Nekochan Net

The cpu boards come back from North Carolina this morning, I put on the reprogrammed EPROM, adjusted the voltage reg for 1.2V on the core, put it in my O2 and:

o2 11% hinv -mv
CPU: QED RM7000 Processor Chip Revision: 5.1
FPU: QED RM7000 Floating Point Coprocessor Revision: 5.0
1 602 MHZ IP32 Processor
Main memory size: 512 Mbytes
Secondary unified instruction/data cache size: 256 Kbytes on Processor 0
Ternary unified instruction/data cache size: 1 Mbyte on Processor 0
Instruction cache size: 16 Kbytes
Data cache size: 16 Kbytes
FLASH PROM version 4.18
Integral SCSI controller 0: Version ADAPTEC 7880
Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 0 (unit 1)
CDROM: unit 4 on SCSI controller 0
Integral SCSI controller 1: Version ADAPTEC 7880
On-board serial ports: tty1
On-board serial ports: tty2
On-board EPP/ECP parallel port
CRM graphics installed
Integral Ethernet: ec0, version 1
Iris Audio Processor: version A3 revision 0
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 1
PCI Adapter ID (vendor 0x9004, device 0x8078) PCI slot 2
Video: MVP unit 0 version 1.4
AV: AV1 Card version 1, O2Cam type 1 version 0 connected.
Vice: TRE
o2 12%

The only thing I have seen so far, is a warning at startup about the "fast clock" not being able to run faster than 1000Hz
I'm not sure what this means, but I will look into it.

I ran some quick numbers:

mpeg movie conversion:
350 - 2.72 min
R12K-270 - 2.60 min
400 - 2.42 min
600 - 1.70 min

xmahjongg-3.6.1 gmake:
R12K-270 - 2.25 min
350 - 1.97 min
400 - 1.73 min
600 - 1.27 min

These were quick numbers, I will rerun them later this weekend.

I will put some pictures of the finished cpu boards up on my website later.

Joe

That's amazing work - I seriously want one of those

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Freaking awesome!

Here are a couple of pictures of the cpu boards without the cpu heatsinks. (these pictures are about 100KB each in size)

This is the RM7000A-350 MHz board upgraded to an RM7000A-400MHz.
http://users.rcn.com/joepage/rm7000_400.jpg

This is the RM5271-300MHz board upgraded to an RM7000C-600MHz.
http://users.rcn.com/joepage/rm7000_600.jpg
In the red box on the left of the picture is the PROM, this sets-up the cpu chip at start-up and has to be programmed for the specific cpu chip. The red box on the right side is the cpu core voltage regulator, there are two small resisters to its left that have to be changed so the output to the core is 1.20V.

I'm doing all this on the 600MHz system and it has been rock solid all evening (about 5 hours) and Mozilla now feels very close in speed to my 360MHz Octane. That means it's now useable as a browser.

Joe

that is some amazing work.

That's really sweet! Don't suppose you'd consider selling one of them by any chance?

_________________
WolfLord -

"Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" - Troy McClure

Very PRO looking job there. It looks like that's how it's supposed look. I'm not sure that I could pick it out of a line of CPU board hacks.

Are these proc with or w/o cache? I couldn't tell if the second heatsink was for the cache or they were PC processors. You can see some blank spots where there is an option for cache modules on either side of the proc, but wasn't sure there was a second mounting point that had something resident.

Shtoink Wrote



The 7000A/C cpu chips have 16K/16K pri. cache and 256K sec. cache (running at full proc. speed) on the chip, and the 5271 had 32K/32K pri. cache on the chip. There is 1MB cache on the cpu board running at 60MHz that is ter. cache for the 7000 and sec. cache for the 5271.

As you look at the picture of the cpu board, the heatsink is on the VLSI controller chip on the right side of the picture, and the cache chips (3) are mounted on the bottom of the board.

Joe

I'm very much so envious...

I think these boosts in cpu speed are really what we need to be more viable as a desktop platform, and especially the O2, while not a 3d beast, I think it works quite well for a small all-in-one machine for desktop Irix use, that is, if you have a decent speed cpu.

Unfortunately my O2 is a mere 175mhz r10k, so it's been delegated to Webserver duties for the time being

I'm soo jealous. If only the base RM5200 boards weren't so hard to come by. And now that your secret is out, I expect a run on them

A strings from the 6.5.21 O2 firmware:


So nothing in the PROM, must be IRIX then.

BTW a grep on '5200' displays nothing. Apparently by the firmware, a RM5200 is identical in PROM functionality compared to the R5000.

A few people (including one with an SGI email address) emailed me asking how these numbers would compare to a more "mainstream" O2. I put my original 200MHz cpu board back in and ran the same two tests:

mpeg movie conversion:
200 - 6.53 min
R5K-300 - 4.53 min
350 - 2.72 min
R12K-270 - 2.60 min
400 - 2.42 min
600 - 1.70 min

xmahjongg-3.6.1 gmake:
200 - 3.60 min
R5K-300 - 2.80 min
R12K-270 - 2.25 min
350 - 1.97 min
400 - 1.73 min
600 - 1.27 min

Joe

Hmmm...I wonder(hope) if the person with the SGI email address is considering helping us all out with this information in some way. Board fab info perchance, slim though it may be. I'd jump at the chance to give my R5k 200 O2 that kind of performance boost though.

_________________
WolfLord -

"Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun" - Troy McClure

hi chicago-joe

i've one o2 RM5200 @300...[my o2 was one of the R7k recalled]

i'm interested in your post.. and a bit of power would be great..
so test after test.. have you checked the termal differences between
r7k@350 and your 400-600mhz monsters?

rob