My information was specific in that the expansion chassis that is currently being developed by Apple uses a PCI-X card as it's interface.
Without getting your fellow in trouble, it sort of depends on exactly what "he" said.
'It's a PCI-X Expansion Chassis' is pretty specific... but it wouldn't prevent the connection to the mothership from being Hypertransport. Which would rock.
'the connection from the chassis to the G5 is PCI-X' is also specific, but far too boring for Future Hardware
And the current G5's got a chip labeled 'PCI-Controller' in their motherboard layout that looks _very_ interesting for this use:
1) It might be an off the shelf part (HT out top & bottom, PCI-X is the only thing 'on' the chip).
2) Since it is already 'HT-in' it is at least conceptually simple to imagine it being in a different box. (Though I'm not sure the HT-serial or connector specs are finalized yet?)
You wouldn't happen to know if that _is_ an off-the-shelf part? Say, from AMD or nVidia?
Without getting your fellow in trouble, it sort of depends on exactly what "he" said.
'It's a PCI-X Expansion Chassis' is pretty specific... but it wouldn't prevent the connection to the mothership from being Hypertransport. Which would rock.
'the connection from the chassis to the G5 is PCI-X' is also specific, but far too boring for Future Hardware
And the current G5's got a chip labeled 'PCI-Controller' in their motherboard layout that looks _very_ interesting for this use:
1) It might be an off the shelf part (HT out top & bottom, PCI-X is the only thing 'on' the chip).
2) Since it is already 'HT-in' it is at least conceptually simple to imagine it being in a different box. (Though I'm not sure the HT-serial or connector specs are finalized yet?)
You wouldn't happen to know if that _is_ an off-the-shelf part? Say, from AMD or nVidia?
This co0nnection device itself sounds promising, but an expansion chassis is too good to be true.
Because:-->
There is no way I can afford a expansion chassis like an Xserve Raid. Which is what I think this connector is probably for, but I could use another 3 PCI slots, and room for 2, or 3 terabytes of storage in an external chassis.
I think, a breakout box like this will never come out of Apple. Much too un-Apple-like, ugly and worthy of a Dell. Apple would rather lose some customers than offer this (afaik the last time they did was with the Lisa's HD-extension).
HT could not be used - you cannot get this fast bus signals over connectors and wires. This kind of stuff is really serious high-frequency engineering and you need to model the physical layout of the data pathes to get it right. And of course, you cannot do that with flexible wires.
I think, a breakout box like this will never come out of Apple. Much too un-Apple-like, ugly and worthy of a Dell. Apple would rather lose some customers than offer this (afaik the last time they did was with the Lisa's HD-extension).
HT could not be used - you cannot get this fast bus signals over connectors and wires. This kind of stuff is really serious high-frequency engineering and you need to model the physical layout of the data pathes to get it right. And of course, you cannot do that with flexible wires.
If you want to see an interesting (?) implementation of an expansion chassis, you should check out IBM's RXE-100 product that gives you 12 PCI-X slots that can be used by either one or two x-series (Intel) servers like the x360 or x440.
pofo, that is a beautiful image to behold! Good work. It will probably have to wait until below 90 nm chips or a liquid nitrogen cooling system.
As for all of the great specs people have been coming up with...they sound cool, but don't sound like the best way for people with legacy HD's to migrate to the G5 case. I know that isn't the point of this thread, but it would be the major reason for the expansion chassis to be designed.
I would love to see it, but I don't think Apple is going to make hot-swappable harddrives for the home market. There are alot of FW solutions out there with 3rd party folks and I don't see an Apple advantage. Sort of like with cell phones. I do see Apple coming up with the next gen connector for rigging up multiple cpu's though. The best and most financially lucrative way for Apple to get people to have easy Quad G5's is to get them to buy two Dual cases and connect them by whatever means. Now you have a screaming machine with 2 optical drives and 6 PCI slots! Now how does the average person afford that!?!?!?!?
