Another Look At The Latest Nouveau Gallium3D Driver

[Thatguy]

It's there. Why do you think differently, when it's obvious you haven't even looked?

I looked, I didn't see much useful info, but given the orginizational nature of most opensource projects, this is often expected. the code library is well,messy.

You seem very needy. Maybe you should just try looking at the code first, before you start complaining?

I might have been ooking for much longer then I let on. I'm not needy, I just want what I paid $200 for. Hows about that.

We do. It's called Gallium .

I'm not interested in gallium actually.

http://www.mesa3d.org/ .

where is the documentation on that site ? I couldn't find it and I spent 15 minutes looking.

It should be labbeled

ATI GPU Specifications and sample code. Unless my command of english has gotten fiarly poor lately.

Sure. Someone is already working on XvMC video decoding routines based on Gallium shaders.

I'm not interested in using GPU's for video decoding or for playing video games to be honest.

[bridgman]

what about newer GPU, registers ? capabalitys ?

ISA for everything up to Evergreen is published. NI docco is in the works.

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/AMDAPPSDK/documentation/Pages/default.aspx

Look under "Related Documentation"

Other programming information is posted on x.org, look in :

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/

I really don't want to deal with mesa. Is this driver code comparable to the quality of directx code ?Is it portable ? how is the performance of the mesa code ? got link so I can see it ? is it well commented ?

Mesa *is* the open source 3D driver. If you don't want to deal with it I'm not sure how to help. It supports two different hardware layers -- generally referred to as "classic" and "gallium3D". Here are links to the mesa project, the classic hw drivers, and the gallium3D drivers :

mesa project : http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/

classic hw drivers : http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes...sa/drivers/dri

gallium3d hw drivers : http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes...allium/drivers

If its so easy why don't we have a portable driver architecture yet ? From what I gather your GPU cores have remained largely the same since r500 "till the 69xx series"

Not sure what you mean by "portable" - if you mean one set of driver code that runs on a range of hardware generations with generation-specific code where necessary, that exists today.

The core changed radically from r5xx to r6xx (HD2xxx/HD3xxx). The 3D programming model was relatively similar between r6xx and r7xx (HD4xxx), then changed again going to Evergreen (HD5xxx) and Northern Islands (HD6xxx). The HD69xx has even more differences in the shader core, using a 4-wide VLIW instead of the 5-wide VLIW on HD24xx through HD68xx.

So where are these open source drivers ? is there 3d support? how about using shaders for other purposes.

Mesa links are above. X driver project is at :

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati

Kernel driver is in the Linux kernel tree under drivers/gpu/drm. Here's an example link:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/airlied/drm-2.6.git;a=tree;f=drivers/gpu/drm;h=10da881fcf14de1376e229f9ed33d206798a2652;hb=refs/heads/drm-radeon-testing

The userspace library code for the kernel driver is at :

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/drm/tree/radeon

[smitty3268]

I might have been ooking for much longer then I let on. I'm not needy, I just want what I paid $200 for. Hows about that.

Last time i checked, you paid $200 for a piece of hardware. Not a guarantee that you could look up documentation online. And definitely not that said documentation wouldn't be a part of Mesa, just because "you're not interested in that". In fact, it seems everything AMD is doing, you're "not interested in". How is AMD supposed to figure out exactly what interests you?

I'm not interested in gallium actually.

See what i mean?

I'm not interested in using GPU's for video decoding or for playing video games to be honest.

You asked about using shaders for other purposes. I provided you with proof that was already being done. You can do anything you want with these shaders.

[bridgman]

I'm not interested in gallium actually.

Yes you are. You just don't know it yet

where is the documentation on that site ? I couldn't find it and I spent 15 minutes looking. It should be labbeled ATI GPU Specifications and sample code. Unless my command of english has gotten fiarly poor lately.

The sample code is added to the living driver projects in the form of initial support for each new generation of hardware.

[deanjo]

Last time i checked, you paid $200 for a piece of hardware. Not a guarantee that you could look up documentation online. And definitely not that said documentation wouldn't be a part of Mesa, just because "you're not interested in that". In fact, it seems everything AMD is doing, you're "not interested in". How is AMD supposed to figure out exactly what interests you?

Exactly, he paid for a finished product. Not a heathkit DIY kit.

[smitty3268]

Exactly, he paid for a finished product. Not a heathkit DIY kit.

Which is what the binary drivers are supposed to be for. But he doesn't seem interested in that, in fact he seems to want exactly that DIY kit, because he also doesn't seem very interested in Mesa or any other finished driver.

[bridgman]

Exactly, he paid for a finished product. Not a heathkit DIY kit.

Heathkit made some nice stuff. I don't think anyone's open source support is packaged as nicely as, say, the shortwave radio kit I built as a kid.

[deanjo]

Which is what the binary drivers are supposed to be for. But he doesn't seem interested in that, in fact he seems to want exactly that DIY kit, because he also doesn't seem very interested in Mesa or any other finished driver.

Ya it appears that way. The reality is that an overwhelming amount of end users couldn't care less about how something works but rather it just worked instead. It reminds me of when Radio Shack used to have a schematic for every device they sold in the manual, that disappeared without so much as a whimper.

[deanjo]

Heathkit made some nice stuff. I don't think anyone's open source support is packaged as nicely as, say, the shortwave radio kit I built as a kid.

Heh, they were a lot of fun. I still have a vacuum tube VOM made from their kits as well as one of their 13" color TV kits that is still going strong.

[bridgman]

You know what I like about Phoronix forums ? We can start talking about Heathkit, and driving to Benton Harbor for parts, and *still* not take the thread any further off topic than it was before