Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932546AbWEXDbO (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 May 2006 23:31:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932547AbWEXDbO (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 May 2006 23:31:14 -0400 Received: from smtp.enter.net ([216.193.128.24]:51972 "EHLO smtp.enter.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932546AbWEXDbN (ORCPT ); Tue, 23 May 2006 23:31:13 -0400 From: "D. Hazelton" To: Alan Cox Subject: Re: OpenGL-based framebuffer concepts Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 23:31:03 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.1 Cc: Kyle Moffett , Jeff Garzik , Manu Abraham , linux cbon , Helge Hafting , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20060519224056.37429.qmail@web26611.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <1148403226.25255.89.camel@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <1148403226.25255.89.camel@localhost.localdomain> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200605232331.04674.dhazelton@enter.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1460 Lines: 35 On Tuesday 23 May 2006 16:53, Alan Cox wrote: > On Maw, 2006-05-23 at 11:41 -0400, Kyle Moffett wrote: > > So a modern GPU is essentially a proprietary CPU with an obscure > > instruction set and lots of specialized texel hardware? Given the > > total lack of documentation from either ATI or NVidia about such > > cards I'd guess it's impossible for Linux to provide any kind of > > reasonable 3d engine for that kind of environment, and it might be > > better to target a design like the Open Graphics Project is working > > to provide. > > Its typically a device you feed a series of fairly low level rendering > commands to sometimes including instructions (eg shaders). DRI provides > an interface that is chip dependant but typically looks like > > > [User provided command buffer] > > [Kernel filtering/DMA interface] > > [Card command queue processing] > > > All the higher level graphic work is done in the 3D client itself. Exactly! Alans above explanation is exactly why I proposed merging DRM with the framebuffer drivers. However, a day later and some new information received, it would be better to change the framebuffer system to use DRM as a backend where it's possible. DRH - 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/