Re: Apple PowerMac G5
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 02:32:34AM +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
>
> > So you think that the north-bridge could be an Apple-IBM common design ?
>
> It's an Apple design.
Indeed, manufactured by IBM. I'm just curious to see what bridge
IBM will use in their 970 machines.
>
> > The rest is not as important, as it is connected trough a HyperTransport
> > bus, so any HT chip will do. The funny thing is that they have a special
> > PCI-X bridge sitting between the north bridge and the super IO chip. I
>
> No. The "super-io chip" (a KeyLargo derivative) is connected to HT.
>
> > guess this one is just a off-the-shelve piece, while the IO chip is of
>
> Correct, the HT<->PCI-X bridges for the slots are AMD parts.
>
> > more common apple lineage. It has serial ATA, standard ATA for the
>
> I believe the serial ATA is a separate (non-Apple) part.
Not according recently released Apple's docs:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G5/PowerMacG5/PowerMacG5.pdf
The K2 chip has a lot of things in it: 2 serial ATA,
one parallel ATA, a HT link, a Firewire controller
(the PHY is external), the Ethernet controller (including
the PHY), 2 USB 1.1 controllers (for Modem and Bluetooth),
an I2S interface for sound, an interrupt controller (MPIC),
the PMU interface, and finally a standard PCI bus (for the
USB2.0 controller and the optional Airport Extreme card).
It probably has a few more things I missed. Another
interesting point is that the memory controller can
use 2GB DIMM modules, which could bring the total
RAM to 16GB for the memory hungry ;-)
>
> > USB 2.0,
>
> A separate, non-Apple part (hi Ben).
Indeed, K2 has USB, but only 1.1 for internal
uses.
>
> > Firewire 800,
>
> I'm not sure about this. The FireWire 400 is the same as before,
> though.
>
> > networking and
>
> Still SUN GEM.
>
> > audio.
>
> Still TAS3004, but with added optical links.
>
> > Naturally, one could even build a PPC 970 motherboard with This
> > IBM/Apple northbridge, some PCI bridge, and Nvidia's HT connected
> > southbridges, not that we have much drivers for them though.
>
> Yes, but why? And engineering adequate cooling for the 970 seems
> to be non-trivial, to say the least...
It is non trivial because Apple seems to have done everything they
could do to minimize noise. The power dissipation of a 970 is in
the 50W range, worst case, which is easily in the range of forced
air cooling when you don't care about noise.
Gabriel
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