A free GMA500 graphics driver

[Posted February 22, 2011 by corbet]

Intel's GMA500 graphics chipset has been a source of pain for a few years; unlike almost everything else from Intel, it lacks a free driver. That situation appears to be changing, though: Alan Cox has posted a new GMA500 driver for the staging tree. Alan says "Currently it's unaccelerated but still pretty snappy even compositing with the frame buffer X server." It seems that quite a bit of work is needed (the driver is going into staging for a reason), and it's not clear when (or how) proper 3D support will be added, but it's a step in the right direction.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 15:39 UTC (Tue) by hp (guest, #5220) [Link] (11 responses)

Getting 3D going on this might be huge just because it could open a path to 3D on a bunch of SGX-based phones too

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:21 UTC (Tue) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (10 responses)

This is for 2d acceleration only.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:27 UTC (Tue) by hp (guest, #5220) [Link] (4 responses)

I know, just saying getting 3D going would have an impact well beyond GMA500

2D isn't good for much beyond emacs/vi/bash these days

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:38 UTC (Tue) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (1 responses)

Not true at all, at least your machine will properly use the
resolutions the screen supports, which is a huge step forward from the
current situation.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:54 UTC (Tue) by hp (guest, #5220) [Link]

not knocking 2D progress, useful for many.

but with a wimpy Atom or ARM you need 3D even to hope to play video, for example. not to mention the latest html5 features, webGL, and upcoming desktop
environments. It all mostly assumes a GPU.

that's why I say 2D is more for those who just do command line and text editor. it's a good step.

the point is, 3D would be awesome too as a future step. seems uncontroversial.

Value of 2D-only

Posted Feb 23, 2011 9:07 UTC (Wed) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link] (1 responses)

> 2D isn't good for much beyond emacs/vi/bash these days

Hang on, you mean there's other graphical software besides xterms and emacsen?

Value of 2D-only

Posted Feb 23, 2011 17:44 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

There's Battle for Wesnoth. ;}

(no 3D yet, but what's the betting it'll start using GPU capabilities in any case, one of these days?)

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:27 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (4 responses)

Right now it's not even for 2D acceleration.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:32 UTC (Tue) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (3 responses)

Oops, sorry, you are right, it's 2d only, not accelerated.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:54 UTC (Tue) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link] (2 responses)

2D acceleration nowadays is "just" blitcopies; there's no real use for the accelerated drawing of circles and stuff like that ;-)

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 23:53 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

On at least modern consumer desktop hardware the 2D functions are carried out by the same hardware bits as the 3D functions.

I don't know how the PowerVR stuff goes, though.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 23, 2011 10:03 UTC (Wed) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link]

What confuses me is that why the 2D stuff was ever a problem to begin with.
The Imagination hardware I worked with has never implemented anything with the actual display it's simply a hardware block that works with memory.

The display has been a different block by a different company but maybe intel outsourced the entire thing to imgtec

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 16:32 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (4 responses)

At first sight it looks mostly like the driver from TG that was already proposed and rejected once, just with drm bits stripped; is that so?

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 17:02 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Yes, it is so.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 17:26 UTC (Tue) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (1 responses)

"just with drm bits stripped"

Which DRM are we talking about here?

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 17:47 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

The Direct Rendering Manager bits have all been stripped out, because their only purpose was to hook up the proprietary userspace driver with the card. I assume if there are any Digital Restrictions Management bits that those have been stripped out too, but I don't know about that.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 17:37 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

TG = Tungsten Graphics.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 19:25 UTC (Tue) by svena (guest, #20177) [Link] (8 responses)

Are there any reverse engineering efforts being made for SGX hardware, similar to Nouveau?

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 21:17 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (7 responses)

Yes!

https://github.com/tom3q/gles6410/wiki

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 21:52 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (5 responses)

The 6410 contains Samsung's own GPU, which is derived from the old AMD embedded division that Samsung bought. It has nothing to do with SGX, despite what Luke Leighton might try to have you believe.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 23, 2011 7:07 UTC (Wed) by idanso (guest, #59932) [Link] (1 responses)

It was Qualcomm that bought the Imageon line from AMD(which they use in their Snapdragon line):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageon

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 23, 2011 12:35 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

I'm sorry, you're right. The Samsung one appears to be from scratch.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 23, 2011 10:08 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

I've compared lists of supported extensions on PowerVR and Samsung, they look similar.

I have not yet looked in details but so far it looks like that Samsung's chip is just PowerVR IP-core with some custom bits.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 23, 2011 12:38 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

Samsung also produce chips with PowerVR. The 6410 isn't one of them.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Mar 18, 2011 20:51 UTC (Fri) by lkcl (guest, #60496) [Link]

yes that was a mistake on my part - the S3C6410 has "FIMD" which samsung would have bought in (they *never* make anything of their own). there are two teams in samsung: their designs overlap, so one team comes out with a SoC whilst the other one is still working on the next one. the S5PC100 (800mhz) had the same "FIMD" 3D engine, but the S5PC110 (1ghz) had that FIMD engine ripped out, to be replaced with a PowerVR SGX engine. exactly why is anybody's guess. but yes, i made the post to which you're referring *before* i had this information.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Posted Feb 22, 2011 22:53 UTC (Tue) by gnufreex (guest, #70396) [Link]

There is also FSF High Priority Project

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-high-priority-proj...

I hope those two are not duplicating each other.