18 Jul
2014
18 Jul
'14
8:27 a.m.
From: Kevin Keith <krfkeith at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:51:56 -0600
Subject: Re: Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion
Ha!
"[Futurebus] intended to replace all local bus connections in a
computer, including the CPU, memory, plug-in cards and even, to some
extent, LAN links between machines."
How accurate is that statement? There doesn't appear to be any citation.
--
Thanks,
Kevin
At the time it was developed Futurebus+ was probably the most advanced
and highest performance bus. It had very advanced protocols that did a
great job of handling distributed cache coherency, and a very nice
distributed priority resolution circuitry. DEC could have build a
complete VAX or Alpha on Futurebus+ and made a very high performance
system. SCI (Scalable Coherent Interface) would be the best choice for
interconnecting Futurebus+ systems.
Unfortunately the NAVY's NGCR program, that was one of the big target
markets for Futurebus+, was defunded and support for Futurebus+
evaporated. High speed serial buses were also getting fast enough to
be competitive with parallel buses, and much easier to implement than
a 64/128/256 bit wide bus.
--
Michael Thompson