Phoronix

X@FOSDEM 2010 Video Status Update

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:43:28 CST

For those waiting on our X@FOSDEM 2010 videos that we recorded, they still need to be uploaded. Each of the talks, which were less than an hour in length, are about 3GB in size with the original HD files...

There's Evergreen KMS Support & More To Test

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:26:16 CST

David Airlie has re-based his drm-radeon-testing tree and there's now a whole lot of new code and features that users can play with and test. The drm-radeon-testing tree is a branch of the Linux kernel and is code for the Radeon DRM area that will ultimately make it into the mainline tree in the Linux 2.6.34 kernel series and later. To be found in drm-radeon-testing right now is new I2C code that supports the hardware I2C engines found on Radeon graphics cards and exposes it to user-space, a PLL algorithm rework, DRM power management support, basic Evergreen "R800" KMS support, and various other fixes and new additions. Like the recent R800 Evergreen in xf86-video-ati DDX support, the kernel mode-setting support lacks IRQ and any acceleration (2D, 3D, X-Video) support at this time for these Radeon HD 5000 series products...

Open-Source ATI R600/700 Mesa 3D Performance

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:10:19 CST

As we alluded to last week, we have been in the process of benchmarking many Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series graphics cards using the open-source ATI Linux graphics stack with the Mesa R600/700 DRI driver. We have now carried out our first batch of R600/700 3D tests using this constantly evolving open-source driver to provide OpenGL acceleration and here are the results.

DirectX 10/11 Coming Atop Gallium3D

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:54:38 CST

With state trackers emerging for the Gallium3D driver architecture to provide acceleration for a range of APIs from OpenGL ES and OpenVG to OpenGL and OpenCL, we knew it was likely that at some point there would be support for Microsoft's DirectX API. There was even a rumor of Tungsten Graphics already having a working DirectX state tracker...

Jerome's Radeon KMS Short-Term TODO List

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:38:35 CST

After the earlier X talks today and then Luc's debated Linux graphics driver stack proposal (largely between he and Eric Anholt and Daniel Stone with conflicting views, but at least Intel admitting "there's a subset of users we care about and a subset we don't"), Jerome Glisse began talking about ATI Radeon kernel mode-setting and its current state. While most that read Phoronix regularly know the direction of Radeon KMS support for the coming releases, below is Jerome's short-term TODO list for the ATI kernel support. Coming up in the Radeon DRM for the Linux 2.6.34 kernel (or releases thereafter) is support for un-mappable VRAM, support for Evergreen GPUs (Radeon HD 5000 "R800" series), use of the Linux power management API for better suspend-and-resume support, better DRM power management, HDMI audio for R700/800 graphics processors, and improved GPU lock-up recording. Other plans on the code side include better fence for improved lock-up detection, using union to separate ASIC specific data, and better message prints for multi-GPU configurations. The most common kernel mode-setting problems these days for ATI Radeon customers is coming down to mode detection issues, PLL issues on laptops with Mobility Radeon parts, ACPI/BIOS interaction problems, memory fragmentation, command submission issues, and GPU lock-ups. Additionally, Jerome is hoping that his R600 Winsys code will be done within the next week or so...

Notes From X@FOSDEM 2010: GLSL, X, Etc

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:05:41 CST

X@FOSDEM is taking place at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium. Nicolai Hahnle and Daniel Stone provided talks on R300 GLSL compilation and X11 and its problems, respectively...

Cleaning Up The Linux Graphics Driver Stack

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:52:11 CST

Yesterday Luc Verhaegen gave a talk at FOSDEM on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS, but today we finally have X@FOSDEM for the last time. Luc has just begun his talk on unifying and simplifying the free software desktop's graphics driver stack. Here are his slides and we will be back with more updates and videos on Phoronix as the presentation progresses.

Linux 2.6.33-rc7 Released, Still Many Regressions

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 04:20:20 CST

Linus pushed out the Linux 2.6.33-rc7 kernel yesterday afternoon, but still even being seven release candidates into the Linux 2.6.33 kernel cycle, at least one more test release is due before we may see an official release. The number of regressions for the Linux 2.6.33 kernel is still high and is somthing that isn't pleasing Torvalds. While the Linux 2.6.33-rc7 kernel release should lower the regression count with many fixes going in since 2.6.33-rc6 last Friday, there is also some Intel and ATI Radeon DRM driver updates still being pushed into this next major release...

