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I don’t agree. You need both the PCI spec and the PCIe spec – you won’t make it with either or none of both. The PCI spec will teach you all about the bus enumeration, config spaces and such, while the PCIe spec contains only the (added) information relevant for PCIe like the transactions, transaction ordering, etc.
Remember: You need to be PCI SIG member to get your own vendor ID assigned and reserved. And you must remain member while you are using this ID (for new products at least).
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Ok, so help convince us why a PCI/PCIe developer would need to spend $1000 on the PCI spec and another $3500 on the PCIe specification.
Remember, we're developing with
existing PCI/PCIe cores, not trying to develop our own. If I was going to develop a core, then by all means I would buy the specifications. If the specifications were both $1000 each, I'd probably just buy them too.
I have the PCI specification, and sure, while it does contain the 'official' wording, I didn't find it added much over the PLX documentation for PCI devices, or the Altera/Xilinx/Lattice/etc PCI documentation. With a PCI bus BFM and then hardware and a PCI bus analyzer, development was straight-forward. Because I was developing for CompactPCI, I definitely needed that specification, but for its
mechanical details, not so much of how it use PCI (other than pin assignments).
Now, diving into PCIe, the transaction discussion should be fairly well described in Altera's PCI documentation, though, I wouldn't be surprised if it was hazy in places :), but any haze should be cleared up using a well-written BFM.
Ok, so Altera has stopped distributing their BFM. So, would I be better off spending $3500 on a PCIe BFM?
Thanks for the feedback!
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
