GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Release 1.5 - January 29, 2002 5/93
1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION
At the heart of the STPC Consumer-II is an
advanced 64-bit x86 processor block. It includes a
64-bit SDRAM controller, advanced 64-bit
accelerated graphics and video controller, a high
speed PCI local-bus controller and Industry
standard PC chip set functions (Interrupt
controller, DMA Co ntroller, Interval timer and ISA
bus).
The STPC Consumer-II has in addition, an EIDE
Controller, I2C I nterface, a Local Bus interface and
a JTAG interface.
1.1. ARCHITE CTURE
The STPC Consumer-II makes use of a tightly
coupled Unified Memory Architecture (UMA),
where the same memory array is used for CPU
main memory and graphics frame-buffer. This
means a reduction in total system memory for
system performances that are equal to that of a
comparable frame buffer and system memory
based system, and generally much better, due to
the higher memory bandwidth allowed by
attaching the graphics engine directly to the 64-bit
processor host interface running at the speed of
the processor bus rather than the traditional PCI
bus. The 64-bit wide memory array provides the
system with 528MB/s peak bandwidth. This allows
for higher resolution screens and greater color
depth.
The ‘standard’ PC chipset functions (DMA,
interrupt controller, timers, power management
logic) are integrated together with the x86
processor core; additional functions such as
communi cations ports a re ac ces sed by the S TPC
Consumer-II via internal ISA bus.
The PCI bus is the ma in data comm unication link
to the STPC Consumer-II chip. The STPC
Consumer-II translates appropriate host bus I/O
and Memory cycles onto the PCI bus. It also
supports generation of Configuration cycles on the
PCI bus. The STPC Consumer-II, as a PCI bus
agent (host brid ge class), fully complies with PCI
specification 2.1. The chip-set also implements
the PCI mandatory header registers in Type 0 P CI
configuration space for easy porting of P CI aware
system BIOS. The device contains a PCI
arbitration function for three external PCI devices.
The STPC Consum er-II ha s tw o functional blocks
sharing the same balls
: The ISA / IPC / IDE block
and the Local Bus / IDE bl ock (see Table 3). Any
board with the STPC Co nsume r-I I should be built
using only one of these two configurations. The
IDE pins are dynamically multiplexed in each of
the blocks in ISA mode only.
Configuration is do ne by ‘stra p option s’. It i s a set
of pull-up or pull-down resistors on the memory
data bus, checked on reset, which auto-configure
the STPC Consumer-II.
1.2. GRAPHICS FEATURES
Graphics functions are controlle d through t he on-
chip SVGA controller and the monitor display is
produced through the 2D graphics display engine.
This Graphics Engine is tuned to work with the
host CPU to provide a balanced graphics system
with a low silicon area cost. It performs limited
graphics drawing operations which include
hardware acceleration of text, b itblts, transparent
blts and fills. The results of these operations
change the contents of the on-screen or off-
screen frame buffer areas of SDRAM memory.
The frame buffer can occupy a space up to 4
Mbytes anyw here in the physical main memo ry.
The graphics resolution supported is a maximum
of 1280x1024 in 16M colors and 16M colors at
75Hz refresh rate, VGA and SVGA compatible.
Horizontal timin g field s are V GA c ompat ible while
the vertical fields are extended by one bit to
accommodat e above displa y resolution .
1.3. VI DEO FUNC TIONS
The STPC Consumer-II provides several
additional functions to handle MPEG or similar
video streams. The Video Input Port accepts an
encoded digital video stream in one of a number of
industry standard formats, decodes it, optionally
decimates it, and deposits it into an off screen
area of the f rame buffer. An interrupt reques t can
be generated when an entire field or frame has
been captured. The video output pipeline
incorporates a video-scaler and color space
converter function and provisions in the CRT
controller to display a video window. While
repainting the screen the CRT controller fetches
both the video as well as the normal non-video
frame buffer in two separate internal FIFOs. The
video stream can be color-space converted
(optionally) and smooth scaled. Smooth
interpolative scaling in both horizontal and vertical
direction are implemented. Color and Chroma key
functions are also implemented to allow mixing
video stream with non-video frame buffer.
The video output passes directly to the RAMDAC
for monitor output or through another optional
color space converter (RGB to 4:2:2 YCrCb) to the
programma ble anti-flicker filter. The flicker filter is
configured as either a two line filter with gamma
correction (primarily designed for DOS type text)