Intel Says Farewell To PCI Bus 415
KingofGnG writes with this snippet from Sir Arthur's Den, which will make my desktop computer sad: "Soon another technology that in past years dominated the always changing universe of computer hardware will bite the dust. That's the decision by Intel, the merciless executioner of standards that the company itself imposes on the market. In upcoming months it will end official support for the PCI bus. Developed by the chipmaker in 1993, the PCI Local Bus standard was implemented on all motherboards for x86 and compatible platforms until 2004, the year it passed the baton to the younger and faster PCI Express technology."
Now What? (Score:5, Funny)
Now what am I supposed to do with my Voodoo II video card?
Re:Now What? (Score:4, Funny)
Sell it to Amiga user.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sell it to Amiga user.
Thanks! :)
You already have better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but Glide => OpenGL (or DirectX) wrappers still don't have exactly full functionality (for playing e.g. I-War).
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Re:You already have better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You already have better (Score:4, Interesting)
The Voodoo 3 actually fell into a quite modest size and power envelope.
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Re:You already have better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You already have better (Score:4, Informative)
The Voodoo 5 5500, which also featured multiple identical GPUs, did make it to market. It had two, the 6000 had four.
While the 6000 didn't make it to market, there are examples of them in the wild. I remember a few years back, it was reported that somebody had gotten hold of one and sold it on eBay, and the buyer posted benchmarks so that people could see what might have been.
Re:You already have better (Score:4, Insightful)
The amusing thing is that the Voodoo5 6000 draws around 4A (at 12V) at max load, which is 48W. Add in the PCI power and you're maybe up to 75W.
75W is what a lower-mid-range GPU draws today. The hottest GPU today (NVIDIA GTX 480) is 250W, over 3 times hotter than the Voodoo5 6000.
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I thought he was talking about a vibrator.
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The same thing you can do with it now...nothing~
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what am I supposed to do with my Voodoo II video card?
A Better Question is how am I going to hook up my legacy scsi array?
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Insightful)
A legacy system.
A better Answer is copy data to non-legacy devices
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Funny)
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Even better transfer all the data to two microSD card. Then we just need a microSD to SD envelope that takes two cards and run them as RAID :rock:
Buy an AMD Computer? (Score:3)
If your SCSI array counts as "Legacy" already, you're probably better off with a SATA drive and maybe an SSD for caching/journaling, but I assume AMD's supporting PCI for a while still.
PCI controller card (Score:3)
Time to get a PCIe PCI controller card.
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Screw that, what about my $2800.00 Sensor input card for this pile of thermocouples and Ph probes in the lab? I guess it's time to go out and buy some PC gear with PCI to make sure the lab can have parts for repairs until the idiots in management give us money to buy new test gear.
That's the real rub. Those of us doing REAL work with computers are getting screwed. Most new scientific and high end test equipment still use PCI and RS232.
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Informative)
Since many current systems implement PCI via a PCIe to PCI bridge chip, there is no reason a riser or backplane card cannot be made to connect to the PCIe bus.
In fact, a quick search for such a beast hit a Google Ad that offered a variety of combinations, starting with one that will connect a low-profile PCI card to a PCIe slot for EUR49.
And system vendors can do the same thing to keep offering PCI slots on the motherboard itself.
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not surprised at all. Just a few months ago I did a job fixing a computer that controls some part of a multi-million dollar ship. The software requires a specific card, that specific card is only available with an ISA interface.
Since PCI still has enough bandwidth to manage 100% of the consumer sound cards, >90% of the consumer network cards and 75% of all other non-video cards, I think it's way too soon.
Probably not about bandwidth (Score:4, Interesting)
This probably isn't about bandwidth, but moving forward. Sure, PCI can handle a lot of the devices, but it can't handle every device. Moving forward, we have the option to do something like we did with PCI/ASA and have two physically different slots on the motherboard, or we can move forward with a scaling interface that supports auto speed negotiation and is physically compatible at all speeds of operation. (ie: put a PCI-E 2x card into a PCI-E 16x slot and it'll work.) This offers more flexibility when building out systems for different types of users, and takes the next step forward to give hardware with the new design a longer life. (ie: If PCI had been scalable in the same way, all those PCI cards would still be worth something, as would those ASA cards if they too had been compatible in the same way PCI-E is.)
