[quote] .A. Semi offers the Electra I and Electra II PWRficient? Evaluation Kits as well the Lynx PCIe Evaluation Kits. The PWRficient Evaluation Kits come with an Electra I or Electra II evaluation board, PC chassis and power supply, serial null modem and Ethernet cables, 512MB DDR-2 DIMMs, and SATA hard drive with pre-loaded evaluation software. Customers can download from P.A. Semi's support site a complete Software Development Kit (SDK) that includes open source development tools, libraries, and Linux Board Support Package (BSPs) for the PWRficient Evaluation Kits as well as a Reference Design Kit (RDK) containing schematics, Bill-of-Materials, and other board design files. The PWRficient Evaluation Kits form a complete platform that enables customers to evaluate the PA6T-1682M platform processor, conduct interoperability testing, and do device driver development for the PCI Express, Ethernet, and local bus interfaces. The Electra I and Electra II boards come with a Common Firmware Environment (CFE) boot monitor loaded into the flash memory. CFE is used to initialize the CPUs, caches, memory controllers, and other peripherals on the PA6T-1682M device. [/quote]
I do like the idea of using G4 Macs, but this would be a better avenue for someone desiring something a little more powerful. On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Alex Perez <aperez at alexperez.com> wrote: > Folks, > > Sorry for diving in here, but at present there have been essentially > three/four suggestions offered for what hardware might be used: > > 1) Legacy Apple PowerMac G3/G4 hardware. Someone pointed out the price > of > Pros: -Least expensive hardware by significant margin. Cheap and > plentiful, and likely to only become cheaper. > -Apple no longer cares about PPC hardware. > -"Sawtooth" G4 desktops are plentiful and were > manufactured for > many, many years, due to limitations of clock speed. This is good for > us. > -Motherboard chipset supports up to 2GB RAM. > -OpenFirmware based already. No hackery required. I can > only see > this as a major plus. > -Most-closely resembles modern PowerPC CPU architecture, > supports > AltiVec SIMD extensions. > -Relatively easy availability. I've offered to help > facilitate > anyone on earth to get a used unit who would like one. PowerMac G4's > routinely sell for under $300, often for as little as $85 (see San > Francisco Bay Area Craigslist postings if you don't believe me). > -Despite claims to the contrary, good reference code is > available > for the hardware from other license-compatible sources, namely NetBSD. > Cons: -Various hardware/chipset configurations, although most/all > of > these seem to be covered/supported by NetBSD > -Slower, older hardware. > > The AGP G4 PowerMac is quickly becoming obsolete in the eyes of most > mac users. Speeds for this line of Macs range from 350MHz up to > 450MHz, with third-party drop-in PPC CPU upgrades also available used > at a low cost. > > The AGP G4 Tower (of?) PowerMac is based on/uses the PowerPC 7400. For > an architectural overview of some of the specifics of the 7400, visit > http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/ppc-2.ars/2 > . Here's a brief excerpt: > > "The new AltiVec instructions, which I've covered in detail in > elsewhere, were first introduced in the 7400. The 7400 executes these > instructions in its vector unit, which consists of two vector > execution units: the vector ALU (VALU) and the vector permute unit > (VPU). The VALU performs vector arithmetic and logical operations, > while the VPU performs permute and shift operations on vectors. To > support the AltiVec instructions, which can operate on up to 128 bits > of data at a time, 32 new 128-bit vector registers were added to the > PowerPC ISA." > > > The final PPC product apple ever sold, the G4-based Mac Mini, still > costs a fair bit, around $499. The Tower G4's, however, can be had for > a song: MegaMacs.com sells 30-day-warranty, refurbished PowerMac G4 > 450 Mhz 256MB/20GB/DVD boxes for $180 USD + $50 USD for shipping to > the US48. http://tinyurl.com/3bbq2q > > For more detailed technical information on this line of CPUs, please > visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_G4 > > > 2) Playstation3 -Cell Broadband Engine based PPC. > Pros: -Lots of bang for the buck, horsepower wise. > -Has embedded gigabit ethernet. > Cons: -Not a ton of RAM (256MB XDR Main RAM @3.2GHz ), non-user > upgradable. > -Not OpenFirmware based > -Hypervisor would take lots of coding man-hours to > program around/ > with, and would be non-portable. > -Sony not likely to support this endeavour > wholeheartedly > -Lack of some hardware documentation, although IBM > provides some > -No NetBSD port to borrow code from, Linux port > works (I have it > installed on mine) but code is off-limits. > > 3) Dedicated POWER6 hardware and/or Freescale-type PPC devkit: > Not sure what a POWER6 machine would cost, but I know the Freescale > PPC eval board is $4,000 USD. > -So expensive it would likely require corporate > backing > -Severely limits ability of potential contributors > to test on local > hardware > -IBMs lowest-end 1-way POWER5-based server costs > $7,995.00 for > 1.9GHz with 1GB RAM, although it's amazing that the CPU on the POWER5 > line has a whopping 36MB L3 cache. > -- " ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and warning... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on we're all damaged." - Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie - Alex Smith (K4RNT) - Murfreesboro/Nashville, TN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/powerpc-discuss/attachments/20080316/000644f3/attachment.html>
