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PCI phased out? (Announce)

posted by marcov, 15.02.2011, 13:40

> > Most stuff has been converted to
> > PCIexpress. We were relatively early with that because we need multiple
> > (full speed capable) Gigabit links in a machine. Something you can't get
> > with PCI
>
> Do you have experiences with some PCI-E to PCI converters or somewhere I
> saw a PCI-E chip with parallel output interface that was simply programmed
> by few registers. There should be something similar for implementing MMIO
> but I never come closer to it.
Aside from the already mentioned use on the new p67 generation boards (because they don't support PCI in the base chipset), I can vaguely remember somebody mentioning HP SFF pc's (the HP 7xxxdc series) using them for their riser cards. I didn't verify that though.

> > Yes. But Intel replaces chips to Gigabyte. Moreover currently we can get
> > perfectly by using the SATA6 ports.
>
> AFAIK new revision will be upgraded within a month and then it will take
> some time for manufacturers to replace it. Yes you can live with other SATA
> port but I wouldn't like the feeling that something is rotting in the
> chip...
True. And if we see a chance to quickly replace it, we will. But the main objective to buy it was to start testing so we can deploy these boards (or their fixed versions) in the field.

Well, turns out there is no real hurry, since while the integrated GPU is praised in all publications, it is still 5+ times slower than the cheapest ati or nvidia card, and we are not terribly pricesensitive there.

> > I mostly run win64 binaries on x64. Not because there is a technical
> > reason, but if people don't use it, the FPC win64 port will never get
> > mature.
>
> And does your 64bit application got some significant benefit from 64bit
> platform, e.g. in data throughput or it's just ~2x bigger binary working
> +-few % the same as 32bit?
No. At work I would have some uses for it (mainly the double SSE registers), but for the FPC work it doesn't matter atm. But there the goal is to debug a 64-bit toolchain, and to do so, you must use it to find all the little problems and bugs.

Another big advantage of 64-bit is that the minimal CPU gets lifted to something Pentium-D like. This simplifies compilers considerably. copro is always integrated, ppro instructions (cmov) are, and SSE2 is always there (and SSE3 too if you are not too strict)

Since this is the first real deprecation of old stuff since the i386 came out in 1988 or so, that is a major thing. (though most people only started to really use the 386 in 95-97 with the advent of Windows 9x and cheaper memory)

> > Yes, but there are only three major videocard vendors. Ati/AMD, Nvidia
> and
> > intel. Most live systems have them onboard.
>
> Maybe, but different chip generations of one vendor are usually not
> compatible so when they release new generation chip (e.g. GeForce 7xxx ->
> 8xxx) you'll have to upgrade driver on your live CD.

For me it usually worked. My fairly new ATI 5770 worked fine with 4xxx drivers.

> So it's better to have one simple standard and keep it in future.
Even if so, it is irrelevant, since nobody cares. VESA implementations of laptops are often even worse then from videocards btw.

> > Sorry. The word bloat is meaningless without context, since it is a
> > relative term, and it is not clear in what context. A Full Live DVD
> > typically (because of its compressed filesystem) in the range of 6GB of
> > binaries.
>
> I was thinking about live CDs on mini 8cm disk. There's about 200MB. I
> think it's better to stuff it with usefull utilities then fill it entirely
> with different drivers levanig space only for bares hell.
I haven't seen mini disks for sale in ages, and when I did they were more expensive than white label DVDs. On 6GB there is room for a couple of MB of drivers. Specially something that everybody has, like a screen.

> > Floppy? Which live CD still boots from floppy? They all moved to IDE
> > emulation years ago (IIRC Slackware 8.1 is the last major linux distro
> with
> > 2.88MB floppy emulation.
>
> I think there are still some (maybe obscure) single 1.44 or 2.88 floppu
> mini distros.
Probably if you search long and hard you will find obscure people running SCO and IRix of 9" discs. But I don't care about that either :-)

> > (also for my non-dos purposes a more fully featured VESA would be a good
> > thing), but that is simply the way it is.
>
> Hm here you say that you would find usefull "more fully featured VESA" but
> from your previous write I got feeling that you want to kill ALL the legacy
> stuff, little bit inconsistent.

I was saying that nobody really expects VESA implementations to become better, only less, based on the current use that is used for. Namely to provide a minimal base for GUI during installation of an OS (be it Windows or *nix).

> Of course I understand there's now
> difference between my wishes and reality and I cannot do much more with it
> (except supportinig some obscure openHW/openFW projects).
There are multiple possibilities. Selecting hardware that actually works, participating in FreeDos, Coreboot. Anything but passively pining away on some forum bitterly complaining how everybody left poor old Dos alone, and that the programs that you still have are so perfectly good, and decide to wing it another year. But the end is inevitable, unless the remaining Dos users actively carve out a livable niche.

> > No problem, but the point I was trying to make is that the C=64/Amiga
> > community doesn't expect current vendors to tailor to their wishes. It
> is
> > the desire and illusion to run old software on new hardware ad infinitum
> > that causes the (self inflicted) pain.
>
> But C64/Amiga never aspired to became wide and long computer standard as
> PC.

I think both held out longer in their original formfactor than the PC did. So did the cards/expansion busses.

> The PC compatible was set this standard and now it's leaving it.

It has regularly changed. PC-XT-286-AT were not entirely compatible either, and later 386 extensions appeared, with Dos5.

> So I think it's time for raneming the whole architecture...
I don't see why. It is still the current incarnation of this architecture. That Dos stopped the evolving with it and clings to standards that are slowly being phased out, is not the problem of the architecture.

> Yes maybe it would was better that MSDOS was forgotten when 386 was
> introduced (before I got PC) and e.g. OS/2 was spreaded instead it.

I never said that. But Dos did nothing. It didn't go away, and didn't evolve anymore. It's that uncertainty why there probably never grew communities like even OS/2, Amiga, C=64 etc. And then I'm not even talking about the multi-billion Linux racket.

Win9x has the same problem. Once the most popular platform on the planet, nobody seems to mourn its demise. I haven't seen any usergroups springing up that actively keep win9x alive.

It's strange that I have to hear dos news on Unix conventions (some mentions about improved freedos support in a Coreboot session). It seems that nothing much happened on the Freedos site after januari-march 2010 (except the news posts about new packages)

> We
> would bring us much brighter future. But it didn't happened so and there
> spreaded a lot of DOS apps that I like. Maybe as you said the sharp break
> would be bettes. Even intel probably planned it with itanium IA64 which
> missing x86 (or poorly emulated) but it didn't become standard.
I think the main failure of EPIC/IA64 was that, like RISC it simplified CPU parts (RISC: decoding, EPIC: scheduling) that were becoming increasingly dwarfed in size by evergrowing caches.

It never even reached a budget workstation price, it stayed in the realm of extremely expensive servers.

> > The linux community builds own ARM and MIPS hardware and phones.
>
> I know. I was also thinking about something like that, make openHW PC
> (probably FPGA based) supporting all good standards of DOS day.

I don't know. Maybe you could base it on low power industrial x86 CPUs, that generally have a long life. Not cheap, but heavy duty FPGA's are probably more expensive.

> But as my
> student time has ended I will never have enough time to realize it. Maybe
> some chinese guys will come with such portable emulating DOS games/demos
> engine :)
And so the Dos community waits for a saviour. Again :-)

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