One time I sawed off the back of a PCI-E 8x slot on my motherboard and put a PCI-E 16x video card in, sticking clean out of the back of the slot, and it worked like a charm. You just can't do that kind of thing with ASA and PCI.
Re:Now What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess it's time to go out and buy some PC gear with PCI
I think you are panicking a little too soon. Intel is planning to remove PCIe from their next generation of cheap-end chipsets. It will be quite a while before current gen chipsets are completely phased out and even longer before motherboards with PCI dissapear completely (heck you can get core 2 motherboards with ISA if you know where to look)
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.htm [adek.com]
Re:Now What? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't worry - VIA is still pushing out hardware that meets your requirements. Parallel, Serial - PCI and PCIe! :P
US: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138187 [newegg.com]
Canada: http://pccyber.com/?v=Product&i=MB-BS-VIOTECH3100%2B [pccyber.com]
Although in all seriousness, boards with PCI ports won't stop being produced overnight. You'll only have issues if you need a board with lots of them. Companies like Asus are still pushing out boards with a couple PCI ports.
Here's a passive heatsink board with 1, and a GF7025 board with 2:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=50891&vpn=AT5NM10-I&manufacture=ASUS [ncix.com]
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=50891&vpn=AT5NM10-I&manufacture=ASUS [ncix.com]
Re:Now What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Piker. I support some scientists (among other users) and they've got some Seriously Old Kit. Some of their instruments require Windows 9x, some have ISA controller cards (PCI for their very newest stuff), and there's one OS/2 3.0 machine that runs three instruments. Don't complain to /me/ about your PCI stuff needing to be replaced.
When it costs $3k to upgrade to newer software that supports WinXP (plus a newer computer that's probably a retired desktop to run it), and well into double digits to replace the instrument, they just want their stuff to keep working.
RS232 ( and 422 ) (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget industrial controllers too
Re: (Score:2)
You've all ruined my first first post ever by taking my joke literally. Thanks, you insensitive clods (also the first time I've used that meme).
Re:Now What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice try, grasshopper, but the correct response to all those with no sense of humour is.. "whoosh"!
1. Whoosh! ...
2. Ruin stewbacca's first frosty piss ever
3.
4. Profit!
In communist first post world, first post Whooshes you!
Am I doing it right?
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Simulate it in Python and run it in a VM.
It'll be faster, most likely.
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i think intel prefers binary...
Not so painful (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when they started dropping ISA support, I had to hunt a bit for a board with ISA support. Things like sound cards, modems, COM / LPT port cards, and so on all came on ISA cards. The couple of desktops that I've used only had one PCI card between them - a network card because there weren't drivers for the on-board one. It's much less common to have a collection of PCI cards than it was to have a collection of ISA (or EISA / VLB) cards to move to a new machine. Graphics cards are about the only thing that you regularly find as expansion cards, and these are typically upgraded at least as frequently as the motherboard anyway.
PCI is now more of a way of connecting the chips on the motherboard than a way of connecting daughter boards, and as such it's far less traumatic when it is replaced by something newer. Aside from driver developers, few people care what interconnect is used between two chips on a motherboard.
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VLB was awful! The form factor was simply too large. Many of today's desktops wouldn't even be able to fit even one of those monstrosities inside.
Thankfully, not that many cards used it, aside from graphics cards which were easily replaceable and quickly obsolete.
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The worst part about VLB was that the cards had a nasty tendency to get dislodged just a little forcing you to open up the case and reseat the card. Not that opening up the case was all that unusual back in those days, messing around with the hardware inside your computer was a lot more common back then, even for regular users...
