PCI 3.0 Coming; Intel gets the Green Light. 172
pjbass writes "This story on ZDnet discusses the next I/O subsystem planned for PC's. It will be PCI 3.0 once making it to the consumers, but it is now known as Arapahoe, or 3GIO. Intel Corp. is responsible for making the technology, and boast its performance will be about 6 times that of PCI2.x, getting up to speeds of 6.6 gigabytes per second of bandwidth initially, with promises to scale more once the technology is mainstream."
AMD (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting to note that AMD voted for it as well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading it closely makes me feel as if AMD is trying to curry favor with Intel for some odd reason while at the same time promoting their own technology.... They do overlap in a few areas, but I am curious if their support for the new PCI 3.0 standard will make it harder for them to sell HT as they will have to work to differentiate it.
Re:Interesting to note that AMD voted for it as we (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading it closely makes me feel as if AMD is trying to curry favor with Intel
or maybe AMD realizes that Intel owns the market and to not support PCI 3.0 would mean PITA for hardware vendors and suicide for AMD.
Re:Interesting to note that AMD voted for it as we (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe they're hoping to saddle Intel with a standard that can't compete with their own proprietary solution?
What happened to AMD? (Score:2, Interesting)
Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:5, Funny)
Call it "New PCI" or "Super-Duper PCI" or "Extra Whizzy PCI (not compatible with any computers made before 2001)". Please!
And don't even get me started on the trouble I've had explaining why people's "innovative" cheap storage solutions are flawed (Zip disks don't work in regular floppy drives, you can't overwrite normal music CDs now matter how good your burner is etc.).
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:3, Funny)
Quite understandable. After all, 4 is a much lower number than 75, so why shouldn't the Pentium 4 be much worse than the 75?
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:1)
I'll trade you my pentium 75! for your ol' pentium 4. Isn't that a deal?
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:1)
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:4, Funny)
[ OK ] [Cancel]
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:1)
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:2, Interesting)
that's because pci 2.1 compatible motherboards have been rolling out ever since that spec was finalized. and after that pci 2.1 cards were pushed to retailers. backwards comaptible, and transparent to most users.
next time you buy a pci card, check out if it requires pci 2.0 or 2.1. it'll be in the manual. and then you'll realize you've been able to match up yuor motherboard and your pci cards with little to no effort already.
complex
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:1)
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:1)
this is the case. please refer to http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pci_x [pcisig.com] for more information.
note: much like high-speed and low-speed devices in usb 1.0/1.1, mixing pci 3.0 and pci 2.0/2.1 devices will lower the effective throughput of all devices to the 2.0/2.1 level.
complex
Re:Please give it a better name than PCI 3.0! (Score:2)
Yeah? (Score:2, Interesting)
Still waiting for that fibre-optic bus. Still waiting.
Weevil
cheap and feasible (Score:1)
Just one question... (Score:1)
is slashdot smoking crack ? (Score:1)
Lawyers?! (Score:3, Funny)
WTF? Since when are lawyers qualified to decide on technology issues? I'd understand if they were to review the legalities of the standard (patents and all that crap), but the standard itself?
Next time I need to design a computer bus I'll ask my mother (a law professor). But first I'll teach her how to use scrollbars...
Re:Lawyers?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it IS the legality of the standard they are interested in. They will all want to go over the spec with a fine tooth comb to make sure they don't wind up with another RAMBUS fiasco.
Yes, I realize RAMBUS's patents werent actually published at time of the memory standards meeting, they were still pending, but that whole incident has definately raised the amount of due diligence companies are putting into the legal end of standards committees. It makes no sense for AMD to endorse the standard going forward if, for example, it wound up that they would have to pay Intel a bunch of royalties on every chip they sold because they needed to use some patented method for the CPU to talk to add-in cards over this bus.
Re:Lawyers?! (Score:1)
Might be why this [e-insite.net] is whythe lawyers are involded...
And you thought this was a good thing,
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Re:Lawyers?! (Score:2, Insightful)
A friend of mine finished his biochemistry degree and is now studying law. This will not only open up more doors for him, but make him a slightly more competent lawyer if he chooses that career path.
