much better. :)
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AGP may be dead but I can still buy a new NVidia 6 series card with 128Mb for less then £25 from dabs or novatech. Sure floats my boat more than a ancient Voodoo card. :roll:
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Tripitaka wrote:
AGP may be dead but I can still buy a new NVidia 6 series card with 128Mb for less then £25 from dabs or novatech. Sure floats my boat more than a ancient Voodoo card. :roll:
Unfortunately NVidia won't give anyone the developer doumentation required to write drivers, so you won't be able to use it in an Amiga. You can get Radeon graphics cards as plain PCI (I have a Radeon HD 2400 pro PCI card myself) and NVidia cards too.
Do you really think that they should waste their time developing hardware with AGP when PCI-Express chipsets are available? I certainly don't.
Hans
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So do people think that SAM will (eventually) go straight to PCI-Express and skip AGP?
Also, am I correct in thinking that you cannot plug an AGP card in a PCI slot?
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NovaCoder wrote:
So do people think that SAM will (eventually) go straight to PCI-Express and skip AGP?
Why bother with AGP when PCI-Express solutions are readily available? I'm expecting them to jump to PCI-Express. Particularly if they continue using embedded chips. PCI-Express is more useful for embedded systems than AGP since AGP is for graphics only, but PCI-E is generic.
Also, am I correct in thinking that you cannot plug an AGP card in a PCI slot?
Correct.
Hans
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So do people think that SAM will (eventually) go straight to PCI-Express and skip AGP?
Absolutely. You can get SOC (System On Chip) PowerPC processors with PCI-Express coming directly out of them. 8641, 8640, 8610, 440spe, and the 460gtx even has gen2 PCI-Express for double the bandwidth per lane. There's more than this small list too. Stick one of them ports to a x16 slot and plug in your graphics card. (These CPUs don' thave a full x16 PCI-Express port, graphics cards are generally x16 connections, but you can run just about any card from any port size, such as a x16 graphics card off a x1, or a x4, x8, etc. The x16 slot may not be fully connected, but electrically it's compatible and physically fits, so all is good, just does not give full bandwidth the graphics chip is capable of) And vice-versa, a x1 card will work in any larger PCI-Express slot, as will x4 and x8 work in slots larger than they are themselves. PCI-Express is popular because it's for more than just graphics cards.
To add an AGP slot, you either do the PCI bus in an AGP slot trick like Efika's adaptor (and I do not think that just any AGP card works properly due to voltage differences in newer AGP cards), or you make up some AGP/PCI bridge logic in an FPGA since that doesn't seem to be an off-the-shelf chip these days and run your AGP graphics card on a PCI bus anyway. From a motherboard perspective, if it's electrically PCI, might as well let the higher-volume customers put a standard PCI card in it... There's very little demand for AGP in the high-volume PowerPC market today, and nothing other than graphics used the AGP slot to broaden its appeal.
All works out that you're far far far more likely to see a PCI-Express graphics slot (even if not fully x16 bandwidth in the electronics) for future PowerPC motherboards than you are an AGP slot.
Also, am I correct in thinking that you cannot plug an AGP card in a PCI slot?
Correct. They're physically different and run at different voltages and have some different pinouts. Like putting a square peg into a round hole. They made it different to help prevent less advanced users from putting it in the wrong slot and breaking something.
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billt wrote:
Regarding the ULI 1575, that one is being used in Freescale's "HPCN 8641/8640 Development board".
I'm curious how to get the chip or if they bought some some time ago and have them on a shelf somewhere. And US$5000!!! Yikes! Oh, another distributor only charges US$4000. Much better. :)
If I recall correctly, Freescale sold it for some $1500 for a limited period of a few months when the 8640 was launched. Won't help you now, though... ;-)
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takemehomegrandma wrote:
billt wrote:
Regarding the ULI 1575, that one is being used in Freescale's "HPCN 8641/8640 Development board".
I'm curious how to get the chip or if they bought some some time ago and have them on a shelf somewhere. And US$5000!!! Yikes! Oh, another distributor only charges US$4000. Much better. :)
If I recall correctly, Freescale sold it for some $1500 for a limited period of a few months when the 8640 was launched. Won't help you now, though... ;-)
Which would be a much more accurate approximate of what the boards themselves cost (though probably still inflated). The 5000 USD will include some form of technical support for developers, I think...
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niklasni1 wrote:
If I recall correctly, Freescale sold it for some $1500 for a limited period of a few months when the 8640 was launched. Won't help you now, though... ;-)
Which would be a much more accurate approximate of what the boards themselves cost (though probably still inflated). The 5000 USD will include some form of technical support for developers, I think...[/quote]
I think the entire development package was included in that price. It was a limited time promotion offer though.
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@billt
The 8377E (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MPC8377E) is an interesting processor in the Sam/Efika range. It has USB2 controller, dual gigabit ethernet controllers, dual SATA2 controllers, a traditional PCI 2.3 controller, and two PCI-E (used either as 2-x1 or 1-x2).
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would be interesting to see how that chip (8377e) handled with saturated dual gigabit ethernet.. most of these SOC's really struggle on the bandwidth front. there is a lot of bandwidth hungry connections hanging off that single chip...
and the two ethernet lanes are shared on the two PCI x1 express lanes.
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@yakumo9275
Of course I don't think one should expect miracles performance wise. The point is *low cost*, just like the CPU's in the Sam and Efika, and I think it could be a strong candidate there!
There are numerous other CPU's mentioned in this thread already that will offer better performance and better features, but at a higher cost of course! ;-)
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Hans_ wrote:
Unfortunately NVidia won't give anyone the developer doumentation required to write drivers, so you won't be able to use it in an Amiga. You can get Radeon graphics cards as plain PCI (I have a Radeon HD 2400 pro PCI card myself) and NVidia cards too.
Do you really think that they should waste their time developing hardware with AGP when PCI-Express chipsets are available? I certainly don't.
Hans
:lol: hell no! I got an SLI rig for a PC and I'm deeply dismayed that I can't have an amiga even close in terms of power graphics. I was just making comment on the "AGP is dead" posts. AGP cards are available at Dabs and Novatech and I don't see any Amigas on their websites. Does that count as dead yet? :-D
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Tripitaka wrote:
:lol: hell no! I got an SLI rig for a PC and I'm deeply dismayed that I can't have an amiga even close in terms of power graphics.
What would you do with it? We haven't got anything like Direct3D 10 that would make full use of it, not to mention the lack of 2008 console level hit games...
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sorry i just had to say this.... :-D
Also, am I correct in thinking that you cannot plug an AGP card in a PCI slot?
you can if you push hard enough. i've had to see and deal with the results of people installing their own graphics cards, the damage from that, a PCI card in an AGP slot, and also PCI in PCI express.
i especially liked the "it showed me a screen the first time i dun turned it on" yeah right. what of? wrything electical agony? just before something went bang and the smoke came out? :lol:
its like there are some people that just shouldn't be allowed near electronics ;-)
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Either I am overlooking the obvious or something,but don't all the Amiga-type machines since the 1200/4000 use a standard PC graphics rather than special C= ICs?
Is the lack of AmigaOS 4.0/4.1 for efika only licensing permission?
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takemehomegrandma wrote:
We haven't got anything like Direct3D 10 that would make full use of it, not to mention the lack of 2008 console level hit games...
chicken - egg - chicken - egg etc....
let's eat :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: - while we all wait for something to happen.
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Tripitaka wrote:
let's eat :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: - while we all wait for something to happen.
I think we might need a bit more popcorn ... just to be on the safe side :-)