Best choice for I/O hub for AMD Opteron

Bari Ari bari at onelabs.com
Wed Apr 28 22:19:01 CEST 2004


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





More information about the coreboot mailing list