How To Reverse Engineer A Motherboard BIOS

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:08:03 CST

Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and motherboards on the market. Luc has worked on support for flashing the BIOS on ATI graphics cards, native VGA text mode support, and other work to help the CoreBoot project. Today at FOSDEM in Brussels, Luc Verhaegen is about to give a talk on reverse engineering a motherboard BIOS.

X.Org Server 1.7.5 Is Just About Done

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:05:36 CST

Peter Hutterer has put out a new release candidate for X Server 1.7.5, which also marks this point release as being just about complete. There are still two weeks left before the 1.7.5 release is expected to be made and then after that we still may see X.Org Server 1.7.6...

Irrlicht 1.7 Released With Many New Features

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:52:05 CST

Version 1.7 of the Irrlicht Engine has been released. For those unfamiliar with Irrlicht, it's an open-source, real-time 3D engine that has OpenGL support as well as its own software renderer...

LLVM's Clang Now Can Build Itself

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:38:51 CST

The Clang compiler that provides a C/Object-C/C++ compiler atop the Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) is now self-hosting, which means Clang can now be used to compile itself. The LLVM developers reached this important milestone where LLVM/Clang can now be used to build Clang with working resulting binaries that can even go on to build another copy of Clang as well. The short announcement of this compiler achievement for LLVM/Clang can be read on the LLVM blog...

XDS 2010 Is In Toulouse, France

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:31:39 CST

While X@FOSDEM has turned into a mess due to a lack of participation and interest among the X.Org development community, plans are underway for the 2010 X Developers' Summit. This year's XDS is back in Europe and is taking place in Toulouse, France...

Wine 1.1.38 Brings Various Fixes

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:11:59 CST

It's time for another bi-weekly development update of Wine. This time around there is better support for memory allocations debugging, improved MIDI support, a wide range of Direct3D fixes, OLEDB fixes, improved debugger support on x86_64, many MSI fixes, and various bug-fixes. Offered up in Wine 1.1.38 is also support for anonymous shaders with the Direct3D 10.0 support along with other enhancements...

Catalyst 10.1 Still Trash In Heaven, But Good News

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:14:48 CST

We have just received official word from Unigine that they still are not ready to release their OpenGL Linux version of their Unigine Heaven benchmark. "Unfortunately we were asked by a hardware vendor not to release current version :(," said Denis Shergin, the Unigine Corp CEO...

Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 Is Out, Time For Lyngen

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:05:56 CST

Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 (codenamed "Lenvik") was released on Tuesday. Since then we have been quite pleased with the adoption of this new quarterly update and the new features and enhancements that it provides...

Unigine Engine Gets Into Physical Destruction

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:01:19 CST

While the Linux community is still waiting on the native Linux release of the OpenGL3-using Unigine Heaven tech demo with its heavenly graphics (it's being held off by a bugged ATI Catalyst driver), the core developers working on this advanced game engine continue adding in new features. One of the latest features added into this proprietary engine is physical destruction with a destructible body type currently offering three destruction patterns...

Intel Clarkdale Linux Graphics Performance

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:45:49 CST

Last week we delivered our first Linux benchmarks of Intel's Core i3 Clarkdale processor with a variety of computational tests through the Phoronix Test Suite. While the Core i3 packs a nice performance punch, that is not all it has to offer. Also found on the Clarkdale (and mobile Arrandale) processors is an integrated 45nm graphics processor that is supposed to offer a decent level of performance in comparison to earlier Intel IGPs normally found on the motherboard's Chipset. In this article are these first Intel benchmarks for the Clarkdale graphics processor as we see how its open-source Intel driver stack compares to that of AMD with their open-source Radeon stack up through the Radeon R700 series.

NVIDIA Publishes 195.xx Linux Driver Beta

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:02:43 CST

NVIDIA has been at work on the 195.xx driver series for some months already and has delivered beta releases to the public that offer VDPAU improvements and new features along with faster X Render performance. This evening they have published a new beta driver for the public, this time it's 195.36.03. The NVIDIA 195.36.03 driver for Linux (and FreeBSD and OpenSolaris) fixes a system hang for GeForce 6/7 series graphics cards, a workaround for a notebook bug with invalid EDID, the maximum number of slices supported by VDPAU for MPEG-2 streams has been increased, unofficial preliminary support for xorg-server video driver ABI version 7, and the soname of libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 and libvdpau_trace.so have been fixed...

