Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 30 Mar 2001 23:11:46 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 30 Mar 2001 23:11:36 -0500 Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net ([207.217.121.85]:27614 "EHLO gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 30 Mar 2001 23:11:20 -0500 Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:11:39 -0800 (PST) From: James Simmons X-X-Sender: To: Jamie Lokier cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List , Linux Fbdev development list Subject: [Linux-fbdev-devel] Re: fbcon slowness [was NTP on 2.4.2?] Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org >I took to using X, with a single screen size xterm to present the >illusion of console mode. Cute trick. I have seen some slow text mode cards. As time goes on it will get worst since text mode support is not the prime goal anymore. Especially now that you see graphical BIOS interfaces. Some graphics cards manufactures have dropped vga text mode support all together. In the next 5 years you will see the elimination of vga text mode. >Probably the lack of hardware area copies has something to do with >this. Yes this is problem. See my response to Paul about this. The only reason I'm using MMX for the vesa framebuffer because it has no acceleration. MMX gives a big boost for genuine intel chips. Other types of MMX are fast but they don't seemed to be optimized for memory transfers like MMX on intel chips. I also have regular code that does all kinds of tricks to optimize data transfers over the bus. It needs more testing but from my comparison between my voodoo 3 accel engine and this code it ran nearly as fast as the accelerator at all depths :-) Another idea for 2.5.X is to implement a font cache in video memory. Even with AGP it is just to slow to constantly transfer font data over the bus. Of course this requires a bit of work since we only have so much video memory but it is worth it for the performance improvement. MS: (n) 1. A debilitating and surprisingly widespread affliction that renders the sufferer barely able to perform the simplest task. 2. A disease. James Simmons [jsimmons@linux-fbdev.org] ____/| fbdev/console/gfx developer \ o.O| http://www.linux-fbdev.org =(_)= http://linuxgfx.sourceforge.net U http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/