Screw graphics... use AGP for GigE networking!!
on
Tackling AGP 8X
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As evidenced by the NetBSD support, AGP is essentially a PCI-bridge-plus-frills with only one PCI device on it: your graphics card. It also adds snazzy stuff like the command FIFO (which if you study I2O, you will note is generally useful and not just a graphics processor concept).
The electrical simplicity of supporting only one card plays a large part in allowing it to be so much faster than the normal PCI bus. It's only a matter of time before you end up wanting AGP speeds for:
graphics
disk
network
Since the most normal PCI slots you want on a single bridge is four, you could have a reasonably balanced motherboard with 3AGP+4PCI... assuming the expansion card vendors agree to make AGP versions of things.
"leia" (the iMac that built NetBSD/macppc 1.4.2) has had its HD divided into MacOS and NetBSD areas for quite some time, but I never did figure out how to run ofwboot from HFS. I just kept netbooting ofwboot and entering the local path to the kernel.
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As evidenced by the NetBSD support, AGP is essentially a PCI-bridge-plus-frills with only one PCI device on it: your graphics card. It also adds snazzy stuff like the command FIFO (which if you study I2O, you will note is generally useful and not just a graphics processor concept).
The electrical simplicity of supporting only one card plays a large part in allowing it to be so much faster than the normal PCI bus. It's only a matter of time before you end up wanting AGP speeds for:
Since the most normal PCI slots you want on a single bridge is four, you could have a reasonably balanced motherboard with 3AGP+4PCI ... assuming the expansion card vendors agree to make AGP versions of things.
Can I moderate this down on the grounds that it's posted by a cron job?
"leia" (the iMac that built NetBSD/macppc 1.4.2) has had its HD divided into MacOS and NetBSD areas for quite some time, but I never did figure out how to run ofwboot from HFS. I just kept netbooting ofwboot and entering the local path to the kernel.
My hat is off to you, sir.