GLAMOR Acceleration Might Work On Newer X.Org

The widely-believed thought was X.Org Server 1.13 (or newer) wasn't working with the GLAMOR acceleration library to run 2D over OpenGL. GLAMOR is explicitly needed for AMD Radeon HD 7000 series acceleration support while it's an optional feature to the Intel driver. It turns out, however, that GLAMOR might already work with the latest X.Org Server.

AMD's Michel Dänzer wrote on the xorg-devel list an interesting message on Monday: "This is rather interesting news: So far the assumption has been that glamor cannot work at all with current xserver. However, I cannot reproduce the problem I reported a while ago even with xserver 1.13.0, let alone newer versions, though I still can with the pre-1.13 Git snapshot I reported the problem for. Apparently the problem was fixed before the final 1.13.0 release. Was I really the only one who ever tried this, and everyone else just took my word for it? :\"

So surprisingly, GLAMOR apparently works on the current X.Org Server but it wasn't realized for months... Many months. X.Org Server 1.13.0 was released last September. But sadly, the GLAMOR acceleration library isn't vigorously developed nor used, so it's surprising compatibility went unnoticed.

With GLAMOR now working atop X.Org Server 1.13 (and hopefully X.Org Server 1.14), plus work continuing to go into Mesa/Gallium3D for RadeonSI, AMD HD 7000 series open-source driver benchmarks will hopefully be here soon on Phoronix.

For information on how to setup the AMD RadeonSI open-source driver, see this forum guide.