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Hardware News   Hardware News : Amy design update Part 2
   posted by Troika on 13-Sep-2006 13:52:04 (28141 reads)
Amy05 update part 2

This is the final update on the Amy05 design prior to BB4 this weekend. Please attend the show and meet with us.

Read more...(mod note)


One of the biggest changes to the Amy05 design from our first released specification is the addition of the .AMD Geode™CS5536 companion device. For Project Prometheus/Amy'05 this becomes Amy’s Southbridge. This is the low cost Southbridge device from AMD that been in many of the newspapers. It’s used in the $100 'One Laptop per child' system, and in many AMD Geode™ embedded designs. It’s a well proven design and AMD continues to refine all the little details to get the most out of the design. Its extremely well supported, and its great to have a working relationship with the AMD people, we take much pride in this.





What’s the Geode™ Southbridge mean to the Amiga community? Software wise the opening of many new doors, and features. For example, one feature built in is the “USB keyboard”, making USB keyboards easy to install and use.


Hardware wise this device provides the following features to Amy05:
AC97 Codec interface,
A single channel IDE port,
An additional 16C550 UART,
Real time Clock and CMOS RAM
Additional USB 2.0 ports,
PC 82XX legacy timers.

There are additional features to this device but we have only highlighted the features utilized by Amy05.

This is the other component of the Kryptos sound system. It is a low cost high performance solution that will in the future, allow for a lower cost design by fully utilizing the USB and ATA interfaces of this device. Also in future Troika designs, will be able to incorporate, many more hardware features not as yet implemented, into future Amy designs.


The CS5536 interfaces to the TSI107 via the 66 MHz PCI bus interface for maximum performance. The 66 MHz PCI bus connects to the 33 MHz PCI bus using a PLX technology PCI 6150 bridge device. The PCI 6150 makes it easier to connect riser cards to the system without violating PCI bus loading rules, an improvement over previous designs.

A side effect of increasing the system bus to 66 MHz was the need for some glue logic, normally quite boring but it did provide potential for a 'Geekport interface' to be easily added. Now referred to as the Amy Geekport.

The aim of this interface was to put some of the fun back into home computing. For too long now if you wanted to add a custom device to your computer, it was too complicated. By providing a simple 8 bit wide interface that connects directly to the PPC local bus it is once again possible to create homebrew devices and connect them to your computer, just like in the good old 8-bit days.

The interface is memory mapped, provides a basic I/O port, can generate interrupts and provides user defined I/O. Application notes and sample designs will be available at product launch.


As a final note, the planned board for display at the show will be a 'developer' prototype. She’s rough around the edges, and we have had “issues” with making our logos look great like we wished. This is the first release which will be made in a limited quantity for hardware testing/OS4 development. There will be bugs to iron out and some improvements will be made, when this process is complete, the necessary changes will be added into the consumer version, which will then be released.

This is the reason we ask for some feedback on the design, there are limited opportunities for changes to the final design. Rest-assured, we will not be making any drastic changes to the system.


*AMD Geode™ CS5536 is a registered trademark of AMD
    

STORYID: 3297
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PosterThread
utri007 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 18:35:28
#41 ]
Super Member
Joined: 12-Aug-2003
Posts: 1082
From: United States of Europe

Is it true that I'm last intel outside man here?

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Interesting 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 18:37:54
#42 ]
Super Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 1812
From: a place & time long long ago, when things mattered.

Quote:
Hey Hyperion, get busy and buy one of those things so you can get with the portin'!


Buy ?

Amy's are free for Hyperion porting.


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Dirk-B 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 18:43:34
#43 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 1185
From: Belgium

@ utri007

Do you see any intel-chips?


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Anonymous 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 18:44:59
# ]



Quote:
ssolie wrote:

I plan to buy whatever ships with OS4 running on it. The memory bandwidth alone may make up for any reduced raw CPU crunching power. The large caches will also make a big difference to the feel of the system. If the Amy05 even comes close to the XE you may want to dump the XE anyway because they will likely dive in value given their problems.

