FPGA Replay Board

[digiflip]

I hope fpgaarcade version 2 does have pci express then the Natami people who hate people mention anything that might be competion to them, will cry lol

[digiflip]

Imagine our fpga arcade 2 will be able to use the latest versions of AMD radeon or nvidia cards,  while they be stuck with super natami aga or whatever they decide to call it lol.

[billt]

@trekiej, If you mean an FPGA with capacitity for more gates etc.. the answer is that it will require a new board spin as the BGA-solder balls underneath are really tightly packed and an adapter would be a real pain.

I know that Xilinx has a scheme where models with "more stuff" can be selected for the same package and pinout but the XC3S1600 is maxed out in this respect.

Is that really true? Xilinx's Spartan3e datasheet says the 1600 comes in these packages:
FG320/FGG320, FG400/FGG400, and FG484/FGG484.
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds312.pdf

The Spartan6 datasheet says some are available as FG484/FGG484.
http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds160.pdf
I guess someone would need to compare exact pinout details, voltages, etc, but the same package is a starting point for hope. And if Mike uses the 484 one. No guarantees of course.

But really, lets see what FPGAarcade 2 will have someday

[matthey]

Imagine our fpga arcade 2 will be able to use the latest versions of AMD radeon or nvidia cards,  while they be stuck with super natami aga or whatever they decide to call it lol.

The Natami 1 should be able to use a gfx card out of the box because it has PCI . I doubt the first versions of the Natami texture mapper will be as powerful or full featured as gfx cards from the 90s. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do it. Advantages are smaller profile case, less electrical use, standard, integrated with SAGA (1 monitor output) and no gfx bus bottleneck. It can improve over time as needed. I would love to see any fpga solutions that support gfx cards though. I would also like to see standards that allow the same OS to run on these different fpga Amiga's. Please add at least ColdFire instructions and compatible RTG "chunky" gfx. I might buy both if they both look good. A little competition will be good for the consumer .

[freqmax]

What graphics card with enough 3D procession performance, reasonable price, lowest PCI-express lane count, open documentation fits the bill?

More PCI-express lanes = more PCB layout mess and signal integrity issues.
And without documentation = no drivers..

There's another combination few have mentioned. Adding more FPGA:s on a daugtherboard.

Oh btw, FPGA Replay first version big batch hasn't shipped yet.. while we fantasize about the next one

[kedawa]

Has anyone tried to implement CPS1 or CPS2 in an FPGA?

[digiflip]

If it makes development time and production costs more maybe PCI-Express should be left out.

[wawrzon]

@digiflip: seems you are really a little over the top here.

[freqmax]

@digiflip, It's either for an add-on board or the next version. Anyway PCI-e x1 should be doable with a minimal effort (pcb space and routing). Thoe PCI-e x1 graphics cards may be hard to find..

[digiflip]

maybe il get well when sony turns on psx network

[Iggy]

PCI-e would be great, but a single lane connection would be a severe bottleneck (so would a PCI connection).
However, a PCI-e X1 or X4 connection could be useful for expansion.

[matthey]

PCI-e would be great, but a single lane connection would be a severe bottleneck (so would a PCI connection).
However, a PCI-e X1 or X4 connection could be useful for expansion.

Actually, I think the fpga CPU (and FPU) is going to be the bottleneck even with PCI. Note that a FPU would almost be a requirement with gfx boards. More PCI gfx card's hardware is documented and Amiga supported as well. The most popular would be the Radeon series and Voodoo 3+. I think I could get the Voodoo3+ Warp3D driver to work if there was a 2D CyberGFX/P96 driver available and a FPU. There is no 68k Warp3D driver for Radeon cards at this time. The other route would be to go through AROS which has support for some Nvidia cards but is less Amiga backward compatible.

[freqmax]

PCI is nice.. until you going to route signals for it. It needs a lot of signals. That's the benefit of PCI-express. Few wires.. done!

It's like P-ATA vs S-ATA.

Another hack is to serialize the Zorro bus

[Iggy]

I can't see a serialized Zorro bus being very useful. I do see the points made in favor of PCI. Radeon 9200 and Voodoo3 cards would work well in that type of slot (and there are drivers for them).
I can't think of any PCI-e cards that have legacy drivers (with good reason as there are no legacy systems with PCI-e expansion).

[freqmax]

The point of serializing any parallell expansion bus is that you can interconnect it with very few wires. As I/O ports on the FPGA are scarce. It also makes it possible to ease some signal skew issues.
A few CPLD or less fancy FPGAs can then parallise the bus off-board. And ZIII is asynchronous so it's less time constrained than other buses.

But for now the only thing I acutally miss on the board is an Ethernet PHY.

[Iggy]

I do see your point, but with a totally non-standard bus we'd have to create the cards that use it ourselves.
That's why, after considering it, I opted to agree with the post on PCI expansion. The cards are available and the drivers already exist.