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VIA's Open Linux Graphics Driver Has Been Defenestrated

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  • #21
    Originally posted by Kivada View Post
    Well, we where their last chance for any kind of foothold in the X86 market, but with AMD's 9w Ontario and 18w Zacate Fusion APU chips, theres absolutely no reason to look at anything from VIA since you've got a GPU about as fast as S3's fastest discrete card
    Exactly. 6 years ago they were the only ones placed with low power, cool and "silent chips" on the x86 market.
    ARM was no option because it was mainly headless, nowhere to buy or only super low profile overpriced boards with no real storage. VIA had everything in that position, including a media chipset to take over graphic stuff if the CPU was not fast enough for e.g. MPEG2 decoding.

    But now intel has established Atom there, AMD is coming with Bobcats and all the ARM people are coming to the home market in various forms. VIA could have built a fan community with a good fellowship of users for their stuff til now.
    But betray your friends once too often and they go.


    And, yes, angry users (and it is not only the Linux users) ARE going to hurt on the long term.
    Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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    • #22
      Well, as current VIA CPU/GPU user i am disappointed too, for their promises. As i said some time before - their GPU technology is not so innovative as they think (even if so - both AMD and Intel outperforms it by another engineering solutions - by placing GPU in CPU and gaining much powerful performance), all the technology components are licenced in US, China and Taiwan not to let competitors to use some of VIA/S3 technologies - why they can't publish documentation? Well if previous GPU drivers code are written by third part, choose for next GPU drivers another programmers team, which allows to publish code as GPL. Now is coming new VN1000 and VX11 chipsets, and nothing wouldn't changed.

      For those who want to boycott VIA for their promises (and do not want support Intel or AMD), there always are such low-power CPU players as RDC Semiconductor, XCore and DM&P Electronics. All these CPU are SoC type with integrated 2D (not 3D) Core. They all are early Pentium level CPUs with 1GHz speed and PCI interface. And all these companies are in touch with Linux kernel community in order to make for their users better Linux expierence.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by mendieta View Post
        Yes, FOXCONN is another one to avoid (they screwed Linux in their BIOSES intentionally, I contacted for support for that and they had NO IDEA what they are doing (and had lots of trouble just communicating). Oh well.
        The story about FOXCONN intentionally screwing up their BIOSes to aggravate Linux users was nonsense rubbish. That also explains why they had no idea what you were complaining about when you called them.

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        • #24
          VIA dropped the ball in the summer of 2003, when Alan Cox worked with them and made the first codedrop available. This is the code that i started the unichrome project off from.

          VIA then often claimed to pick up the ball and to "do it right this time round!!!!!", but every time, they failed.

          That VIA failed is one thing. In this whole story, I am mostly disgusted by those who a) believed VIA without getting anything solid or b) made big promises to VIA officials and the community that they could not live up to either.

          Every time, big claims from many people ended up in a lot of noise, but little to no code being written. People were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen, instead of dealing with reality, and possibly getting active themselves. And so such events ended up being more damaging than anything else, and there were tons of those.

          The last hickup in this story, the big claims openchrome made a few years ago when VIA handed out some docs (in response to the AMD docs of course), was the most exemplary of the lot. Secretly, the openchrome people (on an invite only irc channel and in private email) were coming up with plans and waiting for VIAs actions. Their plans of course never materialised, and the irc channel was littered with "I'm sorry, i didn't have much time in the last month or so, maybe in one month time i will be able to do something".

          So, you end up with users waiting, and being told to wait, and then of course none of them stepping up and getting things done.

          VIA officials also ended up doing something similar: they waited on openchrome people to deliver, only to see them come up with the above line. VIA now thinks that it is impossible to work with the open source community, and it knows that it doesn't have the resources to do anything much themselves.

          Openchrome, this is your legacy.

          It is better to only talk big and nice when you actually have something constructive to talk about, or otherwise talk big and nasty when some things needs to change. Stick to reality, tell the true story, and actually write the code.

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          • #25
            For those that were hoping that VIA Technologies...
            All three of them?

            I still don't get what market VIA is aiming for. Why would anyone buy a mini-ITX system from them when they can buy an equivalent equipped system with Atom that probably has better performance, lower power consumption and costs less?
            If the GPU was capable of decoding video in linux it could be used to build a low-power, cheap and silent HTPC, but if on top of the already higher cost for the hardware you have to buy an OS (Windows), it looses any interest it could possibly have. The only use I see in a VIA mini-ITX system is in a POS terminal or something like that. And even in that role, Atom would be cheaper and not limited to Windows to take full advantage of its (limietd) capabilities.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by Kivada View Post
              Actually VIA is going to be able to keep on their current path, they've been producing ARM parts for years now, and MS is porting NT and all MS internal apps to ARM, a task they likely started long before they formally announced it the other day.

