I am thinking about it..
If the chip's internal architecture is:
Processor ---- BUS ---- DEVICES (memory/graphics/nic...)
and we could attach the external PCIE bridge to the internal bus with
some arbitration (e.g. a software way is: INT->DMA over internal bus to
davinci's RAM), then 2D graphics is near as fast as a native card.
Then 3D (if there is a dedicated block) - does it process a displaylist
from memory? It will be as fast as the engine in the processor...
So the computing core in the Davinci would only nap.. if it is not
programmed by some code - in a GPGPU manner? Is it a DSP, isn't it?
I think that the next generation will offer an PCIe host AND device :)
Will we wait, or will we do something towards putting a DaVinci into PC
on PCIe?
Daniel
James Richard Tyrer wrote:
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tms320dm6467t.pdf
The problem is the price. :-O $106.95 @ 1K
However the price will probably fall with time.
If it wasn't for the high price, this could be used to make a video card
-- and one that had HDMI output and did HDTV. All that is needed
besides the chip is a PCI-PCIe X4 bridge, memory (DDR2 RAM and Flash for
the software) and whatever is needed for the digital or analog monitor
output. The "video chip" would be in software. Perhaps adding a CPLD
and a RAM chip (for the registers) would improve VGA emulation but this
seems foolish as VGA is obsolete. As long as all of the video BIOS
interrupts are handled, I don't see the need for hardware VGA.
The PCI interface means that additional stuff could be added to the
board. E.G to run OpenGL (DiVinci chips DSP is fixed point) and/or X on
the board.
This has a NIC on chip as well so the same circuit could be accessed
with Ethernet.
Only question is how fast this would be with only the DiVinci chip.
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