@digitaldisaster

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digitaldisaster wrote: @blitterstorm They wont be involved in the actual design process but they provide a reference design which our design would be based on. I don't yet know what restrictions (if any) they put on the designs created from their reference material. There will more than likely be none.

nice
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Creating a simulator for a PPC970 chip would be dificul let alone adding the other chips such as the CPC925 northbridge, 8111 southbridge, gigabit ethernet controller and SATA II controller. I certainly wouldn't want to undertake this task.

That was not what I had in mind, creating a simulator for the PPC970 chip, or the other chips for that matter, makes no sence to, almost equals the task to create a new CPU.

what I had in mind was, using existing "buliding blocks" if they, were availible.
The main idear was that it could be done without too much work, an making complex chips would compromise that goal.

I hoped it would be possible, to just "glue" the "building" blocks together, and check that the design as a whole works, the building blocks are themselfs tested.

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The OS will be ported using the evaluation board suplied and the testing and checking will be done with the design tools. I don't know if any of the chips are avilable in VHDL or Verilog and they would need to be licensed (as it would be possible to constuct a clone of the chip form the code) so that means more money

The goal was to check if it was posible to use, software simulation to cut development time and cost.

I guess creating a motherboard is a huge task, done in alot of "steps".
what are your guess, about cost before the prototype can be manufactured?
what about time?