RE: Is is possible to receive a cheep SubVendorID?

[Dave New <NewD@esi.com>]

Dimiter,

Please don't mistake me for someone that believes
that it is OK to charge $2500 for a Vendor ID. 8-)
When the PCI SIG was just starting out, such
membership fees helped to fund the startup
activities of the organization for working sessions,
etc., to get the initial specs out and organize
plug-fests, etc.

Now, a lot of folks would agree that that kind
of draconion fee is no longer required, other than
that it has never been re-thought either through
sheer inertia, or the 'well, *we* had to pay it'
mentality.  For certain, there are many companies
whose membership is not current, but the SIG has
declined to drop and/or re-assign their Vendor ID.
To do so would create mayhem of the worst sort,
with conflicting ID's, etc.  A lot of those
companies paid their initial $2500 fee and then
never renewed, secure in the knowledge that their
assigned Vendor ID would be forever safe.  Of course,
searching through the PCI SIG site by company name
will not turn up the miscreant company, but if you
know a particular Vendor ID, and use it to search,
you will turn up the record with the original
company's name attached.

The other benefits that accrue to member
companies is access to draft specifications,
the ability to participate in the standards process,
and voting rights.  Whether or not you care
about such things would also figure into whether
you care to ante up $2500 a year.  Also, it
wasn't so long ago, that the SIG refused to
sell released specifications to any but bona
fide members.  After a hue and cry, particularly
from the academic community, this policy was
changed.

Perhaps it is time for some SIG members to float
the idea that there should be a one-time low-cost
Vendor ID registration, say, $250 or so, to simply
defray the costs of administering the database, and
hopefully also to deter ID "squatters", as we've
seen such abuse in the Internet domain registration
system.  Note that if a bunch of folks got together
and pooled their money to buy a Vendor ID, they
could then hand out up to 65K Device ID's, as they
see fit.  That would make more efficient use of
the Vendor ID's, as they are a limited resource,
and it seems quite wasteful to use one for only
one or two designs.

On the subject of someone inventing their own
PCI interface circuitry, I would assert that
that is a more difficult proposition than one
may think.  The maillist has had interactions in the
past with various individuals and students who
were convinced that just whomping up a fully-
compliant interface in a few PLD's would be
a walk in the park.  This has just never been
true, unless some freely-redistributable IP for some
popular FPGA has hit the streets, lately.  I'm
unaware if there has.

I'm under the impression that Altera sells/licenses
IP so that someone can embed a PCI interface in
one of their FPGA's, and there are other companies
that offer similar arrangements for those that are
doing LSI/Gate Array designs.  In all of these
situations, I would expect the vendor of the IP
to also offer a Device ID registration service, to
relive the developer of the burden of registering
their own Vendor ID.

On the other hand, FPGA development software/
hardware is so expensive, that $2500 is just lost
in the noise.  Anyone else that is trying to
develop PCI interface circuitry from scratch
will have an army of expensive FPGA/LSI design
software/hardware at their disposal.  I would
maintain that an additional $2500 would not
hurt much.  So who does that leave?  I haven't
seen anyone yet create a compliant PCI interface
out of junk-box 7400 NAND gates on wire-wrap
board.  The timing and electrical requirements
are far too critical.  There is also far too
much logic to build one in a reasonable amount
of space without resorting to FPGA's or custom
or gate array logic.


Cheers,

-- DaveN