Just received the ADC newsletter, and in it is a link to the following hardware:
That doesn't mean anything. Apple was promoting the Rio 500 right up until a week before the introduction of the iPod (when it was removed from the iBook/Digital Hub site).
I own a magma 2 slot expansion chasis with two internal 40 GB HD's running softraid. It's cool and I can only imagine that apple would make it far cooler. As far as bandwidth is concerned, how many of us need seven slots, please, let's not get too full of ourselves. CPU power is up and we don't really need as much support for AV connectivity, processing etc. as we needed in the past especially w/ firewire and ridiculous amounts of RAM. No I think having the option to add a better video card and a couple of drives would really kick ass especially for the powerbook users. Interesting!
I think, a breakout box like this will never come out of Apple. Much too un-Apple-like, ugly and worthy of a Dell.
Sorry to disagree but Apple have nearly released this before...
The first RISC project at Apple (before the AIM alliance and PowerPC) was called Jaguar and the designed unit had a small processor box, and an external drives box.
An expansion module is a good way to make a few extra bucks, but I wish Apple had made the G5 a bit more expandable. As it is now, the $1400 Powermac G4 has significantly greater expansion capacity than the G5, and it's smaller! Two optical drive bays, 4 HDs, and 5 PCI slots wouldn't have killed Apple.
I think an expansion bay might be a solution to an Apple created problem for some, but it will be expensive, as in ~$1000. Just wait, it's going to be 1/3 the cost of the G5 just to add the expansion capacity that Apple took away.
Comments
Originally posted by Amorph
You'd be piping a 6.4GB/s bus through a 2GB/s bus, which would work, in sort of the same way that MaxBus works...
My information was specific in that the expansion chassis that is currently being developed by Apple uses a PCI-X card as it's interface.
HyperTransport would be very useful for linking CPU's in a rack as you mentioned, it's just not what Apple is using for their expansion box.
Aphelion ...
Oh, and you forgot to double the number of PCI slots.
Originally posted by Aphelion
My information was specific in that the expansion chassis that is currently being developed by Apple uses a PCI-X card as it's interface.
Without getting your fellow in trouble, it sort of depends on exactly what "he" said.
'It's a PCI-X Expansion Chassis' is pretty specific... but it wouldn't prevent the connection to the mothership from being Hypertransport. Which would rock.
'the connection from the chassis to the G5 is PCI-X' is also specific, but far too boring for Future Hardware
And the current G5's got a chip labeled 'PCI-Controller' in their motherboard layout that looks _very_ interesting for this use:
1) It might be an off the shelf part (HT out top & bottom, PCI-X is the only thing 'on' the chip).
2) Since it is already 'HT-in' it is at least conceptually simple to imagine it being in a different box. (Though I'm not sure the HT-serial or connector specs are finalized yet?)
You wouldn't happen to know if that _is_ an off-the-shelf part? Say, from AMD or nVidia?
Originally posted by Nevyn
Without getting your fellow in trouble, it sort of depends on exactly what "he" said.
'It's a PCI-X Expansion Chassis' is pretty specific... but it wouldn't prevent the connection to the mothership from being Hypertransport. Which would rock.
'the connection from the chassis to the G5 is PCI-X' is also specific, but far too boring for Future Hardware
And the current G5's got a chip labeled 'PCI-Controller' in their motherboard layout that looks _very_ interesting for this use:
1) It might be an off the shelf part (HT out top & bottom, PCI-X is the only thing 'on' the chip).
2) Since it is already 'HT-in' it is at least conceptually simple to imagine it being in a different box. (Though I'm not sure the HT-serial or connector specs are finalized yet?)
You wouldn't happen to know if that _is_ an off-the-shelf part? Say, from AMD or nVidia?
This co0nnection device itself sounds promising, but an expansion chassis is too good to be true.
Because:-->
There is no way I can afford a expansion chassis like an Xserve Raid. Which is what I think this connector is probably for, but I could use another 3 PCI slots, and room for 2, or 3 terabytes of storage in an external chassis.
