I'm not right with you. We can go to the limit of good steppers with mach2
at 45 Khz, and we can't drive efficiently a good servo system with a higher
definition / speed / acceleration ratio. I don't speak about AC or digital
servo systems, where 45 Khz is very low, specialy if you have high PPR
encoders. Industrial machines are often at 1 Mhz frequencies, or more for
high end ones.
Even with stepers systems it should give a better response, specialy for
full or half step systems, because the timing will be near perfection.
Actually the frequency is limted to 250 Khz if i remember well. It's a good
value for hobbists, more would be too difficult to manage with. (signal
integrity problems).
The gecko 2003 is an open standard, so cheaper non modular interfaces could
come in a near futur.
It's too an opening in the direction of the futur, because nothing garantee
the parallele port and the new motherboards will continue to work with
mach2. A simple design change inside the PC low level components or a new
processor design could cause problems to the actual mach2 kernel.
More it will give the possibility to integrate mach2 in an embedded system
quite easily.
Olivier.