Some of us still have PCI cards (Score:3)
I wasn't too happy that Intel axed the parallel port, but I could get cards/USB adapters for that. Now they axe PCI? I still have a Soundblaster X-Fi, its likely the last PCI card I'll ever buy.
This will lead to headaches for embedded and industrial system users, most of them are now just moving from ISA to PCI based solutions. There were a few P4 motherboards with ISA slots for that market even.
Re:Some of us still have PCI cards (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Some of us still have PCI cards (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like Belkin's? Or my fav, this one [firewiredirect.com] (1394b with FW800 support)? Yes.
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Depends on how you define native. The TI XIO2213 is "native" if your definition of native is a chip that connects directly to a PCIe bus. If you are more pedantic about it, the XIO2213 is really just a PCI FireWire chip with a PCIe-to-PCI bridge part combined into a single package, and thus decidedly non-native. It's a fuzzy grey area. Either way, though, it gets the job done.
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You can buy expansion cards that run a PCI bridge off the PCIe bus.
The problem with that is the physical side of things. I've seen adaptors but if you plugged a non low-profile card into them (and IME most cards other than network cards aren't low profile and network cards probablly aren't worth plugging into an adaptor) it wouldn't
I guess you could use one of those cards together with a big case and a flexible riser to put the card beyond the end of the motherboard but still a very messy soloution IMO.
Ther
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National Instruments began gravitating towards PCI-E in 2006 because of the much greater bandwidth allowed. I'd imagine by now that most of the PLCs and PXI computers my former employer uses for new stands are all PCI-E. There is no problem because the industry has already acknowledged that PCI-E is better than PCI.
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I wasn't too happy that Intel axed the parallel port, but I could get cards/USB adapters for that. Now they axe PCI?
One [intel.com] example of a new model with a parallel port. If you want an upcoming 6-series just use a PCIe card [startech.com].
That's a shame. (Score:2)
Gina, Layla, Darla... farewell.
ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get rid of PS/2, VGA, parallel, and serial ports now, too? Hell, let's axe DVI in favor if HDMI while we're at it!
Oh, and can someone tell the shitty mobo makers to stop requiring MS DOS floppy disks to flash their BIOSs?
Re:ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, some of us do real work we need to be able to interface with serial stuff. You should make like the rest of the kids and get a mac.
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And some of us use Macs to do real work which interfaces with serial stuff. That doesn't mean we need a huge D-sub connector in our laptops.
Re:ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people do "real work" with 10BASE2 networks. It's would still be stupid to put 10BASE2 adapters on every motherboard.
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USB and bluetooth serial ports are available for freaks like you who need to do anachronistic "work."
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I don't know about bluetooth, but for lots of applications USB serial ports won't work because USB operates at 5V and serial is supposed to be 12V.
Some devices handle the far-below-spec voltage gracefully, but results are unpredictable at best. But that's ok, I've got my trusty PCI serial card... oh.
Re:ok... (Score:5, Informative)
It is possible to build a voltage converter to output 12V from 5V, you know.... There's no inherent reason they can't make USB serial adapters that comply with the letter of the RS232 spec. Also a lot of PC motherboards use 5V signaling, too, and have done so for years. You just can't guarantee that you'll get +/-12V signaling these days.
BTW, the RS232 spec requires that devices signal at 12V, but requires that they detect signaling as low as 3V. If your device doesn't work correctly with USB adapters, the device is just as noncompliant as the USB adapter.
In short, I think it's time to upgrade your hardware to something that's at least spec-compliant....
Re:USB-DB9 (Score:5, Informative)
Wait until you need to talk to something that cares about timing.
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My last three mobos had Windows flash utilities, flash the bios then reboot...
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Requiring Windows is no less dumb. My current mobo lets me flash straight from a usb flash drive from a BIOS interface.
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Exactly, which is one of the first features I look for in a motherboard. Asus has had an excellent implementation for years, Gigabyte does quite well too.
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Oh, and can someone tell the shitty mobo makers to stop requiring MS DOS floppy disks to flash their BIOSs?