What about AGP (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about AGP (Score:2, Interesting)
You need to remember that AGP is PCI!
The AGP standard was derived from the PCI bus, but AGP is a port meaning only 1 device is hooked to the controller.
There may be a new AGP spec based on PCI 3.0, or due to it's point-to-point nature, it may not be even necessary to have a special device interface just for graphics.
In response to other posts, AGP 4X maxes out at 1.1GB/s while PCI 3.0 is initially proposed to go to 6.6GB/s and will go higher than that once the technology matures.
All in all this new spec is a Good Thing (tm)
Re:What about AGP (Score:3, Interesting)
I bet you will not want to keep it though. PCI3 would offer a shared 6.6 GB/s peak versus an AGP 4x peak of 1 GB/s. At that point, a GeForce 3 MX PCI3 with 128 MB DDR-333 will most likely run for under $40 online, if they are still bothering to sell them. Drool...
Late story submission .... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Late story submission .... (Score:1)
Re:Late story submission .... (Score:2)
Good point. But if you maintain the wheel properly, it will probably never squeak in the first place.
rLowe
Lowered MB Costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lowered MB Costs (Score:3, Interesting)
JOhn
Re:Lowered MB Costs (Score:1)
More upgrades (Score:1)
Doing this bit and piece at a time is just dragging out the process and going to get people more confused than if they just switched to a non-self-bottlenecking set of standards.
Or am I just dreaming?
DanH
No, you're just naive (Score:1)
If Intel tried something like that, then Intel would lose tons of market share and then AMD would capitalize on it. And it would totally segment the marketplace, which is desirable to nobody.
If AMD tried something like that, almost nobody would buy it and AMD would go bankrupt trying it.
It has to be done in incremental fashion. It's safer for the consumer that way, and that is what the typical consumer has historically wanted.
Re:More upgrades (Score:1)
I was commenting on Intel/PCs getting with the system and coming up to the standards above what is.
DanH
But is it backwards compatible? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:3, Interesting)
"The key message is that PCI software and device drivers do not have to change to be supported in the base level of Arapahoe," Tipley said. "As far as the actual link level, how electrons get across the wires, that's quite different, and obviously won't be the same PCI pins. It will be very similar to what a link would look like for 10 Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand, that kind of signaling."
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:1)
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:1)
Are you saying that you know that it isn't compatible? Becuase if it wasn't I'd expect them to put the old PCI2 slots in mobos. Sorry to be so exacting, but can anyone confirm or disprove with confidince if it is backwards compatible?
I.E. Will you be able to throw your current PCI devices into it, like the way different AGP speeds work currently?
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:1)
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:2)
Ir probably will not be simply because it's such a change from previous PCI that I seriously doubt that Intel wants people confused about what cards will work in what (as someone else mentioned, there are a lot of people out there would would try to shoe-horn a new card into a Pentium 75...)
Also, because it's intended to be more of a port, not a bus, one goal is to try to prevent conflicts, sharing, noise, and other things that severely limit current PCI technology.
There is no sound reason to assume that PCI 3.0 is "Foul Crap" except that you probably don't like Intel.
Get over it.
Re:But is it backwards compatible? (Score:1)
If you've looked at the spec it calls for an entirely serial approach to everything... & you see modern PCI cards are parrelel with the ability to send 32 or 64 bits every cycle... This is where we get a problem... You either have to use a buffer to handle parellel requests in a serial fashion (adds $ to use) or you have logic added to each card so that it can communicate in either Serial or Parellel mode (which doesn't work for existing cards). Think about it for awhile & you should realize that I'm right about it...
& frankly Intel has never cared if what they do forces a user to upgrade, heck Intel is the king of forcing upgrades on people just to make more money... They've used that tactic since the 386 days...
Those were the days.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I remember when I was a kid, seeing some article on Usenet circa 1990 about how it was impossible for any computer to do 30 FPS in 24-bit
3D Chips (Score:2)
Besides, as long as the 3D card can render it, you can send many more polygons/second if you have 6.6 GBps of bandwidth
Another thing that comes to mind is Video Capture and processing of HDTV signals.
