Le Supervidel - Page 1

Voici des infos interessantes:
' Looks like I have to throw myself into this thread.


The SuperVidel is definitely not dead.

The SuperVidel will be 100% hardware register compatible with the old Videl and it will snoop all accesses to the old Videl. This means that old unmodified games, demos and applications will run as before on the SV but you will get the output through the new DVI-I port (digital + analog). There will be no speed increase though until the games/demos are modified to use the DDR2 graphics RAM. This is a small patch. Of course we'll also have to add new hardware registers for all the new functions.

Development of the SuperVidel is progressing. Now I get some help with the PCB from my brother Torbjörn. Earlier we had the job split up so that I do the PCB and he does the VHDL code for the FPGA with some help from me. The schematics design is nearly complete and I've begun looking at the layout. I don't have to do it all from scratch since I've already done the layout to almost completion a couple of times before...

The current specs of the SuperVidel are:

* 128MB 32bit-wide DDR2 "333Mhz" yielding 1350MB/s internally on the SuperVidel. Accessing the graphics RAM from the CT60 is limited by the speed of the CT60 bus and will probably reach 100MB/s or slightly above. Still, that’s a lot better than the 5.5MB/s you get from the old STRAM today.

* One full DVI (DVI-I) connector, i.e. both digital and analog output.

* Dual screen output, one via the digital signals and the other through the analog, thanks to dual internal pixel decode pipelines. This means you may at the same time display two different screens (for example a stretched GEM desktop) or the same screen on both monitors.

* All the old resolutions are supported (because the SV is Videl compatible…) and the upper limit will be around 1600 x 1200 x 24bit x 75Hz.


/Henrik '

Alors, quelles sont vos impressions et comment situer la CTPCI par rapport a ces informations ?

Quelqu'un peut m'expliquer l'intérêt de mettre de la DDR2 sur une carte graphique qui ne fera que de la 2D, sauf erreur ?

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Et qu'ils livrent les Ethernat pour les derniers c*ns qui ne l'ont pas reçus...
S'il faut encore attendre la fin de la conception de la carte (1-2 ans), et surtout la livraison, mon Falcon sera mort et je serai grand-père !

frost (./4) :
Et qu'ils livrent les Ethernat pour les derniers c*ns qui ne l'ont pas reçus...

Et accessoirement des drivers, parce que du hardware sans software qui va avec...

Et pour revenir au sujet ?

quel sujet ? il y a rien

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DHS.nu

Je serais preneur pour sur, mais comme Zero l'a ecrit :

Zerosquare (./5) :
Et accessoirement des drivers, parce que du hardware sans software qui va avec...

Ca serait chouette !!


GT

des nouvelles prises de leur site:

'Just wanted to say that the SuperVidel has progressed some more during my vacation this summer. Thanks to the first two weeks of rain, some heavy routing of the SuperVidel's PCB was performed. First the DDR2 part was completed. The data lines were length-matched to comply to the tight timing margins of DDR2 333. Then the data, clock, address and control lines of the DDR2 were simulated to ensure as clean signals as possible. This actually led us to a more simple design than we had from the beginning.

Next the DVI chip was routed, first the digital signals from the FPGA and then the differential highspeed TMDS signal pairs leading to the DVI connector. Since the TMDS signals are running at up to 1.65GHz they require careful layout considerations. But we're pretty sure we've followed all the things mentioned in the datasheet, like differential impedance and separate output grounds. :P

Then the DAC was routed, its digital input signals coming from the FPGA and the analog outputs leading to the DVI connector. Dual Schottky diodes were added to the analog outputs to protect these pins of the chip from damaging voltages if the SuperVidel is running while being connected to an active display. This was something we copied from an application note, so we think it should be trustworthy.

Last we began routing the CT60 connector signals. At the time of writing the CT60 data connector (upper connector) is completely routed while the address connector (lower connector) remains.When the CT60 connectors are routed not much is left to do, only small things like the Flash memory for keeping the FPGA configuration and garnishing the whole board with a lot of capacitors. One slight obstacle though is the power plane with all the different voltages that have to reach all possible corners of the board. Thankfully the SuperVidel is a six layer board and there’s a layer that serves as a mixed signal/power layer that may be used for this.

Now we consider the PCB of the SuperVidel to be around 85% complete. Note that this percentage does not include the VHDL code that will control the behaviour of the FPGA, but when the board layout is finished we may finally order the prototypes to be manufactured, and then it will not be easy to stop us from developing all the cool stuff like the SuperBlitter, MPEG-support and 3D-support.

Maybe you'd like to see what the layout looks like now? Here it is: SuperVidel

During my vacation a few EtherNat boards were soldered also. But only half of them work right away. At least now we have 7 working boards for the upcoming batch. :P'

Et mon Ethernat n'est toujours pas prête .... C'est bien gentil de jouer avec son FPGA mais il faudrait penser aux clients aussi.

Il a dit qu'il y en a 7 de prêtes...

Kochise

Kochise: oui, en comptant sur la liste, ils n'en sont toujours pas à mon nom..

Quel serait votre choix entre une ctpci et un supervidel ?

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Nan nan, c'est typique de l'esprit Atari, regarde les projets Microbox ou Falcon040, sans parler des autres...

Kochise

question puissance/qualite/prix/duree ? Parce que je n'ai pas beaucoup de sous.

marss0 (./18) :
question puissance/qualite/prix/duree ? Parce que je n'ai pas beaucoup de sous.

Pour l'instant rien n'est dispo donc tu est tranquille. Pour ma part, m'en fout un peu tant que je peux taper des resols assez grande en True Color. Car le vrai probleme va toujours se poser pour les drivers. Pour la CTPCI il y a le support de Didier, mais pour Nature hum hum, car SebRmv m'a preter une Ethernat mais avec un TOS normal tu as rien, j'ai envoye un mail et voila la reponse tu n'a qu'a trouver la doc de la puce utilise et cela commence a l'adresse $xxxxxxxx.

Donc si tu as du mal a avoir de l'aide des auteurs, imagine ce que tu va en faire. C'est comme si SCPCD et Zero livrait la JagCF sans doc, tu as un DSP qui remet la Jag a hauteur d'une PS1 mais aucune doc. De ce coté c'est la tradition Atari garanti, de chouettes produits mais sois sans doc soit avec une doc encore plus buggé que mes programmes.

GT Sans support

Nouveau schema de la carte sur le site de Nature. Ca progresse...

De nouvelles informations des deux developpeurs:
'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...'

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du bbs de dhs.nu

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Bon voila je viens de recevoir ma Radeon \o/ plus qu'a 'attendre' la CTPCI. Je serais pret a commander les deux cartes, et surtout je ferais tout pour supporter les deux cartes dans les productions.


GT Pour les deux !!

GT... quel modele as-tu ? Quels sont les avantages sur les autres modeles ?

marss0 (./26) :
GT... quel modele as-tu ? Quels sont les avantages sur les autres modeles ?

C'est une 7000, je t'avoues que j'ai pas trop regardé le détail technique, car en PCI ca commence a etre un peu dur a trouver, une partie des refs que Rodolphe donne en lien son plus dispo a la vente, donc vite commandé ce que j'ai trouvé : 7000 Radeon Sapphire (64 megs de DDR) en plus en carte PC j'y connais rien donc



GT En PCI

bon en gros tu t'es encore emballer sans savoir où tu mettais les pieds...

kuk (./28) :
bon en gros tu t'es encore emballer sans savoir où tu mettais les pieds...

J'ai demandé a RaZ, vu que je n'y connais rien en PC, mauvaise langue d'historien



GT PC