From: Frank C. E. <fe...@ai...> - 2001-08-21 15:41:10
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Mike A. Harris wrote: > Aside from ATI and Matrox currently, you're not likely to find a > more open source friendly video hardware vendor. Getting docs > from other vendors while sometimes possible, is not always easy. > I'm sure many developers here can attest to that. It's like pulling teeth. SiS sent my employer 2D and MPEG decode register info but didn't give us the 3D info (My current employer's got a few projects where having the full SiS DRI driver would be nice- without that register info it's going to be harder for me to help them keep it supported...)- this was under NDA and our contact in the US said that they normally don't give out the 3D info for their chipsets, ever (Which is a bald-faced lie; they did give everything out for the 6326.). Trident won't give us the time of day (Which is surprising, considering that they helped out with the sound chips they make!). NVidia promised open source, delivered a broken, buggy driver and then closed up everything again. Imagination insists on the driver development for the Power VR architechture being in-house for all OS platforms they choose to support. If I can get at info, it's usually under NDA, incomplete, and/or will cost you an arm and a leg (Tvia, formerly IGS, wants $5k to get access to the info to work the 2D and Video passthrough support on their 5XXX series of display chips...). It's really amazing how much they've clammed up over the years ATI's been fairly good to us. Having said this, I find it disappointing that the data that they gave the Utah-GLX team for the Rage 128 was "sanitized" so it wasn't terribly useful; they'd cut out all the 3D and CCE info out of the docs I've got. -- Frank Earl |