Re:3D Chips (Score:1)
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:3, Funny)
If you drop it from high enough, any computer will do 30 fps before it hits the ground, without regard to its bitness.
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:1)
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:2, Insightful)
How about 10 Gbit ethernet? A few such interfaces should put some load on the bus, so maybe a router working with 10 Gbit could need the bandwidth.
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:2)
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:1)
If you build it, then people will find ways to (over)use it...
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:2)
It makes me chuckle to hear these young'uns talk about 1990 being a long time ago.
Back in 1980, I remember when a 40 MB drive was so big (and expensive) it was only used in a multi-user system. Now I have individual files that easily exceed that. Sometimes by several times.
So I hope nobody makes any statements to the effect "640K, that ought to be enough for anybody."
On my bookcase, I've got the drive mechanism from an old 5MB drive. It is about 40 % larger than your typical 5 inch drive mechanism today. It's 5 MB. It sounded like a jet engine starting up. And it cost --- $3000 when new. And that was the "new", "low-cost" technology.
I hope the lessons here are obvious and don't need explaining. The time will come when 6 GB/Sec will seem so limiting. After all, a holographic projection needs way more bandwidth than this. I look at the progress of the last 20 years, and I am hopeful to see where computers will be in 2010.
Re:Those were the days.. (Score:2)
One word: graphics.
I mean, this kind of bandwidth is at least in the same league as what today's graphic chips have to their local (on-board) memory. If a board could have >6GB/s bandwidth to system RAM, that might make it feasible to do unified memory systems again. I'm not saying that would necessarily be better, but it's at least possible and might even be cheaper in some cases. Also, I for one would enjoy a world where PCs don't have a single one-of-a-kind AGP connector for the graphics board, but where I could plop in as many boards as desired with at least reasonable bandwidth.Beowulf Clusters (Score:1)
Who's you super computer, who's your super computer...baby!!!
Can't wait for these to hit the market and build a network of 3.0 spec motherboards!
-hack
PS: Gonna have to sit down now....I feel dizzy.
OFFICIAL Slashbot Opinion. (Score:2)
therefore
PCI 3.0 = Bad
Look for the stranger..... (Score:1)
Some big players are missing but is Microsoft doing there ???
Re:Look for the stranger..... (Score:1)
PCI 3.0 implies backwards-compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PCI 3.0 implies backwards-compatibility (Score:2)
ISA is effectively dead (I know some people still use it, but more and more motherboards simply don't have a slot).
PCI 2.x is the current "legacy"
Between PCI 3.0 and HyperTransport... If PCI 3.0 is not backwardly compatible then I would expect a motherboard to probably support PCI 2.x and ONE of the other standards (most likely dependant on whose CPU the MoBo supports).
Question (Score:2)
I haven't read the spec: Are there any provisions for hardware copy protection systems in this thing?
Intel's been working on hardware copy protection for IEEE 1394, so it wouldn't surprise me if they managed to sneak that garbage into PCI 3.0.
Schwab
Whats the point for consumers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, where does PCI-X fit into all this?
Re:Whats the point for consumers? (Score:2)
A 64-bit bus is expensive because it doesn't go as fast as a serial bus (you have to slow it down deliberately to avoid timing problems making all 64 lines sync up) and it eats a lot of board space and chip pins.
Though it seems counterintuitive, a serial solution is currently more consumer-friendly than a wider bus is.
Of course, in 5 years, when the PCI is becoming the bottleneck again, and even cranking it up to 24 or 48 GHz isn't enough, someone will put several of these in parallel and tout it as a great advancement.
I take it back. I predict we'll see someone doing that and marketing it as vapor it before we even buy the first one of these.
Or maybe I just did.
--Blair
Does this trump AGP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Will everyone who bought AGP 4X graphic cards have to abandon them again like they left the PCI platform before? Anyway I'm still plugging along with an old PCI card and maybe I'll be glad I stayed there.
