[Open-graphics] A really good immediate use for OGD1: PCI bus analyzer

[Dieter]

> > This is a good idea.  But what I meant was to use some very simple
> > compression in the hardware in order to shorten the length of time
> > necessary to download the entire trace over serial line.
> 
> 115200 bps is ~ 14 k/s.  At that speed, a full 256Mb ram dump would
> take approximately 5.2 hours.

> Compression's a good idea.

Do we have an idea of how compressable the data is likely to be?

Suddenly a faster interface (Ethernet, Firewire, USB2, ...) looks
attractive.

Or...  assuming the case that the board under test locked up the machine,
would it be possible to protect this RAM from being cleared on reboot,
and then upload it to the test computer via PCI?

Or...  could the OGD ship the data out the DVI?  Then we just need a
custom DVI-to-something (DVI-to-Ethernet?) adapter.  Although... such
an adapter is probably... non-trivial.  Probably easier to attach
the desired interface directly to the board.