Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:35:23 -0500 (EST) From: Tom Huppi <thuppi@huppi.com> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: SMP mini-ITX board... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.58.0412132223290.87141@nuumen.pair.com>
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...and some general Via hardware questions. I'm in the planning stage of an upgrade to my aging hardware, and have some general technical questions that I hope someone may be able to theorize about to help me determine if it might be 'worth the wait'. The mini-ITX form factor appeals to me as an always-up workstation. In looking around, I spot a dual-processor board from Via (epia-dp) which, I suspect, will be vaporware for at least another couple of quarters but I have hope that it would materialize eventually. If not, the epia-sp model is already on the market, and the cn400<->vt8237 chipset looks on paper to be relatively impressive compared Via's earlier offerings. I've recently taken up a hobby that requires actual crunching ability so it may make more sense to invest in a separate 'mainstream' system to attack the heavyweight problems on an as-needed basis. Firstly, I've not found a whole lot of info about the hardware but there are some general peeks at prototype boards, and some general info about the chipset. http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=405 http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/chipsets/c-series/cn400/ Here are my questions: - Nehemiah CPU/{Via northbridge} MP vs. FreeBSD SMP impl. Can anyone enlighten or theorize about if it may 'work' or not, and how well compared to 'reference' SMP hardware. - vt8237 USB2: I have (will have) a device which squirts data over the USB as fast as possible. I understand that some motherboards have inferior USB2 controllers. For the life of me, I cannot find many actual benchmark tests of this. Anyone know off hand whether Via's vt8237 USB is any good (+ as supported under FreeBSD.) - vt8237 GigE: Via makes noise about their 1Ghz northbridge<->southbridge interconnect (cn400/vt8237), but doesn't say much about their vt8237<->'Via connectivity' interface shown on the above diagram. It appears that their GigE implementation, pci(-x?), and a lot of other things (although *not* SATA happily), are driven through this interface. GigE support seems to requires an extra chip ('VIA Velocity'). Any thoughts on the architecture and/or experience with FreeBSD driver support here? Thanks for any thoughts on any of these subjects, - Tom
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