#060 MP Board
15 messages in this thread
Hi Jim,
I was wondering if you had a fact/info sheet available for inclusion in the
Amiga Report Online Magazine?? The magazine itself covers all things Amiga, and
I'm sure it could only be (further!) exposure for yourself and your company.
Thanks again!
Andre Lackmann
Andre,
The specs we have are preliminary, but here is what we plan to make available
(Q394 – the 060 is officially available):
Multiple processor support – up to four MC68060 processors working in parallel.
No application changes are required. A new setpatch and accompanying utilities
will be provided.
Memory – Up to 256 megs of memory using industry standard 72 pin SIMM sockets
(no propreitary memory to deal with).
Zorro III board design – ZorroIII only board. Up to 4 MP boards could be used
in a single machine (up to 16 processors and 1 gig of memory).
We are going to try to stay around the $1,000 price barrier (one CPU 0K).
Additional processors could be purchased seperately and just plugged in by the
customer.. nothing special would be required.
The multiprocessing is completely transparent to the Amiga OS.
Jim,
Does this mean that possibly by 3Q94 or so I might be able to put an MP
board in my A3000/25/030 and have 060 power and speed and be able to add
memory through standard simms w/o having to take my entire computer apart?
Yep, Michael, that's exactly what I mean. 🙂
C'mon, don't you like ripping out the 'cage' to get to the CPU socket on the
A3000? 😉
Jim,
There are days when I would like to shoot whoever put the drive platform
and power supply of the 3000 directly over the portion of the MB where you
have to stick zillions of tiny zips. Whoever it was MUST have worked for
GM or the government.
The MP board is incredible. I guess I really don't need to worry about
finding an A4000 at a firesale. Wow. I'm excited! <g>
Jim-
I've got one question about memory. Will the boards only address memory
that is mounted directly on them, or will motherboard memory be used?
Btw, it sounds GREAT! A real salvation product.
Paul – Minus Pins!
Paul,
The MP board will address any memory in the system, however, accessing the
motherboard memory will be like putting all of your programs into chip memory
now… SLOW. Having 64 bit (or 128 bit) interleaved memory connected directly
to the processor is the fastest way you can go. The Z3 Bus has a max bandwidth
of 25Mhz (on a good day with a tail wind), so accessing memory outside of the
memory on the same board (even to a 2nd MP board) will be limited to the speed
of the Z3 bus.
Jim-
Sounds cool. You'll be selling populated boards also, right? Or will you
be recommending that people get their memory elsewhere? I can't even
begin to guess how much 128bit or even 64bit memory will cost. 🙁
Paul – Minus Pins!
The memory we are using on the MP board is standard 72 pin 4megx8 SIMMs. They
are configured to be 32/64/128 bits wide depending on how many SIMMs you have.
Oh. I know very little about memory, but I always thought that 16bit
memory was a different entity from 32bit memory, so I assumed that I would
have to get special 64bit or 128bit memory for your board.
Another thing Jim- will you have different boards for different clocks, or
is it a one-size-fits-all deal?
Paul – Minus Pins!
Will the Quad 060 work with Emplant? Seems like it would be a nice PS
engine.
….John
The MP board will work with ANY other Amiga hardware/software.
Jim,
Is there a technical reason you went with the Zorro III slot instead of
the CPU slot? I realize that if you used the CPU slot you can only put
one card in a machine but Zorro slots are so hard to come by when your
Amiga is already loaded with cards (Graphics, MIDI, ethernet, IO extender,
Emplant, etc…)! Maybe a better question would be are you considering a
CPU slot version for those of us that do not want to turn a single Amiga
into a MegaMonster MP unit (16 processors and 1 gig of memory!)?
I know, I know…."you can't have everything, where would you put?" 🙂
Ed,
A3000 owners would not be able to use the MP board because there ain't no space
under the power supply. 🙂