HT could not be used - you cannot get this fast bus signals over connectors and wires. This kind of stuff is really serious high-frequency engineering and you need to model the physical layout of the data pathes to get it right. And of course, you cannot do that with flexible wires.
Originally posted by Smircle
I think, a breakout box like this will never come out of Apple. Much too un-Apple-like, ugly and worthy of a Dell. Apple would rather lose some customers than offer this (afaik the last time they did was with the Lisa's HD-extension).
HT could not be used - you cannot get this fast bus signals over connectors and wires. This kind of stuff is really serious high-frequency engineering and you need to model the physical layout of the data pathes to get it right. And of course, you cannot do that with flexible wires.
Optical?
Originally posted by JLL
There will be one expansion chassis for PCI and one for optical drives.
Don't believe. There's no point in a special expansion chassis for opticals, you may as well buy an external drive and hook it up to FW800.
Much more flexible and far more options.
As for all of the great specs people have been coming up with...they sound cool, but don't sound like the best way for people with legacy HD's to migrate to the G5 case. I know that isn't the point of this thread, but it would be the major reason for the expansion chassis to be designed.
I would love to see it, but I don't think Apple is going to make hot-swappable harddrives for the home market. There are alot of FW solutions out there with 3rd party folks and I don't see an Apple advantage. Sort of like with cell phones. I do see Apple coming up with the next gen connector for rigging up multiple cpu's though. The best and most financially lucrative way for Apple to get people to have easy Quad G5's is to get them to buy two Dual cases and connect them by whatever means. Now you have a screaming machine with 2 optical drives and 6 PCI slots! Now how does the average person afford that!?!?!?!?
ha, ha, maybe 2-fer coupons in Parade magazine.
Originally posted by Clive
[B]Don't believe. There's no point in a special expansion chassis for opticals, you may as well buy an external drive and hook it up to FW800.
Much more flexible and far more options./B]
That's what the optical chassis will be (I could've been clearer in my first post). Apple branded external optical drives.
I don't know the connector, but AFAIK you can choose among different optical drive types in the chassis (but only one).
Just received the ADC newsletter, and in it is a link to the following hardware:
http://www.magma.com/pci/7slot6466/
This certainly suggests that Apple is just going to rely on 3rd parties to provide external expansion.
here's the quote from the newsletter:
The 7 Slot 64-bit/66MHz PCI-to-PCI Expansion System from MAGMA
provides (7) additional 64-bit/66MHz PCI slots in a separate
enclosure and connects to Apple computers through a PCI card and
cable. When your application requires more than 2 or 4 PCI slots,
the MAGMA 64-bit/66MHz 7 slot PCI expansion chassis provides the
fastest PCI slots for Apple Computers.
http://www.magma.com/pci/7slot6466/
Now, make that a PCI-X card that you plug into the PowerMac, and you're talking.
Originally posted by pofo
this is just what the Dual G5 should have been designed like.
Originally posted by Gamblor
Apparently Apple has other ideas...
Just received the ADC newsletter, and in it is a link to the following hardware:
That doesn't mean anything. Apple was promoting the Rio 500 right up until a week before the introduction of the iPod (when it was removed from the iBook/Digital Hub site).
Barto
Originally posted by Gamblor
Apparently Apple has other ideas...
Apple's idea is to offer developers a stopgap solution to the reduced expansion capabilities of the G5.
Of course, at the price points listed, you could buy a second G5 and use it in target mode as an expansion chassis.
Aphelion ...
Originally posted by jindrich
this is just what the Dual G5 should have been designed like.
That tower would be 6 feet tall.
Originally posted by Smircle
I think, a breakout box like this will never come out of Apple. Much too un-Apple-like, ugly and worthy of a Dell.
Sorry to disagree but Apple have nearly released this before...
The first RISC project at Apple (before the AIM alliance and PowerPC) was called Jaguar and the designed unit had a small processor box, and an external drives box.
I think an expansion bay might be a solution to an Apple created problem for some, but it will be expensive, as in ~$1000. Just wait, it's going to be 1/3 the cost of the G5 just to add the expansion capacity that Apple took away.