Re:Does this trump AGP? (Score:1)
Does this mean? (Score:1)
Yeah! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Yeah! (Score:1)
Re:IA-64 (Score:1)
Right, because you've actually done any of these comparisons yourself, and you're not just yammering about something someone else said about this subject that you know absolutely nothing about.
Should be noted (Score:4, Informative)
no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2, Informative)
no silicon yet so many companies do not even have access to what it is
their are no third partys supplieing interfaces or anything BUT lots of archs with bus problems i.e. Bandwidth problems
EV^ aka hypertransport is here right now and their is third part silicon SUN and apple will use it to link AGP Memory CPU because it is just faster !
nice but intel still have bandwidth problems now and look to drop their prices by up to 50 % today on the P4
the BUS is the problem for them and thats where AMD rules
SUN has also had faster machines simply because the BUS was faster
oh well
regards
john jones
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to quibble, but while this might have been true a long time ago, it's certainly not true today. In a Sun Fire 6800 you can't write from memory to PCI space at more than 150 MB/sec, which is really terrible for a 64/66 PCI bus. (The PCI to memory speed in that same machine is about 370 MB/sec.)
Supposedly their next PCI controller chip will fix this problem, but that's what they said about the last one...
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2)
That might still be a lot faster than what's seen in the PC space. I remember a few years ago having a devil of a time getting some of the popular Intel chipsets to sustain more than about 20MB/s without locking up. Sun's new-at-the-time "Psycho"[1] chipset was a breath of fresh air by comparison. You might think that 150MB/s sucks, but it would not be at all surprising if it's still better than what you'll find in the Intel/AMD camp.
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2)
Oops, forgot the note. [1] I'm not sure about the spelling because I only ever heard it talked about, never saw anything on paper. Then I left that job and stopped keeping track of such things.
Another thought: the reason Intel, AMD et al keep pushing faster pipes when they only get 20-50% of nominal on the existing pipes is simple. They'll always use only a fraction of whatever pipe you hand them. It's way easier to design a faster pipe and get 20-50% of that than to get 70% or more out of the existing pipe.
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:1)
hypertransport IS EV6 (Score:1)
regards
john jones
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2)
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:1)
EV6 is the code name for the 21264 Alpha. (Yes, EV67 is the code name for 21264A and EV68 is the code name for 21264B. And of course, EV7 is the code name for the upcoming 21364.)
AMD licensed the EV6 Bus from DEC for use with K7.
I hope this clears everything up.
which if you read the spec ARE the same thing (Score:1)
I am preaching to people who should understand this
hypertransport is the same thing bought ready to go for AMD
arrrch read the spec if they tell me its differant why does the same patent end up in both ?
regards
john jones
No they are not the same thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hypertransport is a variable width, bi-directional bus. It can transfer up to 12GB/s. It can be used for many things - CPU - Northbridge (as it will be used for the upcoming Hammer CPUs), Northbridge - SOuthbridge, Northbridge - RAM, GPU - RAM, Southbridge - RAID controller, etc.
Hypertransport is packeted. EV6 isn't. AMD license EV6 from Alpha, AMD designed Hypertransport.
Is this enough to convince you that EV6 and Hypertransport are different?
Re:No they are not the same thing. (Score:1)
EV67 is packeted in effect
how do you want to spin it EV67 and hypertransport are the same thing AMD research got the guys from DEC OK
please dont delude yourself its like saying electrons are nice little things that fly around atoms
or electons flow from positive to negitive
its just nice lies that work
regards
john jones
Re:No they are not the same thing. (Score:1)
Read the specs.
Re:No they are not the same thing. (Score:1)
wrong
ok some of what I say is wrong i.e. they are not compatable there switching is done differantly but the ideas and the way they are implemented are the same
so I am not totaly wrong but then I am nit completely right if you want to be pedantic
one question how many pages is the EV67 reqspec ?
or the tech manual for hypertransport ?
dont know
thats because you dont have them !
they are subject to NDA so dont tell me to read the spec ! (I have them)
what I am annopyed at is the fact that so many people seem to have jumped on the mrketing DROIDS words
I admit I am wrong but hey !
your so far off base its incredable
regards
john jones
Re:No they are not the same thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not surprised that patents for one bus technology are reused in another bus. But that does not make the second bus a variant of the first bus. It makes sense to reuse good ideas!
