OpenChrome Still Pushing For DRM Kernel Driver, Updated DDX

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OpenChrome Still Pushing For DRM Kernel Driver, Updated DDX

It's been a while since last having anything to report on the OpenChrome project for providing open-source Linux graphics support for vintage VIA x86 graphics hardware. But it's still going and what is one of the only contributors left on the project has issued an update...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OpenChrome-DRM-Rebase

[NotMine999]

I still have an old VIA C7 board, now in a static bag, that has VIA Chrome graphics and "unstable" Realtek onboard NICs; the NICs or their drivers would randomly "crash", requiring a "hard reset" to recover. I suspect VIA C7 would be woefully underpowered compared to something as simple, useful, and effective as a RaspberryPi or similar. Times have changed.

I don't understand why a developer would spend time creating support for OpenChrome graphics. Maybe it's the challenge of "just doing it" that keeps this developer working on this ancient technology.

I don't think VIA had or even retains any noticeable market penetration and even less remaining "installed base" in today's world. A VIA C7 CPU can be replaced by most Intel "in-order processing" ATOM boards in many applications and with a net gain in CPU core count; I did such a changeout years ago, but it wasn't a "graphics intensive" application.

Seriously, VIA technologies are at least 10 year old technology by now, maybe older, and basically "tombstoned" when it comes to product development by VIA. At least I haven't heard of any meaningful developments from VIA in years. There are other solutions available today that would be more powerful, more energy efficient, cooler (temperature) in operation, etc. than a ancient VIA motherboard & CPU combination.

[wdb974]

I still have an old VIA C7 board, now in a static bag, that has VIA Chrome graphics and "unstable" Realtek onboard NICs; the NICs or their drivers would randomly "crash", requiring a "hard reset" to recover. I suspect VIA C7 would be woefully underpowered compared to something as simple, useful, and effective as a RaspberryPi or similar. Times have changed.

I don't understand why a developer would spend time creating support for OpenChrome graphics. Maybe it's the challenge of "just doing it" that keeps this developer working on this ancient technology.

I don't think VIA had or even retains any noticeable market penetration and even less remaining "installed base" in today's world. A VIA C7 CPU can be replaced by most Intel "in-order processing" ATOM boards in many applications and with a net gain in CPU core count; I did such a changeout years ago, but it wasn't a "graphics intensive" application.

Seriously, VIA technologies are at least 10 year old technology by now, maybe older, and basically "tombstoned" when it comes to product development by VIA. At least I haven't heard of any meaningful developments from VIA in years. There are other solutions available today that would be more powerful, more energy efficient, cooler (temperature) in operation, etc. than a ancient VIA motherboard & CPU combination.

I've heard the latest Atom CPUs have out-of-order execution.

[Adarion]

There are still enough elderly machines out there. Mini-ITX boxes, thin clients, some laptops, among them an OLPC generation. Well, I do welcome the efforts of Kevin Brace. I still have some VIA stuff (and Transmeta, too, by the way) floating around. Of course, these days both intel and AMD offer low power solutions in the x86 market - unlike the days when VIA came up with the C3. And with an AMD APU you can have it in all "sizes" and with a well-working GPU driver and far better procession power at comparable energy consumption.
Sure. But as long as the old HW still is around why not bring that stuff finally to shine?


(Maybe I'll get those things to fly finally, been with it since xf86-video-via times for the CLE266.)

[starshipeleven]

But as long as the old HW still is around why not bring that stuff finally to shine?

No matter how much you polish it, a turd will remain a turd.

[latalante]

I still have an old VIA C7 board, now in a static bag, that has VIA Chrome graphics and "unstable" Realtek onboard NICs; the NICs or their drivers would randomly "crash", requiring a "hard reset" to recover. I suspect VIA C7 would be woefully underpowered compared to something as simple, useful, and effective as a RaspberryPi or similar. Times have changed.

I don't understand why a developer would spend time creating support for OpenChrome graphics. Maybe it's the challenge of "just doing it" that keeps this developer working on this ancient technology.

I don't think VIA had or even retains any noticeable market penetration and even less remaining "installed base" in today's world. A VIA C7 CPU can be replaced by most Intel "in-order processing" ATOM boards in many applications and with a net gain in CPU core count; I did such a changeout years ago, but it wasn't a "graphics intensive" application.

Seriously, VIA technologies are at least 10 year old technology by now, maybe older, and basically "tombstoned" when it comes to product development by VIA. At least I haven't heard of any meaningful developments from VIA in years. There are other solutions available today that would be more powerful, more energy efficient, cooler (temperature) in operation, etc. than a ancient VIA motherboard & CPU combination.

My old cheap laptop (2006) with VIA Chrome, comes with an Intel processor. It's not a processor that is a bottleneck, and a graphics card.

Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 15
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5300 @ 1.73GHz
Stepping: 2
CPU MHz: 1728.971
CPU max MHz: 1733.0000
CPU min MHz: 800.0000
BogoMIPS: 3459.02
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 2048K
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lmdtherm

Chrome - Ocatane 2.0 - 7800-8300, Speedometer - 34.5-35, Youtube (HD on fullscreen) 21-22 fps.
Mplayer VP9, x264 1080 50/60 fps - 60% Cpu usage.