Timothy Normand Miller wrote:
Allow me to inject a little guidance here. People are going in circles, discussing high-level things like which video formats to decode and which video formats to output.You're putting the cart before the horse. Before you can HOPE to support any of those things, there are lots of basics that have to be worked out first:- Let's assume PCIe 1x (the answer to the alternatives is basically the same). How are you going to connect that to a processingelement?
This would depend on the processing element. Some processors have PCI, PCI-X, or PCIe (or perhaps one of the common serial interfaces) built in. Others might be able to use an existing chip, or would require an interface in a FPGA
- What kind of processing element are you going to use for basic graphics stuff? (DSP? something else?)
That is the major question being discussed. This isn't very focused because we appear to be at the brainstorming stage.
- What kind of processing is your primary focus? Graphics rendering? 2D? 3D? Video decoding?
That question is interrelated with the question of what type of processing element.
- How are you going to handle things like graphics memory? That is, how is the processing element connected to the memory?
Most chips I am considering would have a memory controller built in.
- How do you access your video framebuffer and scan it out to a monitor, regardless of the format?
Some CPUs have a video controller built in. Other CPUs could use a northbridge. A media processor would also have a built in video interface. A DSP would require a FPGA, but could probably use some of the DMA on the DSP chip for part of the controller.
No offense intended, but it appears that some of you do not have much hardware design experience.
I suppose I should try to focus the discussion.
You have to crawl before you can run. Focus your attention on crawling.
But, I was just letting them brainstorm about this.
I'm going to get progressively more demanding about this: Discussions that make no progress are by defintion off-topic. If you notice that a discussion is going nowhere, take it off-list until it's resolved. Then report the results and the reasoning that lead up to the results.Is it time to create an ogml-advocacy list that intended for rather noisier discussions?Also, before much more of this is discussed, I strongly recommend that some people volunteer or be elected to join gEDA-user and becomeproficient in PCB design. No design can be realized if you have no idea how to realize it. The high-level dreaming is healthy, but if you want to achieve something, you have to have a healthy dose of the practical and keep in mind that every finished design is 99.9% practicality.
I must admit that although I have some of their stuff installed (I am fairly proficient at using the schematic editor [see attached]) that I haven't tried the PCB layout stuff yet. And, as I have said before, most of my actual design experience is in analog.
I think that a major issue is cost. FreeScale has some real nice stuff but it is too expensive.
-- JRT
Ported_Box.ps
Description: PostScript document
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