Hi ssolie,

My AmigaOne XE isn't going anywhere!

I'm not losing Altivec, while I still have it.

I will get as many NG Amigas as I can raise funds to do so. (Hope that's two more, at least in the next 365 days.)

Hate to be negative, BUT, in this day and age, a geek port of ONLY 8 bits??? Is it really that hard to do anything in designing these things that a 32 bit port couldn't have been done easily? This is where ibm/moto comes in, they want these CPUs sold, and in 2006 we're still strugging to get high bandwith to ram, DDR, SATA/PATA, PCIe/AGPx8, etc. etc. Hate them soooooo much!


On the EIDE connectors.

Does this mean 4 devices could be attached, AND 2 HDs in RAID configuration, AND NOW one more EIDE device through the AMD chip? WOW!



BTW, can't wait, because, AMIGA RULEZ!

 
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Interesting 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 18:46:49
#45 ]
Super Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 1812
From: a place & time long long ago, when things mattered.

Samwel

Quote:
Will it be possible to overclock the 800MHz 750GL to 1GHz?


Its been talked about in the irc that a special "helgis" feature was built in for CPU meltdowns.

No overclocking !


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Rob 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:10:30
#46 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Mar-2003
Posts: 6385
From: S.Wales

@Insanity

As far as I know Hyperion have a licence for 4.x. There were feature lists somewhere showing what would be included in versions 4.0-4.2 IIRC.
It has since been mentioned about quite a few features that have from moved from 4.1 to 4.0 over time.
Also more recently we have been told that warp 3D will be replaced by Mesa in version 4.1 or 4.2.

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stedy 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:14:43
#47 ]
Member
Joined: 26-Aug-2005
Posts: 35
From: London, England

HI,

Further information/clarifications

The base design (developer release) has the Silicon Image SIL680 IDE device fitted providing support for 4 IDE devices. The AMD IDE port is not used in this version but will be for the consumer release. RAID support will require OS driver support and is only possible via the SIL680.

SATA will be for higher end models.

You could try and overclock the 750GL, you risk invoking the Helgis Easter Egg! ;)
Seriously, the power converters for the CPU are rated for 1 GHz operation (15 Amps @ 1.5V) but I would not recommend it as the heat increase would risk damaging the PPC!

The geekport is only 8 bits wide as I ran out of pins on the XC9572XL device that implements it! As well as providing the decode logic, it also converts from the 2.5V PPC bus to a 3.3V/5V compatible user bus, for your homebrew devices. Doing this takes many of the 66 I/O pins on the chip.
For ease of use, the geekport is brought out on 0.1" (2.54 mm) pitch pins to allow easy connections.

Bye,

Ian

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Samwel 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:15:51
#48 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@Interesting

Yeah I know. I where online when Adam made that comment

Btw my post was a joke..


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Simon 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:18:27
#49 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 16-Feb-2005
Posts: 999
From: Antwerp / Belgium

I actually do not know what is worse for a motherboard ... Microsoft or Helgis...
If you look at it in perspectif I think Helgis destroyed more...

Typing this I wonder this is personal attacking or joking ... oh I remember... you can not personal attack someone that isn't here

What the Amy concerns ... Ah me like the expansion port... now I am just curious what is going to be made for it... maybe the word "hobbycomputer" does get a meaning again...


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Samwel 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:22:36
#50 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@Atheist

The 8bit port should be enough for most small things that users (or Jens) want to do.
Although 16bit wouldn't have hurt.. For 32bit why no make a small PCI card instead?

The new "south bridge" has one channel IDE (two units). Troika have stated before that
they're using Sil680 on the Amy, which would support 4 more units. I really hope they
have changed Sil680 for a 3114 four channel SATA.

EDIT: Oops already answered by Ian. Thanks for the answer Ian!

Seems we have a possible 6 units (or RAID) for the new board. Great!