Yes, definitely. But most motherboards these days, even old ones, tend to support booting to USB devices. That means you can often flash from a USB drive as long as you configure it right. (I keep a specially formatted stick in my bag for just such cases, so I can just toss on the right drivers and plug it in.) But really, the problem is with BIOS. Let's just transition to EFI already, can't we?
And because I'm sure someone's going to reply and chastise me, I'll ask upfront: what are some EFI-like projects,
Re:ok... (Score:4, Informative)
Screw configuration and USB booting even (at least for this purpose). The good motherboards these days (such as Asus R2E and others) have the tool ready to launch from bios which can lift the bin file directly from the USB disk. Much easier than going through the steps to make a bootable USB.
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Re:ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Because those of us that do real work use them.
Rs232 is still a big standard in the commercial and industrial world.
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Man, either I've been here too long or the community is getting smaller. I can remember the last time Intel dropped support for something and Lord Ender said virtually the exact same thing.
Meanwhile you can measure the generations by counting the number of adapters and dongles coming out of my Modem M.
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PCI isn't really something that is in need of being killed.
ISA was like that.
Various PC legacy IO ports are like that.
PCI is relatively sensible and still very useful.
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It's actually made in Kentucky using the same design as the Model M. However, it's still not the same IMO; the plastic is crappier and the key feel not quite right. I also had all kinds of problems with mine not registering keypresses correctly and returned it, and bought a real Model M on ebay.
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Especially as they generally don't even come with a floppy interface socket these days.
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Re:ok... (Score:5, Informative)
"Get rid of VGA"
FUCK NO. HDMI has too many fucking changes every revision, DVI has a shorter cable range than VGA. I get crisper pictures (with better alignment) on my 32" LCDTV using VGA than with HDMI (which barely works at all.)
And then the lag in HDMI. Double fuck that.
Re:ok... (Score:4, Informative)
I think there may be something wrong with your TV. HDMI should be decoded in milliseconds.
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HDMI lag?
Some displays have processing which involves a delay. My Samsung, for instance, adds a bit of delay for any input not listed as "PC" or "Game," regardless of whether it is VGA, component, or HDMI. (Presumably, it does this so that it can utilize some intra-frame data to do whatever it does, but for all I know it does it just to be annoying.)
The VGA input defaults to PC. The others default to something else that produces a small amount of lag. They're all configurable, though.
(This message is an
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Actually, DVI and HDMI are not exactly the same thing. HDMI drops the analog DVI-A pins from the DVI connector, so it's strictly digital-only (or in other words, HDMI is the same as DVI-D and not DVI-I which is what most video cards have). Something you might want to keep in mind if you think you can be clever and chain a HDMI to DVI adapter with a DVI to VGA adapter so you can use one of PC-to-SDTV things you linked to.
I'm just getting used to this new fangled AGP.... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just getting used to these new fangled AGP cards and their single connectors. I feel so much more secure with the dual connectors of my VLB cards....Maybe if I saw the boards in half they'll work in my new PCI-based motherboards. What do think? They fit, but all I get is sparks and a strange smoking smell....
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You must not have done well at sawing the board in half. At the very least, you shouldn't be getting sparks. The worst you'd have done is sever most of the connections on the card. Not having electricity making a complete circuit isn't the same as a short circuit.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Eh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel is shaving a few more pennies off the implementation cost for boring business boxes that will see no expansion at all, gamer boxes that will see no expansion beyond a so-new-the-solder-is-still-warm graphics card, and your basic home-user "everything-on-motherboard" use cases.
Given the availability of PCIe to PCI bridge chips(both ones for cheaply retooling a PCI design into a PCIe design, and ones for hanging an actual PCI bus off a PCIe bus), motherboards to accommodate PCI cards should be available at a fairly modest premium for another 5 years, and at an industrial/embedded/specialty premium for another decade or two....
