c d saunter wrote:
> JJ ([email protected]) wrote:
> : In comp.arch (and others) there is a thread on this Opteron Virtex4
> : coprocessor that sits in socket 940.
>
> : http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1920
> : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04....dailytech.com
> : http://www.drccomputer.com/pages/products.html
>
> : I wonder what others think of this, at $4500 its way to steep for most
> : individual buyers who might happen to have a dual socket Opteron board
> : (I don't), but I wonder if companies like Digilent, Enterpoint and
> : others might see any opportunity to build a much lower cost edu version
> : that is more in line with the cost of an Opteron cpu chip say <$1k and
> : based on best Spartan3 or Virtex2,4 that can still use Webpack.
>
> John,
> I expect the $4500 reflects development costs and what the market will
> bear more than anything else - after all the only thing I've seen near it
> was the old Pilchard FPGA on a DIMM research project.
>

Ofcourse, I recall Xilinx VC funded that or another FPGA-DIMM company,
not quite the right time.

> : I also wonder how much faster exactly the HT link is over any of the
> : PCI interfaces.
>
> HT can be implemented much faster than parallel PCI but perhaps more
> importantly when used with an Opteron is that it's much more tightly
> coupled to the CPU. Looking at the upcoming HT3 I feel the best is yet
> to come.

Much lower latency I hope.

>
> One of the posibilities that interest me is a V4 module sitting in a 940
> socket with some MGTs wired up (space is tight - I realise that!) - if
> you happen to be dealing in high speed data aquisition and processing on
> the bit/word and (large) frame level then a tightly coupled
> FPGA/commodity CPU system is really quite exciting.
>

Takes one back to when you could interface 68000s or whatever to your
custom logic or even wire wrap your own mobo, its been along time since
one could "touch" a processor.

Whats you acquisition area?

> cds
>
> : John Jakson
> : transputer guy