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Re: gEDA-user: PCI core

On 2/1/06, Karel Kulhavy <clock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Can you please provide some info or experience how to design a PCI card?
> Free PCI core? Free re-narration of PCI specification? Is it difficult
> to draw the wires to PCI so that they don't flip bits in the high speed?

PCI is designed to take advantage of the signal propegation
characteristics of unterminated buses at high-speed.  In particular,
it exploits the 100% SWR on each line.  This is quite a good thing. 
The disadvantage is, you need special bus transceivers to do it --
this is not something you can find in most FPGAs, which reduces your
selection considerably.

However, if memory serves me correctly, Xilinx and Altera do make
FPGAs which have direct-to-PCI capable pins, which should help
considerably.  Alternatively, cheaper FPGAs or CPLDs can be used with
external PCI bus transceiver chips.

You might want to check with Intel's chip catalog to see if they have
any interface chips.

The alternative is to embed a PCI-to-ISA bridge chip on the card, and
hook the rest up via the ISA bus it provides.

--
Samuel A. Falvo II