feedback to NVidia [was: Nvidia Drivers]r

[Sean Estabrooks]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 16:03:18 -0700
"T. 'Nifty New Hat' Mitchell" <mitch48 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:


> > > These are not frame buffers with 'common' processors glued to them.
> > > 
> > What are you talking about?   Do you know how many open
> > source 3D drivers there are?   Please check out:
> > 
> > http://dri.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Good pointer.
> 
> Looking at the design documents I see mention of what I am saying.
> These are not simple frame buffers with common processors
> glued to them.   The design of dri shows awareness of this task
> and associated issues.
> 
> What I am failing to communicate is that there is a fun set of issues
> associated with the use of asymmetric special purpose co-processor
> subsystems for acceleration of any type.
> 
> Of interest dri does work on FC2 (nv driver) with my nVidia
> Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] card, glxgears and more.  Just
> not as fast as the accelerated driver.
> 

That's just the development site for the 3D drivers that you typically get
already included in the XFree/Xorg rpms.   Nvidia cards do not have a 
DRI component as mentioned on the site.   So you won't get any 
acceleration.   There are quite a few cards that do have open source 3D
acceleration drivers and they are listed on that site as well.    Once the details 
of any given card is released there is some hope that a DRI driver will appear.
All of the topics you touched on are handled by the developers there and
they use the gnu compiler & assembler.

Cheers,
Sean