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Crocus: Working On Gallium3D For Old Intel Graphics

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  • Crocus: Working On Gallium3D For Old Intel Graphics

    Phoronix: Crocus: Working On Gallium3D For Old Intel Graphics

    Raised during the recent discussion over looking at removing Mesa's classic drivers from the mainline tree this year is that there still exists an effort trying to create an Intel Gallium3D driver for older pre-Broadwell graphics currently only served by the i965 classic driver. That Crocus effort continues to be worked on but isn't yet mainline...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Going out of your way to develop drivers for undesirable GPUs is like driving an hour to a grocery store so you can pick up plain oatmeal and eat it in a bowl with cold water. Yeah, you'll get sustenance, but was it worth it?

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    • #3
      Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
      Going out of your way to develop drivers for undesirable GPUs is like driving an hour to a grocery store so you can pick up plain oatmeal and eat it in a bowl with cold water. Yeah, you'll get sustenance, but was it worth it?
      If it's the only grocery store around it is. I used to have to drive 20 miles to get to anywhere that wasn't a Dollar General, gas station, or Sonic. That's one way.

      IMHO, we're coming a point where x86 is going to have to be split into two. Between potentially losing GPU drivers and current x86_64_v# discussions that time is approaching fast. We've passed the invisible inevitable to imminent line.

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      • #4
        can't see the point, this old intel are well suported with classic driver, they can use vulkan because hw limitations, they are slow for gaming but ok it's a new project

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        • #5
          I have MacMini 2012 with 4C8T i7 an 16G of RAM - still very capable machine to do anything even in 2021. I don't need macOS anymore and I use Linux on it. But it has Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU and it will be a shame Linux won't run on it properly only 1-2 years after Apple dropped support. Same stands for many other computers having similar GPUs.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by skeevy420 View Post
            If it's the only grocery store around it is. I used to have to drive 20 miles to get to anywhere that wasn't a Dollar General, gas station, or Sonic. That's one way.
            But you're ignoring half my point: if you had to drive 20 miles, why would cold plain oatmeal be the only thing you bother to get? You spent more money on fuel just reaching the store than you spent on actually getting the product.
            In this analogy, traveling the distance is spending the time, effort, and gas to develop the driver. Eating the oatmeal is the reward (playing DX9 games at low graphical detail, because the GPUs can't handle anything better). There's nothing wrong with spending time developing a driver and there's nothing wrong with playing old games on old hardware. What doesn't make sense is combining the two.

            EDIT:
            To further the analogy, let's compare it to the recent N64 support being added to the kernel:
            That would be like driving an hour to the grocery store so you can pick up saffron. Is that going to give you any meaningful sustenance? No. Was it time well-spent? Debatable. Does it pique people's interest? Yes, definitely. N64 support was known to not yield any practical results, but it was meant to be interesting, not useful. Much like a painting.
            Last edited by schmidtbag; 24 March 2021, 09:35 AM.

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            • #7
              Haswell is **not** yet vintage. Would love to see this driver merged.
              ## VGA ##
              AMD: X1950XTX, HD3870, HD5870
              Intel: GMA45, HD3000 (Core i5 2500K)

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              • #8
                From my point of view Crocus currently makes sense as Hasswell / Sandybrige were descent HW back then - while Skylake was a desaster (under Linux clear from day 1) and thereafter it got really insane with mitigations ruining performance and graphics quality. So any technical person may not have chosen Intel after Hasswell ... and with Zen2 / RDNA1 AMD delivered nice HW to be used under Linux (while RavenRidge etc. had been similar problems as Skylake/Icelake).
                And as long as Intel not even try to get a clean CPU/GPU without this mitigation madness, only uninformed people will buy Intel products. So for Linux Crocus makes much more sense than Iris ...
                This is extremely sad - but just true.

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                • #9
                  Think about how many potentially devices is out there. If 1% of those use the driver it could be more than RTX30xx and RX6xxx combined - for now.

                  Intel Sold Over 100 Million CPUs In Q3 2014, Record Revenue
                  Last edited by raun0; 24 March 2021, 09:54 AM.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by V1tol View Post
                    I have MacMini 2012 with 4C8T i7 an 16G of RAM - still very capable machine to do anything even in 2021. I don't need macOS anymore and I use Linux on it. But it has Ivy Bridge HD4000 iGPU and it will be a shame Linux won't run on it properly only 1-2 years after Apple dropped support. Same stands for many other computers having similar GPUs.
                    And this is not going to happen, all the discussion is about is to split this old code (which was not really advancing in years) in a legacy repository, your distribution can still (and most probably will) package this. The sole difference is that you would have to install mesa-legacy (name made up) instead of mesa. Due to GLVND you can even install both of them side by side which, most likely, the majority of all user centric distributions will do.

                    When your graphics chip is working at the moment there is nothing you have to fear. Actually, it is even more likely it will remain functional when split into a legacy branch since nobody touches underlying data structures to squeeze additional performance out of later generation hardware. If you are hoping to get some new feature or performance improvements out of this old hardware, though, well for Sandy Bridge era this was not very likely in the first place.

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