@KimmoK

Quote:

I wonder if there would be any use for FPGA on PCI -cards amongs amigans? Would our community be able to develop MPEG accelerators, audio card or AA/AA+/AAA/Hombre gfx card or lagacy I/O card with it? (just for fun or just for geeky use)

yes!


Quote:

IMHO, putting some weird monster I/O chip on board (like the SB600) is not very good idea, unless we have 100% documentation to write/port drivers for it "overnight". But... New available PPC SoCs luckily do not have that high southbridge need as PA6T, as they have basic SATA and USB on chip, so perhaps "our own I/O" chip would not be needed for other than geeky engineering or legacy I/O needs.

more usb
any usb3
pci32 bus
audio (hd audio/azalia)
pci-express fanout to more slots (sb8xx, a75, q77)
ethernet for cpu that lacks it, such as pasemi, 8610)
more and faster sata
raid modes
sd (some ppc socs now have up to sdhc too, though i'd go with discrete sdxc)
clock generator (pci-express lanes etc)
ps/2 if you like
acpi power controller
displayport to vga d/a converter if you need one (amd fch, intel pch)
etc

many/most amd southbridges are nda documented at their embedded developer support site. register online. and a lot of the firmware stuff is gpled in coreboot.

intel seems to have a similar embedded site with docs for their equivalents. again see coreboot.

_________________
All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@Rob

An M3 is about on par with a 68040, performance wise. So it's not to off-load processing they include it

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@Rob

Quote:

It seems that Applied Micro Circuits are putting an ARM Cortex M3 in their next PPC465 based SOC's.

They did they some time ago. It's for security, AMD are doing the same with a Cortex-A5 in their processors.

The speed of the M3 will depend on the implementation and clock speed, but only the very low clocked ultra low power versions will be in 68040 territory, more likely to find a Cortex-M0 down there.

I still remember when the 68040 was considered high end. Amazingly, now it's only the very low end 32 bit microcontrollers give that level of performance.

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Whyzzat?

Just digging some info...

New term for me: Bound multiprocessing (BMP)
"A single OS manages all cores simultaneously. As in SMP, the
OS can dynamically schedule processes on any core. However,
the developer can also lock any process (and all of its associated
threads) to a specific core. Combines the developer control of AMP
with the transparent resource management of SMP.
The option to lock threads to any core simplifies migration of legacy code
and allows designers to dedicate cores to specific operations."

See "Running AMP, SMP or BMP Mode for Multicore Embedded Systems" in:
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/brochure/PWRARBYNDBITS.pdf

In QNX:
"Compared to full, floating SMP
operation, BMP offers several
advantages.
• Allows legacy applications written
for uniprocessor environments to run
correctly in a concurrent multicore
environment, without modifications
• Eliminates the processor-cache
“thrashing” that can sometimes
reduce performance in an SMP
system
• Enables simpler application
debugging than traditional SMP by
running all execution threads within
an application on a single core
• Supports simultaneous BMP and
SMP operation, allowing legacy
applications to coexist with
applications that take full advantage
of parallelism of multicore hardware"

Perhaps it's BMP way of multicore support in AOS4.2.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

Latest chips.
T1020, T1040, T2081.

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1743554&highlight=&tid=rsspr

Need to start polling price estimations and dev kit availabilities...
I assume T1 series to start from 100eur and T2 from 200+eur ...

UPDATE: I thought DIU is gone from Freescale chips, but...
It seems DIU is back on the fact sheet. If it is not a mistake, one could get the old 1280x1024 DVI (2D framebuffer) output cheaply from the chip.

Too bad that there is no 3D GPU on any modern/near future PPC SoC.

UPDATE: It seems "DIU" unit was added to Freescale material since original T1042 material. So I assume DIU really is back.

UPDATE: from conference at Asia .... QorIQ AMP T4240 has booted up Linux. Verisilicon has more PPC+GPU designs "inhouse". I wish they make some end user chips one day.

