Thinking to the future, X1000 Add-On CPU Board ??

[amigasociety]

Curious, looking into the crystal ball, say Amiga OS gets multi-processor support, could a CPU Board upgrade be made to not only keep the PASemi intack, but add additional PPC CPUs to the X1000?

Like an upgrade board that adds additional processors that the Amiga OS could take advantage of.

I know, really crystal ball but lets dream a little.

Or is X1000 locked to what it is, which is darned nice, but still, more power, uh uh uh (Talking like Tim Allen from Tool Time)

tj

[kicko]

You got 2 cores and one is in use. The future will enable the second in os4 and new gfx system with 3D drivers, more then 2GB limit etc. Thats enough future for me now

[mechanic]

I like your thinking.......but....
If you had a card(?) with an auxilery cpu (APU?) how would it share system resources?

The CPU would have to give up control in order for the APU to have it. Not saying it can't be done, just what would you use it for?
Right now most any card that has DMA could be considered an APU. Sound, video, TV, etc..

So what is your thinking? Using it as a data pump, or maybe something like the classic Buster chip? Maybe a controller between a Sam and the PCIe bus of X1000.

I don't have an answer,,,but oh boy, do I have questions. Speak up, and never hold your peace.

[LyleHaze]

Just playing "Devils Advocate"..
The Nemo board has physical connectors for PCI and PCI Express.
There is also the Xorro slot, which has access to many of the pins of the Builtin Xena chip.

There are NOT connections for a processor. Unlike some previous AmigaOne designs,
the CPU is not socketed, and there is no "Meg-Array" connector riser for the CPU.
The Xena is soldered directly to the board, as are the SB600 and Xilinx PLD.

All this has meaning. Many, likely most intermittent faults are connector related.
How many of the older A1's suffered from a loose Meg-Array connection?
How often do chips come loose in their sockets? You'd be surprised how
many problems are simply loose connections.

This DOES make the Nemo boards a bit more difficult to build, but I think we will
find that they might last longer than any previous Amiga model (of any generation).

I'm just guessing, Time will tell whether I'm right or not, but I for one am very happy
with the "minimal connectors" design, even if it means that I cannot change
processors with the seasons of the year.

Just my opinion,

[ChrisH]

There are NOT connections for a processor. Unlike some previous AmigaOne designs,
the CPU is not socketed, and there is no "Meg-Array" connector riser for the CPU.

The lack of a socketable CPU *board* (aka Meg-Array) on the X1000 is a very good design decision, because that alone was probably responsible for a great deal of complexity & cost of the original AmigaOne design (not to mention increasing the chances of failure).

A socketable CPU itself would have been nice (for replacing failed CPUs), but CPUs fail very rarely (without an umm 'helping hand'), and the X1000's CPU is available in very limited quantities anyway. And it seems doubtful that there will be an alternative PPC CPU which is pin-compatible with the current one.