SAM and other new hardware - missing modern graphics card slots?

[dammy]

@AndyFC

What were you expecting, a multi media desktop?  :crazy:

Dammy

[takemehomegrandma]

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! :-)

[Nlandas]

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

[billt]

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.

[skurk]

The Sam has built-in VGA.  It's not like it's a gaming platform anyway, so why worry?

[billt]

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.

[alexh]

Wasnt the SAM's chip originally designed for an interactive toaster anyhow :-)

[takemehomegrandma]

@billt

That's at least my understanding. Regarding the ULI 1575, that one is being used in Freescale's "HPCN 8641/8640 Development board".

[billt]

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.

[Tripitaka]

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:

[Hans_]

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

[NovaCoder]

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?

[Hans_]

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

[billt]

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.

[takemehomegrandma]

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... ;-)

[niklasni1]

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...