The Plans For The New VIA Gallium3D Driver & DRM/KMS Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Plans For The New VIA Gallium3D Driver & DRM/KMS Linux Driver

Last week I wrote about a new Gallium3D driver under development for VIA Chrome hardware that was being done under the OpenChrome umbrella along with new work on the VIA DRM/KMS driver. I now have some answers from the developer about his plans for this open-source VIA graphics work under Linux...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VIA-Gallium3D-DRM-KMS-Plans

[Adarion]

Well, Kudos to the man. I hope the VIA HW is still have around will stay alive long enough to see the KMS, even though I plan to replace it with Kabinis. But I got some cheaply acquired used VIA boards for tinkering with Coreboot once I find the time.

[Brane215]

Eww cr*p. I'll never understand how they couldn't find $$$ for a at least one guy's pay to work on OS drivers. Surely results would pay for his work many times.

I remember scraping quite e few EPIA boards because of lousy drivers.

And NOW he has found the will to finish the job... What's the use ? And even now AFAIK documentation is not open.

I have in my hands right now PCEngines AliX 3D3. Cuuute little machine, albeight old ( yr 2009). Geode LX 500 MHz ( i think 512MB RAM) , 6x4 inch board, power consumption a few Watts tops - for ?100.

With open documentation for most everything ( for Geode and accompanying CS5536 from AMD, for board schematics etc from PCEngines).

Why would anyone bother with VIA anymore ?

Waste of time.

[lepetit]

the via nano + vx900 or vx11 is very better than amd geode
the doc of via : http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Openchrome/Development/

[Brane215]

I'm n ot so sure. Geode is OPEN - which means you have schematics available.

Furthermore it is cheap and and its power useage is miniscule.

I've compiled my version of CLFS for it and use it as a data acquisition system. With a couple of custom-made paeripherals it works marvelously.

These things from VIA cost ~ $300 and it is unclear to me why should I go for them instead of say one of those Intel's board on J1900 or AMD's A4 chips on AM1 board, each for $50-$75 for a board with CPU.

[ahlaht]

I have in my hands right now PCEngines AliX 3D3. Cuuute little machine, albeight old ( yr 2009). Geode LX 500 MHz ( i think 512MB RAM) , 6x4 inch board, power consumption a few Watts tops - for ?100.

With open documentation for most everything ( for Geode and accompanying CS5536 from AMD, for board schematics etc from PCEngines).

Do you run Coreboot on it?

I'm just wondering how well would it work? (VGA?)

I read about people using it with Coreboot but this doesn't directly list it as supported:
coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards

[Brane215]

I thought about trying but couldn't find any useful info.

That's why pulled their git repo and found inside materials about Geode LX etc, but nothing directly relating to Alix 3D3.

SInce it wasn't high on my priority list, I set it aside. It is true that original BIOS boggled some registers so kernel can't/won't initialise some timers that are needed for watchdogs and GPIO but I managed to initialize CS5536 registers from userland well enough for workaround, so I left it at that.

But I definitely plan to play with coreboot at some point and do glimpse at source regularly.

It would be very nice if it could be merged with memtest and some diagnostic routines so that one could do some serious system diagnostics directly from BIOS.

Memtest could be especially efficient this way since it wouldn't necessarily need any RAM to run, so one could catch mucgh greater span of errors and recover from them more gracefully.

[Tralalak]

Greetings to all.
After a long time as you watch, I resolved to write.
I want to thank in advance to Mr James Simmons and I wish him future success in innovation and development of VIA OpenChrome Gallium3D Driver. I wish you success.
VIA community is still alive and I believe that it is expanding.

Cheer and best regards.

Tralalak from Slovakia


P.S.


At the bottom of the table is VIA ARTiGO A1250 with Windows 7 => 25" LCD (left) and on it is located next VIA ARTiGO A1250 Pico-ITX PC with Debian linux => 17" LCD (right).

[Adarion]

I have VIA C3, C-2, C7 Eden and Geode LX 800 for comparison. I plan (when I find the time) to install coreboot to all of them.
(edit: I bought some of them really cheap off a certain popular auction platform, the Geode LX being in a FSC Futro 2xx thin client. Totally Linux compatible, clean ACPI (!) and flashrom compatible. So basically they should be able to run coreboot. I also got BIOS chips and 3 of the clients (some were 1 Euro plus shipment ) so I can tinker with them.)

The Geode isn't bad. The GPU part does not really have 3d but 2d accel. Driver development is slow, though. They still plan to integrate the driver replacement for the older Geodes from NSC (Geode GX and such).
Regarding computing power it is hard to say. It's always a matter of comparison and case of use. I used the LX800 (500 MHz) a long time as my computer at work. Equipped with a CF card + 512 M RAM in a thin client it was quite a fine box. The 1.2 GHz C7 was a bit faster, of course. Still the C7 won't get far against a Kabini. I haven't used any recent VIA CPU though (because of the very unresolved driver situation).
I have followed the VIA drivers since the early days and it was kind of a catastrophy. A mix between hope and downfall. I learned my lesson here.

For the PC Engines boards: There is an updated version with an AMD APU. Very cute. I saw them live last year on a LinuxTag (German Linux day/weekend). When they start making this on with Kabini or a successor of Kabini I'll buy one. The price is still fair for the small form factor boxes. (depending on RAM and stuff ~ 130...160 E)

E.g. this store sells them:

http://varia-store.com/Hardware/PC-Engines-Boards/PC-Engines-AMD-APU1D-System-Board-1-GHz-2-GB-DDR3-RAM::3101.html

Coreboot is listed!

Anyway I still hope to get the VIA HW running with KMS and stuff. The idea back at the time was great, make a slow but cool and energy efficient CPU, equip it with ASICs for the computing intensive tasks and put it in a small form factor board with passive cooling. Would have been such a great HTPC, surfbox or little server. Now AMD E-350, Kabini or intel Atom are doing that job.

[curaga]

...not to mention the stunt last August about a coming Nano 2. Spoiler: nothing happened to date.