Best choice for I/O hub for AMD Opteron

[Craig C Forney]

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