Last edited by Samwel on 13-Sep-2006 at 07:27 PM.


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Rob 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:25:12
#51 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Mar-2003
Posts: 6385
From: S.Wales

@stedy

Quote:
In our design we use 6 audio connectors to provide a full surround sound system: Front, Left side, Right side, Center,


Can you clarify wether this means Amy05 will have component Audio. I'm sure the quote is clear enough but it seems unusual that low-end computer equipment to be able tointerface with hi-end HIFI equipment.

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Rob 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:33:39
#52 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Mar-2003
Posts: 6385
From: S.Wales

I think Helgis' main problem that he was using overclocking technology from the dark ages. The jumpers on the A1 do not allow for fine adjustments and making big increases a most risky.

you really need to be able to increase the speed in small increments, have good cooling and preferably be able to monitor the CPU temp under load so you can check it is safely within the processors tolerences.

It is also worthy of note that while some chips will be capable of high overclocks ,others from the same batch might not.

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Crumb 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:34:22
#53 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 12-Mar-2003
Posts: 2209
From: Zaragoza (Aragonian State)

Quote:

The new "south bridge" has one channel IDE (two units). Troika have stated before that
they're using Sil680 on the Amy, which would support 4 more units. I really hope they
have changed Sil680 for a 3114 four channel SATA.


It would make more sense to include the SATA chip as default as it could be used until drivers are written for the AMD chip. Then you'll have both SATA+PATA.

Having PATA+the southbridge PATA would be a waste. Use SATA. I doubt it's much more expensive. In the long term it will be better


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Samwel 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:35:29
#54 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 7-Apr-2004
Posts: 3404
From: Sweden

@Rob

Clarify what?

It will have (as any computer today) 6 channel analog connectors that can connect directly to
your home theater/HIFI equipment. Or you could use the digital output connector if you want
the home theater/HIFI equipment to decode the sound.


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Dirk-B 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:41:15
#55 ]
Super Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 1185
From: Belgium

@ Aminicle

Quote:
What the Amy concerns ... Ah me like the expansion port... now I am just curious what is going to be made for it... maybe the word "hobbycomputer" does get a meaning again...

Maybe someone can build an interface for our lego-trains.


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CodeSmith 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 19:55:07
#56 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3045
From: USA

@stedy

So, I'm a bit confused. Does this mean the final consumer version of the board will allow for 6 IDE devices (sil + amd) or just 2 (amd)?

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Simon 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 20:25:08
#57 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 16-Feb-2005
Posts: 999
From: Antwerp / Belgium

Playing with the Amiga like in the good old days ... I still remember me playing with an infrared adapter. Now it's nothing special... but back in the those days controlling your hifi with from your computer...

I still have to see the first average wintel user doing such things ( I said average ! not that i can't be done )

I really hope the Amy05 board will be the new commodore 64 / Amiga500


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hatschi 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 20:29:06
#58 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Dec-2005
Posts: 2328
From: Good old Europe.

Quote:
Does this mean the final consumer version of the board will allow for 6 IDE devices (sil + amd) or just 2 (amd)?


I think it's 6 IDE devices in total.

(Although I have to admit that I am getting a little confused with all those Amy-Prometheus-"frozen design"-Version 1.1-Version 1.5-consumer version-prototype-highend-higher end-developer release-Zeus-whatever-specifications)

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hatschi 
Re: Amy design update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 20:35:57
#59 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Dec-2005
Posts: 2328
From: Good old Europe.

Quote:
The 8bit port should be enough for most small things that users (or Jens) want to do.


8bit-baby from Jens springs to my mind.

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mbilla 
Re:Amy update Part 2
Posted on 13-Sep-2006 21:03:54
#60 ]
Super Member
Joined: 25-May-2003
Posts: 1369
From: EU

Quote:
Maybe someone can build an interface for our lego-trains


Or an interface for the new Lego Mindstorm NXT !!!!


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