 |
|
|
CT60 and related things BBS
| Not confused |
|---|
|
Posted by: Nature
|
Oct,18.2009-12:23
|
We feel the need to clarify some of the functionality of the upcoming SuperVidel, since we start to feel that people think that just because the SuperVidel offers backwards compatibility, it doesn't offer good performance. So here we go:
1) The SuperVidel will have dual screen output simultaneously, 1 digital DVI and 1 analog VGA, coming from the same full DVI port. Use a simple splitter cable (about 20 USD) to get a physical DVI port and a VGA port.
2) The SV will offer extended desktop functionality across the DVI and VGA ports. Max resolution will be around 1920 x 1200 x 60Hz x 24bit per screen (max 165MHz video clock). Note that if you run the absolutely highest video modes in dual screen, the memory bandwidth limit will start having an impact on the 2D performance, but the user will probably never notice this when only moving around windows on the desktop.
3) The Radeon 7xxx/9xxx have higher graphics memory bandwidth than the SuperVidel, 6.4-8.0GB/s, compared to the approx. 1.7GB/s of the SuperVidel. This comes from the fact that we could only fit a 32-bit DDR2 memory interface on the SV, while the Radeons use 64-128 bit wide interfaces. This results in higher 2D performance in the Radeon than the SuperVidel, but we need to point out that the SuperVidel will have both a DMA unit for copying data to/from the CT60 SDRAM (matching at least the CTPCI transfer rates), and a 2D blitter for drawing/copying/scaling stuff inside the DDR2 SDRAM. So the user shouldn't notice any slow desktop performance, even in the highest resolutions.
4) The 3D performance of the Radeon is probably much higher than anything that could be created in the Xilinx Spartan3-2000 FPGA on the SuperVidel. We have plans on creating some kind of 3D engine (others have done it successfully recently, see the Natami project for example, www.natami.net). But that belongs to the future after the initial SV release.
5) We plan for MPEG replay support in the SuperVidel. We lean towards including four to six 100MHz CPUs in the FPGA, that can be used for video playback, or anything else really. It will be like having a couple of DSP56001, but faster and without the bottleneck buses. Each such CPU is probably a little bit slower at integer stuff than the 68060 itself, since they aren't superscalar, but we would add sufficient HW acceleration like inverse DCT (used for decoding MPEG and JPEG), as well as making the blitter support sub-pixel copying (used in MPEG-2 and up). This would make each such CPU several times faster than the 68060 at replaying video in practice. Then it's a software question to adapt an existing open-source player to use this HW acceleration.
Note that the SV will be shipped with the bare minimum functionality to replace the old Videl, so you won't have to wait forever for it (as if you haven't already... :P ). This includes no video replay, 3D nor the mentioned CPUs, just the Videl replacement and probably the DMA and blitter. But the SV can easily be upgraded from a program running on your CT60, without any extra needed hardware like a programming cable. So when we release upgrades of the FPGA firmware you just download it and upgrade, just like the CT60 flash.
By the way, we got a good idea from Sqward in a post here at the forum. We can use the left over FPGA pins, now routed to a small expansion port, to connect a cheap ethernet board (much cheaper than the EtherNAT), which you can screw directly to the back of the falcon. There will be a thin flat cable between the SuperVidel and this ethernet board. The FPGA will then contain an open source Ethernet MAC core, using DMA.
Henrik & Torbjörn
|
[All messages in this thread] [Start new thread]
|
Topic
|
Posted by
|
Date
|
|
I'm so confused!
|
JoeAtari
|
Oct,17.2009-05:06
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
Beetle
|
Oct,17.2009-13:13
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
quackmore
|
Oct,17.2009-20:25
|
|
Not confused
|
Nature
|
Oct,18.2009-12:23
|
|
now everything clear
|
Beetle
|
Oct,18.2009-13:11
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
Beetle
|
Oct,18.2009-13:13
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
PeP
|
Oct,18.2009-15:21
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
PeP
|
Oct,18.2009-15:23
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
Beetle
|
Oct,18.2009-16:16
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
Instream
|
Oct,18.2009-16:20
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
Instream
|
Oct,18.2009-16:34
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
Beetle
|
Oct,18.2009-21:10
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
quackmore
|
Oct,19.2009-04:43
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
hencox
|
Oct,19.2009-20:35
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
FDR1980
|
Oct,20.2009-01:28
|
|
Re: now everything clear
|
quackmore
|
Oct,20.2009-13:38
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
ggn
|
Oct,20.2009-07:50
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
Beetle
|
Oct,20.2009-11:38
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
quackmore
|
Oct,20.2009-13:51
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
ggn
|
Oct,21.2009-09:13
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
Beetle
|
Oct,21.2009-11:41
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
Didier Méquignon
|
Oct,21.2009-12:44
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
Rodolphe
|
Oct,20.2009-18:19
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
calimero
|
Nov,01.2009-12:34
|
|
Re: I'm so confused!
|
PeP
|
Oct,20.2009-20:32
|
What's the anti-troll code?
That's your personal code to be able to add comments and messages on the dhs.nu site.
Don't have a code or forgot it? Fix it here.
|
|
|
