This is the first of two updates on the Project Prometheus/Amy'05 design that we will be releasing this week. The second part before BB4, is scheduled for Wednesday 13th September 2006 (US pacfic time).
The PowerPC CPU has been improved upon, we now have an IBM 750GL @ 800 MHz with 1 MByte of L2 cache, against the previous 512K of cache. The design of the motherboard will support 750GL CPUs upto 1 GHz core speed in the future. The 800 MHz part was chosen as the baseline as it represents the best price/performance mix.
To keep the system cool, both the CPU and our Northbridge the Tundra TSI107 need heatsinks, but the TSI-107 does not require a fan in normal use. The Troika team developed a thermostatically controlled fan system for the CPU and optional case fan. Amy has a dedicated fan controller IC, this will allow quiet operation, if allowable by system usage patterns.
SDRAM DIMM detection has been improved compared to previous OS4 capable systems. The TSI107 provides the necessary features to more accurately setup the SDRAM timing based upon the Serial Presence Detect (SPD) ROM parameters of the installed memory stick(s). This will ease the purchasing of suitable RAM for Amy'05.
In keeping with the speed increase, the graphics slot has been doubled in speed. The PCI slot for the graphics adaptor now runs at 66 MHz, yielding a maximum throughput of 264 MByte/sec. This provides comparable speed to the AGP 1X slot.
From previous experience, this bus speed has been sufficient to run 1280x1024 Open GL 2D/3D graphics @ 60 Hz with no issues using the ATI Radeon 9700 series and above graphics cards.
Only one PCI slot supports the 66 MHz speed and there is the appropriate bridge chip and logic to connect to the system 33 MHz PCI bus.
That is all for this update, the second and final update is on Wednesday.
