Looking for advice and counsel regarding LinuxBIOS support for I/O hub alternatives ...
We've just completed a very dense cPCI dual Opteron design with an AMD 8111 as the I/O hub, no superIO, no 8131, no 8151, with 8GB SDRAM. LinuxBIOS seems to work fine, although the lack of legacy support for serial I/O was problematic (we ended up simulating a serial port). Thanks for everyone's support on helping us with early issues getting up to speed with LinuxBIOS.
For our next generation, we would like to use a better supported and more integrated I/O hub than the 8111 (USB 2.0 doesn't work on the 8111, to start with). The nVidia nForce 3-2506B and the VIA K8T800 Pro seem to have a lot of potential, but I'm concerned about support for these from the manufacturers as far as LinuxBIOS is concerned. We don't mind helping with debug on any new code required, but we don't want to even start unless we have some confidence that there will be some level of support and effort behind our choice (and that we are not alone).
Are there any opinions out there about these (or other) candidates related to LinuxBIOS?
Any comments appreciated.
Regards,
Craig Forney
Opus Innovations LLC Cupertino, CA
Craig C Forney wrote:
Looking for advice and counsel regarding LinuxBIOS support for I/O hub alternatives ... For our next generation, we would like to use a better supported and more integrated I/O hub than the 8111 (USB 2.0 doesn't work on the 8111, to start with). The nVidia nForce 3-2506B and the VIA K8T800 Pro seem to have a lot of potential, but I'm concerned about support for these from the manufacturers as far as LinuxBIOS is concerned. We don't mind helping with debug on any new code required, but we don't want to even start unless we have some confidence that there will be some level of support and effort behind our choice (and that we are not alone).
Are there any opinions out there about these (or other) candidates related to LinuxBIOS?
I doubt that you'll get any support from nVidia unless they can make a ton of $$ off your project.
VIA will get you hardware specs once you make it into their trusted circle or unless they can make a ton of $$ off your project, which puts you into their trusted circle.
AMD is great with specs but they only offer their chipsets as a reference and have no long term plans to support them.
Checkout ALI or consider rolling your own with a Xilinx or Altera FPGA. USB from an FPGA is usually the only big catch. A PCI 2.0 4-port host is under $5 but adds to the real estate. PLX also has a HyperTransport to PCI-X bridge. There are a few more things on the horizon but still under NDA.
-Bari
I can only say that to date, for this high end stuff, neither VIA nor Nvidia have been very interested in linuxbios. Historically, VIA has been friendlier to linuxbios than most vendors, however. They have certainly been helpful to users of the EPIA series.
What you can try to do is ask each vendor for the linuxbios support you need if you use their part. Ask for docs you need to make the part work. Don't make a decision until you are sure you have all the docs you need. You can even try to get sample bios code for making the part work.
We'll help you if we can.
ron
-
Bari Ari -
Craig C Forney -
ron minnich