feedback to NVidia [was: Nvidia Drivers]

[T. 'Nifty New Hat' Mitchell]

On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 12:24:00PM +1200, Greg Trounson wrote:
> Frank Tanner III wrote:
> >--- Sean Estabrooks <seanlkml at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> >>On Wed, 26 May 2004 09:54:15 -0700 (PDT)
> >>Frank Tanner III <pctech at mybellybutton.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>If they don't publish the specifications how are
> >>>all of these third party shareware tweak programs
....
> No, the existance of tweak utilities is merely proof that the registers 
> that allow tweaking are documented.  For example GPU clock speed or 
> memory bus speed.
....

There is a lot more to modern 3D graphics cards
than folks in these rants are grokking.

No one acknowledged that these cards are built with custom graphic
processor engines.   That is to say special processors.

Some of these are single instruction multiple data special purpose
processors (SIMD).  Some are parallel pipelines of SIMD and DMA engines....
The floating point blocks are not likely to use IEEE standard data,
rounding or exception handling.

As custom processors they require special compilers and assembler
(tools) to develop code for the engine.  i.e. gcc will not just work.
It takes more than poking bits into registers.

Next there is all the algorithmic tricks.  Some of it is 
SIMD magic.  Some of the algorithmic magic is instantiated in 
the hardware, some not.  Some is parallel programming ....
Lots of room for secrets and warts here.

Add in all the 3D perspective stuff.  Hidden line removal, dithering
of colors, interpolation, multi-pixel sampling, lighting, shading,

Then there is the texture mapping magic.

Then there is all the API, ABI library stuff to connect your
program to the bits on the screen.   

Then there are the hardware bugs to work around.

Remember that gcc will not just work even if the source was open.


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