| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | |
| 2 | The SGI Visual Workstations (models 320 and 540) are based around |
| 3 | the Cobalt, Lithium, and Arsenic ASICs. The Cobalt ASIC is the |
| 4 | main system ASIC which interfaces the 1-4 IA32 cpus, the memory |
| 5 | system, and the I/O system in the Lithium ASIC. The Cobalt ASIC |
| 6 | also contains the 3D gfx rendering engine which renders to main |
| 7 | system memory -- part of which is used as the frame buffer which |
| 8 | is DMA'ed to a video connector using the Arsenic ASIC. A PIIX4 |
| 9 | chip and NS87307 are used to provide legacy device support (IDE, |
| 10 | serial, floppy, and parallel). |
| 11 | |
| 12 | The Visual Workstation chipset largely conforms to the PC architecture |
| 13 | with some notable exceptions such as interrupt handling. |