From: Hamie <ha...@tr...> - 2004-11-04 22:09:46
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Rogelio Serrano wrote: > On 2004-10-25 04:10:30 +0800 Vladimir Dergachev > <vo...@mi...> wrote: > >> >>> If there weren't all those patents out there we might just try to >>> develop a free graphics chip. >> >> >> I have thought about this (repeatedly - the idea gets very tempting >> after asking for the docs for the Nth time) and I don't think it is >> feasible to make an actual chip. By the time we are finished the >> world will move on. >> >> What could work, however, is to make a *board* that is capable of >> decent 3d. Put lots of memory, lots of bandwidth and several DSP to >> approximate the same level of raw floating-point power as 3d GPUs. >> Leave everything else to the software. >> >> The problem is getting such a beast under $1000 range. Last time I >> looked TI DSPs that were up to the task were rather expensive. >> >> best >> >> Vladimir Dergachev > > [snipped...] > > This was discussed in lkml a few days ago. A hardware company is > considering building an open fpga based video card. Although the > target is mainly 2d accel its a good start. There was a lot of > discussion about off screen rendering and support for the new > compositing model in xorg. You can see that thread posted on kerneltrap. > I was watching that... Does anyone have figures for the MOST time consuming parts of software 3D in the Mesa libs? Those would be the logical bits to push into hardware first. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a profile output from X to say which parts are actually most & would benefit more from acceleration than others... H |