Re: PLX 9060SD

[Adam Barnes <amb@transtech.co.uk>]

Steve Deiss wrote:

>> Anyone tried the 9060SD with insights to share?  
>> Has the DMA channel throughput been measured on
>> Pentium and Pro motherboards for data moving
>> from target to host?  Know where I can find a 
>> current errata sheet?  Got a favorite gripe
>> about the chp?

We have a lot of experience with 9060 and some
with the SD. As far as I know the differences between
the parts are very minor in the DMA area (apart from 1
channel vs. 2).

Anyway, we have seen some very good results both
between 9060s (>100Mbyte/sec aggregate b/w sustained
with both DMAing to each other at the same time),
and from 9060 to host memory. On a Triton 430 FX
M/B with a P133 + 256k PB cache + 16Mb EDO
I saw 110-120Mbyte/sec sustained. The trick seemed
to be programming a large value into the latency register.
This caused the 9060 to stick around after losing GNT#
so that it could do a nice long burst. I saw plenty of
cases where the burst length hit 256 words. The local
side was 0ws interface to a FIFO which was being
pumped with data from a SHARC DSP chip.

This allowed us to do a fun demo with a Data Translation
PCI framegrabber DMAing digital video onto our PCI
SHARC DSP board which then DMA'd the processed
result out to a DCI display (Matrox Millenium).
The whole thing kept up with the frame rate and was a
great showcase for PCI, IMHO.

On the whole, we have had a very good experience with
these PLX devices and I would recommend them.

Adam Barnes
Transtech Parallel Systems

PS: PLX have been very helpful on errata. 
Ö°	Ÿ