|
|
CT60 and related things BBS
| Re: Video Upgrade |
|---|
|
Posted by: hencox & instream
|
Nov,09.2008-23:24
|
Just wanted to point out some of the current and future features of the SV, so people don't think it's just a Videl replacement and nothing else:
1) SV replaces the old Videl by bus snooping all accesses from the 060 to the ST-RAM and the SV resolution is set by using the same registers as the old Videl. Up to 1920x1080p@60Hz is possible, which is what the 165MHz limit of one DVI channel allows. There is also a DAC feeding analog VGA signals into the DVI port, so you can have dual screens at the same time. The higher resolutions and dual screens require new software support of course, which we'll patch into TOS as far as possible.
2) Upgrading the SV firmware is just a matter of running a program from the desktop and cold-booting the falcon. To be able to deliver SV to the customers as soon as possible, we will not include all wanted features at once. They will later be available as downloads.
3) A SuperBlitter is planned, which will have some of the old Blitter's functionality, but not all. It is not meant to be compatible, since the old Blitter was rarely used anyway. The SuperBlitter will have features like alpha blending, free degree rotation, and sub-pixel copying (for MPEG2 replay).
4) Some kind of MPEG2 replay is planned. Earlier we looked at creating a dedicated unit in the FPGA, which would be very powerful (perhaps able to decode 720p movies)but would take a long time to create and would eat a lot of FPGA resources. We're currently leaning towards another way of solving it: Using several dedicated CPUs in the FPGA (four CPUs are currently planned), which share the decoding load. Such a CPU is the aeMB (http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/aemb/overview), which is a dual threaded 32-bit CPU running at 100MHz on our FPGA (Xilinx Spartan-3 2000-5). We estimate its processing power to just below the 060. We'll extend the processor with small dedicated accelerator functions for doing MPEG2 decoding, which will reduce the decoding time several times. Of course programmers realize that these CPUs can be used for lots of other stuff...
5) 3D: This is a very large area. To begin with we're thinking of creating a simple matrix multiplication unit, which you just give a 4x4 matrix and a list of vertices to work on. It would be very fast, with no 060 interaction required.
6) The final goal with 3D support would of course be to create a texture mapping and rendering unit. It will be a lot of work and the final performance will not even be close to the performance of today's graphics processors. But as you may have noticed with PC's: unless you also have a fast CPU, a fast graphics card doesn't really matter...
7) There is one other hardware feature of the SV: We have included our own expansion port, which has nothing to do with the CT60 expansion port. It is an 8-bit bidirectional 3.3V bus, running at approx 165MHz. It is meant for connecting possible future IDE/SATA boards, to finally get rid of the limitations that the falcon motherboard places on disk accesses.
8) Since the FPGA is endlessly reprogrammable, the only limit to the features that may be created is the number of logic gates inside...
|
[All messages in this thread] [Start new thread]
|
Topic
|
Posted by
|
Date
|
|
Video Upgrade
|
samf
|
Nov,07.2008-15:38
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
mikro
|
Nov,07.2008-20:20
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
samf
|
Nov,07.2008-20:40
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
Simon Y
|
Nov,07.2008-23:00
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
ggn
|
Nov,08.2008-09:52
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
PeP
|
Nov,08.2008-12:30
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
hencox & instream
|
Nov,09.2008-23:24
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
vlg
|
Nov,10.2008-00:47
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
mikro
|
Nov,10.2008-13:07
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
Orion_
|
Nov,10.2008-13:19
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
PeP
|
Nov,10.2008-14:44
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
hencox
|
Nov,10.2008-22:21
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
ggn
|
Nov,11.2008-07:53
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
hencox
|
Nov,12.2008-15:02
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
Orion_
|
Nov,11.2008-17:17
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
quackmore
|
Nov,10.2008-08:16
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
MacFalcon
|
Nov,10.2008-10:29
|
|
Re: Video Upgrade
|
calimero
|
Nov,10.2008-20:32
|
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.
|
