1. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 L2ßeta: Current Focus Last Friday’s meeting at UMD: Bob Hirosky, Drew Baden, Rob Bard, John Giganti Discussed details of various SBC and I/O card options Re-iterated desire for simple, ~‘off-the-shelf’ re-implementation More detailed discussions of hardware requirements Discussion of ß-2-ß PIO reduction for multiprocessor models AGP-style solutions set aside - leverage existing PCI experience for minimum development time Prime contenders include: SBCs: single or dual PIIIs dual or quad G4s I/O: (modified) s-link PMC(s) Catalina 64bit PMC or similar (Transtech) (vs redesign)

2. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Summary of Hardware findings CPU boards: SINGLE->QUAD Power PC Variety SINGLE->DUAL PIII Variety I/O CARDS: PMC CARDS w/ Internal FIFO/MEMORY Catalina (64 bits wide at 33MHz) S-link (32 bits wids at 33 MHz) Transtech (64 bits wide at 66 MHz) NEW FIND!

3. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 DUAL/QUAD Power PC Option Single/Dual/Quad PPC 750 450 MHZ PPC 7400 to come 30% faster than alpha in INTs about the same in fp

4. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Power PC option comments cost ~ $8K(dual)/14K(quad) Pro: Quad CPU board can replace a whole crate, no need to alpha-alpha PIO - use shared memory instead 2 PMC slots are on completely separate busses - limits bus latency 64bits/66MHz - higher bandwidth for DMA 32bits/33MHz - lower bandwidth for other things Con: Longer startup curve due to switch to PowerPC linux? Compiler options under Linux? Linux compatible images? Single vendor for this QUAD board, several for single/duals

5. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 A Dual Pentium III OptionDual 1GHz PIII specint95 46.6 vs alpha 15.4

6. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 PIII option comments Pro: Huge amounts of CPU now on the shelf More familiar Linux KAI compiler under Linux Con: PCI bus is only 32bits/33MHz - would have to live w/ estimated 65MB/s Max bandwidth (vs 80 ish now) No QUAD option yet - can’t replace a whole crate Maybe single vendor for the dual PIII board, many for singles

7. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Catalina QC64-PMC

8. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Catalina PMC card comments cost ~ $4.5K Pro: 64 bits wide w/ user programmability in onboard FPGA FPGA programmable from PCI bus! Lots of FIFO space on board, we could do w/o FIFO’s on our adapter card Should be able to get LINUX drivers Con: Runs only at PCI 33MHz, same as we have now It’s a one way card, need another PMC card for output

9. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 CERN S-link to PMC, PMC to S-link Output Card Input Card

10. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 S-link PMC card comments Pro: Lots of support from CERN/LHC We could use this as a base design if we later build PMC cards ourselves Con: Runs only at PCI 33MHz / 32 bits way cards, use two of them or modify an existing design

11. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Transtech-DSP PMC-FPGA I/O card

12. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 Transtech PMC card comments cost ~ $2.5-5K, depending on FPGA Pro: 64 bits wide w/ user programmability in onboard FPGA 66 MHZ PCI interface It’s a two-way card Choice of onboard FPGA Lots of fast on board SRAM (can it replace fifo’s) Promise of LINUX drivers This company is working w/ DNA computers Con: FPGA programming might be a bit more difficult if we use the onboard memory to implement or FIFOs Not delivered yet (but promise several week time scale - this board is a modification of an existing DSP board, not made from scratch) Newest find - need to do more research on this one, but it looks promising

13. B. Hirosky Jan 5 ‘01 SYSTEM OPTIONS QUAD PowerPC + Catalina card + output PMC QUAD PowerPC + Transtech card  Fastest I/O  option of removing alpha-alpha PIO  separate PCI buses, may make this a non-issue  Linux/Compiler issues  Less certain about future enhancements to SBC PIII + S-link Card  Compilers / Familiar Linux  Maximum symmetry w/ existing system  18-25% PCI BW hit, ~65MB/s max (MBdma needs~ 20MB/s) Continuing work on draft TDR for mid Feb...