On 12/13/06, Eric Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
After looking at the data sheet on the G965 chip (which contains the GMA X3000), it occurred to me that it might be possible to put the G965 on a card with an FPGA (probably Spartan 3) to act as a PCIe-to-FSB bridge. The main technical issue was whether the GMA X3000 actually needs the FSB cache coherency protocol, and I've been told that it does not.
This isn't a bad idea, and it has been looked into before. Early on, we investigated some of the Intel northbridge chips, and what we found was that it's just not designed to function without having a CPU hanging off of the FSB. That's how it gets initialized properly, and basically, your solution puts the CPU on the wrong side of it. There are all sorts of assumptions that the chipset designers make that you're violating with this configuration. Now, things may have changed a bit since we last investigated. Before money is invested in a PCB, we need to find out if it's even possible. You'll need the same docs from Intel that they give to mobo manufacturers, and I would suggest trying to make some sort of boardless mock-up of it to see if you can get it working. Take some PCIe 16x board and literally hack it apart and wire it directly to a northbridge and see what you can accomplish. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
