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To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
Cc: Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>,
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From: Roland Dreier <roland@topspin.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:32:31 -0700
In-Reply-To: <417955D3.5020206@pobox.com> (Jeff Garzik's message of "Fri, 22
 Oct 2004 14:47:47 -0400")
Message-ID: <52r7nqft0w.fsf@topspin.com>
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Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
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    Jeff> 4) I am a bit dubious that FPGA will perform at a useful
    Jeff> clock speed.

    Jeff> 7) two-chip solution

    Jeff> One thing I have pondered, with regards to #6: what about
    Jeff> implementing a multi-core solution?  One core to handle the
    Jeff> graphics operations and control the video, and one core a
    Jeff> much more generic microcontroller that runs ucLinux, and
    Jeff> handles the GL "slow path" stuff.  The advantage of this
    Jeff> approach is

It's might be a bit expensive, but one could use a Xilinx Virtex 4
FPGA.  For example a XC4VFX60 has 16 SERDES (which could be used to
implement a 16X PCI Express link) and two embedded PowerPC 405 cores
(which can be used to run Linux -- there is already existing support
in the kernel for this).  The Virtex 4 can be clocked quite high (300
MHz wouldn't be out of the question), and interfaces like a wide DDR2
controller would be possible as well.

In fact the Virtex 4 has so many cool features it might be hard to
convert the code to an ASIC later....

 - R.

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