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Methinks thou dost assume too much. 8 lanes is not enough for SATA+GFX+spare ports, so the P2041 is actually better, and faster. Unless you've got some 64-bit mode for AOS4 secretly stashed away

I know you lust for the DIU, but even a 30EUR graphics card will beat any Freescale DIU in performance

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

From 8 lanes one can derive anyway a lot for low end. (for example 1x PCIe is ok to start with if the device cost is very low) Our niche's SW does not yet max out any PCI bandwidth ... I think (well, perhaps 33Mhz legacy PCI).

I know DIU "only" enables something like 2D out from framebuffer with no acceleration, but multicore PPC should anyway provide enough muscle for low end.
Example of kit that uses DIU: https://www.power.org/solution/p-cubed/
I imagine it has (3x) more CPU power than RasberryPI, so it would be nice to see running Linux against Rasberry.

(going to dig deeper to APM82181, initially ... baby steps towads baby product?)


More about P-Cuped:
It would be ideal for low end Amiga if it had T10xx instead of P10xx, SATA header and PCIe external. It would run circles around SAM440, would be cheaper to produce etc... But untill T series are out, not an option.

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

T4240 dev board seems to be now available:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=T4240QDS

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

Well the P-Cubed surdenly looks very promising, lets hope AOS 4.x will be ported to it.

_________________

At USD 4995 the QorIQ T4240 Development System makes the X1000 look like a bargain.

_________________

@Yssing

I believe P-Cuped has a P102x SoC, so it's not compatible with AOS4 SW.
But it's interesting example what can be built with 199USD.
I believe T104x should be priced similarly to P102x, so T-Cuped with AOS4 compatible CPU will be possible in future.

(P-Cuped has 2x performance of SAM460 if both cores are used, T series might have higher clock rate and more cores (+64bit).
& to remind, T1 series does not have Altivec, T2...T5 will have.)

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Troels

It's priced in traditional dev board way. But I believe T4240 chip is cheaper than PA6T (and both might be unavailable to buy without MB currently).

P-Cuped is the cheapest dev board I have seen for PPC.
Some AMCC/APM dev boards might be available below 1000eur but most PPC dev boards cost thousands of euros (from what I have seen so far).

And one more thing. If someone buys T4240 dev board, one can use it's design to build one's own boards. So one would be buying also some design material. (also some other developer/reference boards are like that)

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@Yssing

Quote:

Well the P-Cubed surdenly looks very promising, lets hope AOS 4.x will be ported to it.

Who is going to pay for Hyperion to do the port?

_________________
Dammy

@damocles

Same who paid for Peg2 port?

(other than that, P-Cuped has incompatible CPU)

Last edited by KimmoK on 03-Jan-2013 at 01:15 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

It's P-Cubed, actually. Keep your large-breast fantasies to yourself, please.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

LOL! I stand corrected!

Btw. Morphzone ppl spotted that Varisys has QorlQ P3041/5020 SoC in VM400 Linky to Varisys pdf.

Makes it very clear why a-eon is exploring those same chips for next motherboard.

Last edited by KimmoK on 03-Jan-2013 at 02:44 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 03-Jan-2013 at 02:43 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Nice. The 3041 is starting to look (to me) a heck of a lot better than when I first heard about the QorIQ families. The hypervisor gives such awesome options for multi-OS'ing

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@damocles

Well to some extent, it would have to be Hyperion themselfs, since it would be in their interest to have as wide a userbase as possible.

_________________

@getting OS ported to a HW

I imagine the best way would be to send a few working prototypes to OS dev teams and ask from them what they think about it.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

Freescale R&D 100% in ARM????

"We still do have products based on other architectures, but virtually 100 percent of our research and development is directed toward 32-bit ARM-based (chips)," Lees said.



From last summer:
PPC & ARM will co-exist at least for now?


A bit confusing. Elsewhere they were indicating that power architecture is the #2 in the processor world. But is it just so insanely difficult to adapt PPC to cellphone caliber products, that it's worth to start another architecture (ARM) R&D. Perhaps they just employed Medhi Ali...

Part of the reason:
http://martinhingley.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/chip-q312-fig1.png
ARM might be going up in fastest speed in processor market share.

Full article.
" As the market shifts away from the x86 instruction set, so we will see some major changes in market positions"

So... Freescale might be "just" predicting that ARM will be the new king after x86. It might be true from those trends. Interesting years ahead.

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?