B. Hirosky 10/17/00 ‘L2ßeta’ CPU Concept Commercial 6U CPU Card W/ UII on board FPGA MBUS P I/O + DMA ECL Latch Driver MBUS Straight pass to VME Latches + ECL Drivers Cable to PMC/PCI
B. Hirosky 10/17/00 FPGA replaces: DMA P/IO buffers TSI device Keep ECL drivers Buy This Same Basic Concept as L2Alpha, but much simplified implementation
B. Hirosky 10/17/00 Minimal engineering: connect FPGA to MBUS, PCI bus to FPGA via a cable and/or driver, connect ECL drivers to FPGA This project is largely a software issue program FPGA device driver coding Result: a clear upgrade path to modern/powerful CPUs and NO problems w/ ARCHAIC spare part hunts
B. Hirosky 10/17/00 Compatibility - needs new PCI base classes (PCIDEV, PCICFG, CIA) the UII driver should be transparent -need new drivers for replace MB devices and TSI - easy - minor linux tweeks? --->> result = source code compatible boards! Can select hotter CPU boards for Global worker or cooler boards for Administrators
B. Hirosky 10/17/00 What’s on the market? Many vendors for 6U CPU cards, most have UIIB’s on board. Small companies w/ off the shelf boards + custom options Medium companies like SBS w/ off the shelf boards Giant companies like Raytheon too! Medium and High End CPU’s available now vs. our alpha: SPECint95 SPECfp95 Cost Alpha 500 MHz ~$5K (complete) PIII 600MHZ ~24 ~16 ~$4K from SBS (700 MHz price!) POWERPC (550MHz) SPARC II ~$7K (old sparc versions) SPARC III !!!!!