              Though I'd expect to see NT running on those quad core Cortex A15 based chips coming out next year. Think something like this http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/N...stems-R1801e-/ not a phone or tablet running full blown Win7 and Office, at least not initially.
              Wondoze on arm.... ??? You actually believe that this is their real objective? Or you think that maybe they are simply trying to threaten the x86 chip makers, who have a lot invested in x86 APU stuff now...?

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              • #27
                Originally posted by fernandoc1 View Post
                That's why VIA is one of the worst chip makers that I ever seen.
                They think that Microsoft will last forever. However they are wrong.
                Microsoft will abandon X86 architecture gradually and VIA's investment in X86 will be compromised.
                VIA will soon regret of letting Linux as a secondary operating system.
                It's already beginning. Microsoft's already trying to move to the ARM platform and while they have a bit of a performance edge over ARM right at the moment, they just simply don't have the power profile that a Cortex A9 SoC has right at the moment. The ONLY thing they have over ARM right at the moment is, quite simply, very good 64-bit X86 support and their PadLock silicon.

                VIA, you had your chance, but you pretty much blew it. Only way to fix that mess is to quit integrating S3 graphics or if you continue to do so, offering an MXM module or PCI-E 16 lane slot on your designs.

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by droidhacker View Post
                  Wondoze on arm.... ??? You actually believe that this is their real objective? Or you think that maybe they are simply trying to threaten the x86 chip makers, who have a lot invested in x86 APU stuff now...?
                  Little of both, in truth. They're not happy about the turn of events and they see the way the wind's blowing right now (This is from one of my insiders... ). I can't say it's fully their intent as they'd like to stay where they are for now- but they're working on a worst-case backup plan as it looks like that worst case might come to pass after all.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by devius View Post
                    I still don't get what market VIA is aiming for. Why would anyone buy a mini-ITX system from them when they can buy an equivalent equipped system with Atom that probably has better performance, lower power consumption and costs less?
                    I'd question the CPU performance edge Intel has on them in this space, but the rest is dead on. And that gets only into Atom machines. If you've got a bit of ventilation capability, you could come up with a Mini-ITX using a Core i5 with an Nvidia or a Phenom II with an AMD on-board for slightly more money that blows the doors off of even the Atom and Nano boards out there. And...you CAN make a quiet machine doing this- it just takes a bit of ingenuity.

                    If the GPU was capable of decoding video in linux it could be used to build a low-power, cheap and silent HTPC, but if on top of the already higher cost for the hardware you have to buy an OS (Windows), it looses any interest it could possibly have. The only use I see in a VIA mini-ITX system is in a POS terminal or something like that. And even in that role, Atom would be cheaper and not limited to Windows to take full advantage of its (limietd) capabilities.
                    It's not even really useful in POS or Kiosk role right now. I can do better even if the Nano might be faster by going Atom (Or...better yet...ARM...same performance, even lower power...). They've bet the farm on Windows and they're about to find out that that wasn't a good bet. Windows might not be going away anytime soon- but neither is Linux and it's ascendant in the market segments they're selling to right now.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by droidhacker View Post
                      Wondoze on arm.... ??? You actually believe that this is their real objective? Or you think that maybe they are simply trying to threaten the x86 chip makers, who have a lot invested in x86 APU stuff now...?
                      Initially no, it won't be Win7 on ARM, it'll be Server 2008 on ARM based servers, from the looks of it they are aiming for a release to coincide with the release of the Cortex A15 chips http://www.arm.com/products/processo...cortex-a15.php Keep in mind that nVidia has stated that they aren't going to support anything other then Windows on ARM http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/...oses-wince.ars and are using the A15 as the basis for the next gen Tegra chips http://www.anandtech.com/show/3905/a...ks-and-servers

                      So expect to see something like the aforementioned server but with 8 2.5Ghz nVidia Tegra3 quad core chips running Windows Server 2012.

                      In other words, maybe there was something to those Mayan prophecys...

                      Why would this threaten X86 chip makers though? The APUs still beat ARM on desktop performance, to match X86 you need allot more cores but most code can't yet make use of it all, meaning that ARM is currently still no threat to X86 on anything other then small tablets, cheap netbooks and low performance servers.

                      As for the netbooks, see the difference between a crappy ARM netbook like the $100 Augen Genbook7 vs something decent like the $330 Open Pandora

                      MS is just covering their ass on all fronts to ensure that ARM servers still run MS products.

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