LWN: Comments on "A free GMA500 graphics driver"

A free GMA500 graphics driver

lkcl — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:51:27 +0000

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.

Value of 2D-only

nix — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:44:10 +0000

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

mjg59 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:38:57 +0000

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

mjg59 — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:35:13 +0000

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

Cyberax — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:08:41 +0000

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

ken — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 10:03:46 +0000

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

Value of 2D-only

pjm — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:07:16 +0000

> 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?

A free GMA500 graphics driver

idanso — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:07:55 +0000

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

drag — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 23:53:01 +0000

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

gnufreex — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:53:04 +0000

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.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

mjg59 — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:52:24 +0000

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

Cyberax — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:17:38 +0000

Yes!

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

svena — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:25:12 +0000

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

njs — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:47:36 +0000

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

dgm — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:37:04 +0000

TG = Tungsten Graphics.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

robert_s — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:26:50 +0000

"just with drm bits stripped"

Which DRM are we talking about here?

A free GMA500 graphics driver

mjg59 — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:02:41 +0000

Yes, it is so.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

arjan — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:54:40 +0000

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

hp — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:54:01 +0000

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.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

gregkh — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:38:27 +0000

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

gregkh — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:32:11 +0000

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

lkundrak — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:32:03 +0000

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

mjg59 — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:27:17 +0000

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

A free GMA500 graphics driver

hp — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:27:09 +0000

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

gregkh — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:21:02 +0000

This is for 2d acceleration only.

A free GMA500 graphics driver

hp — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:39:38 +0000

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