Keith Packard at Intel?
Keith Packard at Intel?
Posted Aug 9, 2006 21:41 UTC (Wed) by vblum (guest, #1151)Parent article: Free Intel i965 graphics drivers released
Is this the result of a high profile OSS figure joining the right company? In any case, great.
Posted Aug 10, 2006 2:50 UTC (Thu)
by tetromino (guest, #33846)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Aug 10, 2006 8:51 UTC (Thu)
by oak (guest, #2786)
[Link]
No, this is a result of Intel's long-standing partnership with Tungsten Graphics (i.e. Alan Hourihane). Intel has been paying Tungsten to write open-source drivers for their 3D hardware for many, many years. Frankly, I don't understand why there is such a big press buzz about this. Intel *always* makes sure their integrated graphics have an open-source driver available. I didn't remember any press coverage when they released i915 or i945 drivers. Why is i965 so special?Keith Packard at Intel?
I think the differentiating part is this: "65 Express Chipset represents Keith Packard at Intel?
the first product family that implements fourth generation Intel graphics
architecture [...] this chipset family includes support for programmable
vertex, geometry, and fragment shaders.".
I guess there weren't earlier any Open Source gfx card driver containing
all of this potentially badly patent-encumbered stuff. MicroSoft might
have a few patents on this area (now that they own SGI's patents etc)...
Anyway, after this news the new computer I'm going to buy next winter is
most likely going to be some Intel-combo that doesn't warm up the house
as much and noisily as my current setup (Athlon-XP + large CRT monitor;
my Matrox G550 doesn't warm much, but it doesn't perform that well
either).