EV6 IS NOT the same bus as HyperTransport. They are not even similar, except maybe for some low-level things.
EV6 does not use LVDS.
EV6 is not a bidirectional (full duplex) bus (X data lines one way, and Y data lines the other way), instead all of the data lines are use for communications in both directions (half-duplex).
EV6 is a processor (Alpha or Athlon/Duron) to northbridge bus. Hypertransport is a chip interconnection technology for the future.
EV6 is not packet driven, unlike HyperTransport.
EV6 is a point-to-point bus. Hypertransport can have 32 devices on a single bus, via a hub architecture (i.e., you could say it is a lot of point-to-point busses connected together, but the addressing allows for 32 devices)
and there are such a lot of other things that are different.
You're so far off base it's incredible. And you have the specifications? Have you thought of reading them? If your job requires you to work with these busses, and you do not even know the difference between them, then I feel sorry for your employers.
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:1)
I've read quite a number of technical reviews of both the athlon and p4 and for some reason I remember reading more than once that the bus the p4 uses has 3.2GB/sec of bandwidth whereas the EV6 bus tops out (at least right now) at 2.1GB/sec.
Doesn't this mean that the bus is more a problem now for AMD than it is for Intel? Or am I totally wrong?
Re:no silicon years off - EV6 AKA hypertransport (Score:2)
The P4's bus is quite bandwidth hungry if I remember correctly. It isn't as efficient as the EV6. Anyway, the P4 is slowed down badly by high RDRAM latency.
Of course, the P4's FSB will be updated to be 533MHz (133x4) next year, thus getting over 4GB/s bandwidth, with faster RDRAM with more bandwidth. However DDR ram then will be faster and have even lower latencies. Imagine a dual channel DDR chipset for the Athlon that support PC2700, aka nForce 2 coming next year. A total of 5.4GB/s of bandwidth between memory and the system.
Different applications.... (Score:1)
HyperTransport = chip to chip
PCI/3GIO = motherboard to expansion cards
InfiniBand = box to box
Each of these technologies are designed with differenct applications in mind and therefore different constraints and complexity. There is no such thing as a "one size fits all" bus.
Re:Different applications.... (Score:1)
Re:Okay, Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing I was wondering though - is what use is HyperTransport? I always thought that it was marketed as a replacement bus architecture, but I guess not given that they want 3GIO as well!
AMD's HyperTransport (Score:3, Informative)
It works at 6.4GB/sec and looks to me like a direct competitor.
Re:AMD's HyperTransport (Score:2, Informative)
Re:AMD's HyperTransport (Score:2)
Tech Dept: This product is a high speed add on.
Marketing: It is the future in computing and a replacement for all your other hardware
Tech Dept: Nope, its complimentary
Marketing: It doesn't sound so good if we say that
Re:AMD's HyperTransport (Score:1)
Re:AMD's HyperTransport (Score:1)
PCI
Re:Okay, Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article.....
It at least answers your first question....
And I really doubt that Intell will prevent VIA from using it.....it would sort of defeat the purpose, it's intended to REPLACE PCI....and the only way it'll do that, is if it can be used in every PC....
Currently PCI is used not just in Intel machines, but Macs, Sparc workstations and others....
Re:PCI 3.0 should take a lesson from NuBus. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Okay, Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:1)
Put them in a decent system with 66MHz PCI slots and/or multiple PCI busses and the computer will keep up.
Re:intel only? (Score:1)
Re:nforce: Obsolete before release? (Score:1)
Re:Speaking of Changing PCI 3.0 Naming... (Score:2)
It's just you :-)
'Arapahoe' is likely named for where the engineers wish they were instead of slaving over design terminals in fluorescent lit rooms. The Arapahoe Basin is a ski area in Colorado:p [arapahoebasin.com] .
http://arapahoebasin.com/contact/content.shtml#ma