Re: Popular MIPS4Kc boards?

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 08:16:42PM +0100, jrc@skylon.demon.co.uk wrote:

> A possibility for a MIPS64 based device might be the recently announced
> Broadcom BCM97398 IPTV set-top box reference design platform:
> 
>     http://tinyurl.com/bm44b
> 
> This contains a BCM7038 with a 300 MHz R5Kf together with enough
> peripherals to make it interesting: 2 x UART; 2 x SATA; 2 x USB 2.0;
> 10/100 Ethernet.  If produced in quantity and available it would
> probably be more affordable than low volume evaluation boards.
> 
> What I would like to see is a multicore (multithreading?) MIPS64 chip
> attached by HyperTransport to a PC chipset (eg. Via KN800A) on a small
> form factor board (mini-itx; micro-atx; micro-btx).  An ideal plaything
> for the kernel hacker and a useful resource for academic teaching and
> research - a modern version of the UNSW U4600 ...

There's a wild difference between the 5Kf, a relativly simple 64-bit core
and one of the current 32-bit & 64-bit multithreading cores coming out.
For the latter ones you'll probably still have to hold the breath for little.

  Ralf