Hell, you can still find new ISA motherboards... (Score:5, Interesting)
This ATX board I found, supporting C2Duo/C2Quad processors, has ISA, 4x serial, parallel, FDD, PS/2 mouse & keyboard, etc., in addition to dual gigabit Ethernet, RAID, SATA, PCI-Express x16, PCI, HD audio, DDR2, etc.
http://www.adek.com/PDF/MB-P4BWA.pdf [adek.com]
Re:Hell, you can still find new ISA motherboards.. (Score:4, Funny)
most on board chips use pci and pci-e waste lanes (Score:2)
most on board chips use pci and using pci-e for some of them is a waste of lanes.
Most on board sound is still pci based.
Most severs have on board pci video and I don't x1 pci-e video chips out there.
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There is also, basically, an ISA bus on your motherboard; in the form of Low Pin Count bus. As a matter of fact...PCI -> PCIe have somewhat similar relation to the one between ISA -> LPC. Roughly the same logically, as far as software is concerned, but implemented using less parallel approach. So your "using pci-e for some of them is a waste of lanes" is probably unjustified.
On board sound might be PCI based logically, but it's partly integrated into the chipset. The "audio chip" you see on a motherbo
Another "local bus" (Score:2)
How many people still living even remember the other "local bus" that preceded it, VESA Local Bus? I still have two boxed motherboards with VLB slots and a couple interface cards intended for it.
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Oh, well, I still have a VESA/ISA system with all the slots filled (SB32 sound, VESA video, IDE caching controller with 16MB SIMMS, tape controller)... the dream machine of 1993.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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max 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes? wow that is way to few! (Score:2)
max 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes? wow that is way to few!
A video card eats up about 8-16 just for video.
add sata 6 about 4
usb 3 2-4??
Not really. (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
Intel PCI-free chipsets expected to be unveiled are H67, P67 e H61, they will implement the new LGA1155 CPU socket (which would be a pin less than the current LGA1156), will support 8 independent PCIe 2.0 lanes, Serial ATA connections at 6 Gigabits and 14 USB 2.0 ports. Just to be clear, these chipset are targeted at the consumer market while the new chipsets designed for the enterprise market (Q67, Q65 e B65) will continue to support the PCI bus.
So, Intel says farewell, except that it didn't.
Even if they were, if there's money to be had, I'm pretty sure someone will carve some silicon that motherboard manufacturers can use to bridge PCIe with PCI further downstream from the chipset.
Sounds like good news for AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
or any other chip maker willing to continue supporting PCI for a few years while the transition away from PCI finishes up.
I wasn't aware... (Score:4, Insightful)
...that Intel was the only manufacturer of motherboards out there.
Sure they're heavy hitters in the field, but if enough people and companies start buying AMD so they can use their 'legacy' PCI equipment in a native PCI slot, this could get interesting...
I know of a company that had to switch laptop suppliers simply because the ones they had been using stopped supplying DSUB serial ports, which the company needed to interface with industrial monitoring and test equipment. The so-called USB / serial port adapter dongles didn't work worth crap for the equipment they were trying to interface with: they needed a native serial port. Yet they could still get the pretty-much-useless firewire support in just about every model...
cc
Whats the replacement (Score:3, Interesting)
So we still have PCI Express for video cards, but whats going to be the replacement bus for other cards (sound cards, wireless network cards, additional Hard drive interfaces, extra USB ports, and custom stuff?
My old computer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And to think, if we just bought 68K machines (Score:5, Interesting)
Number of buses that have been killed off during the years is considerable:
And those are only the ones I can come up with out of my head.
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And those are only the ones I can come up with out of my head.
Don't forget Zorro I, Zorro II, and Zorro III -- all dead as a doornail now. :^)
Re:And to think, if we just bought 68K machines (Score:4, Funny)
Number of buses that have been killed off during the years is considerable:
And yet, the short bus isn't killed off, and it continues to grow it's user base.
Re:And to think, if we just bought 68K machines (Score:5, Funny)
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as well as a 30Mbs max, and need twice the power.