Subject: EBSA-285 Linux port

From: "Stephen Noftall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 19:41:32 -0700

Hello there;

I am designing a ARM110 board around Intel's (formerly DEC's) EBSA-285
evaluation board. This board will have a SA-110 with it's companion chip,
the 21285. It will hook up to Symbios's NCR53C895 Ultra 2 SCSI controller,
and Intel's 82559 Ethernet controller.

I have looked at the Linux-Arm port, and it seems that the EBSA-285
configuration is supported. I have some questions about the port, hopefully
someone can answer:
- What is the status of the EBSA-285 port? Have most of the bugs been worked
out?
- Although there are Linux drivers for the 53C895 and 82559 (82558, which is
pin/software compatible), what problems will we have in porting the drivers
over to the platform?
- It was mentioned that the Tulip driver (Intel's ethernet chipset) has bugs
in it. Will those bugs be relevant to our SCSI/Ethernet port?
- What is the general feeling on the performance of the StrongArm?

What is the story with Intel? My supplier says Intel is not quoting lead
times on it's StrongArm parts. Supposedly, when they received the stock from
DEC as part of the deal, they double counted it. Now they have over
committed, and are doing an internal audit. This scares me, and although the
port seems very stable for the StrongArm, NEC's MIPs chipsets (the VR4300
and VRC4373) look very tempting.

Cheers

{- Stephen Noftall, LCS : http://www.lcsaudio.com -}

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From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 11:52:16 +0000

>- What is the status of the EBSA-285 port? Have most of the bugs been worked

It seems stable enough.  Most of the code is shared with the NetWinder and 
CATS ports.  There have been reports recently of lockups under heavy network 
activity but that's the only problem I'm aware of.

>pin/software compatible), what problems will we have in porting the drivers

They'll need appropriate cache synchronisation primitives adding, since the 
StrongARM doesn't do this in hardware.  Other than that there shouldn't be any 
problems.  PCI drivers are usually pretty well behaved.

>in it. Will those bugs be relevant to our SCSI/Ethernet port?

The Tulip is the 21040 family that Intel bought from Digital.  Regardless of 
whether it's buggy or not (I've never had ay serious problems with it) the 
82558 won't be affected.

>- What is the general feeling on the performance of the StrongArm?

Depends too much on your application.  If you want to try for yourself you can 
beg, steal, borrow or buy one of the various StrongARM machines and have a play 
with it.  Typically you get 200+MIPS of integer performance.  I don't know if 
anybody's measured floating point speed with the currently available emulators.

>What is the story with Intel? My supplier says Intel is not quoting lead

I can't answer that.  MIPS would probably be my next choice as well, or maybe 
PowerPC.  Neither of those, as far as I know, will give you anything like the 
integer performance of the StrongARM at the same price, though in terms of 
floating point performance and integrated peripherals they do rather better.
Again it all depends on your application.

p.