DRI2 Driver For Mesa EGL In The Works

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:58:50 CST

Kristian Høgsberg, the mastermind behind DRI2 and the one behind the Wayland Display Server, has a new announcement and that's a DRI2 driver for the new Mesa EGL implementation. Kristian's work interfaces EGL with DRI2 and is described as a "nice, self-contained implementation." Kristian has aspirations to add support for EGL with a DRI2 driver on the KMS frame-buffer, which could be used in the Wayland world. Kristian previously wrote the Eagle EGL stack as part of his work on Wayland, but those Eagle-specific bits have been dropped after Gallium3D received a new EGL state tracker and Kristian has merged some Eagle bits with Mesa. Kristian's announcement concerning this DRI2 driver for EGL can be read on mesa3d-dev...

Today, Delayed GPU Switching Comes To Linux

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:59:44 CST

Two days ago we reported on hybrid graphics coming to Linux in a crude form that allowed switching between graphics processors on notebook computers that utilize dual graphics processors, one that's meant to deliver the best energy efficient performance while the other GPU is for maximizing the graphics performance in demanding environments. Just 24 hours after this kernel patch hit the Internet it already went through four revisions by Red Hat's David Airlie, which delivered better switching and greater notebook compatibility...

A Nouveau 3D Driver That Works For Old NVIDIA Hardware

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:36:09 CST

While there is now DRM support in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel for the Nouveau driver that carries the bits for kernel mode-setting, 2D (EXA) acceleration, and other fundamental functions on NVIDIA graphics processors, the Gallium3D driver still is incomplete. Prior to focusing solely on Gallium3D for their OpenGL acceleration, the Nouveau project was working on a DRI driver for classic Mesa, but that work was dropped in 2008 to focus entirely on Gallium3D support...

AMD Toying With XvMC In Gallium3D R300 Driver

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:27:09 CST

XvMC support came to Gallium3D through a Google Summer of Code project for 2008 that involved getting X-Video Motion Compensation running atop the Nouveau driver with NVIDIA hardware. We described this work in The State Of Gallium3D Video Decoding and subsequently in Nouveau's Gallium3D Driver Gets Video Boost...

LM_Sensors 3.1.2 Released: Better HW Support

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:16:58 CST

Jean Delvare has announced the second point release for the LM_Sensors 3.1 series, which was introduced last March. The LM_Sensors 3.1.2 release delivers better Linux system sensor monitoring support by preemptively adding support for future kernels and HID devices in libsensors, the sensord daemon has received a lot of clean-ups, and sensors-detect is better detecting the supported sensors with drivers. The LM_Sensors 3.1.2 release announcement can be found on the project's mailing list...

Ubuntu Has Another Special ATI Catalyst Driver?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:25:55 CST

The past three releases of Ubuntu Linux have included unreleased ATI Catalyst drivers. It started with Ubuntu 8.10, which got an early-access driver as the official Catalyst Linux driver that was available to the public at the time had not supported X Server 1.5...

VMware's Embedded Plans For Gallium3D?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:37:58 CST

Back in December of 2008 VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, the company that's principally behind Mesa 3D along with the Gallium3D driver architecture, the TTM memory manager, and other parts of the Linux graphics stack. A year later (this past November/December) we then found out VMware had them create a virtual Gallium3D driver for their VMware virtualization platform so that virtualized operating systems can exploit the graphics processor on the host system just not for driving OpenGL support, but OpenCL, OpenVG, OpenGL ES, and other areas covered now by the Gallium3D state tracker and going into the future (VDPAU, etc). One of the latest branches appearing for Gallium3D is coming from VMware's José Fonseca...

A Day Later, Hybrid Graphics On Linux Does More

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:14:02 CST

Just yesterday morning we reported on hybrid graphics coming to Linux in a crude form, which allowed dual-GPU notebook systems to switch between the onboard GPUs via a kernel patch but what made it crude was that it wasn't seamless switching within the running X.Org Server (it won't be this way for some time) and it didn't actually turn off the other GPU when the other one was in use. In the past 24 hours, however, David Airlie has published three new versions of this Linux kernel patch. The second version of Airlie's "switcheroo" code as it's called brought support for powering up and powering down the GPUs...

Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 Released

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:33 CST

Phoronix Media has announced the immediate release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 (codenamed "Lenvik"), as the latest update to their open-source testing framework that delivers immediate and measurable advantages to its customers. The Phoronix Test Suite 2.4 software is compatible with a greater number of operating systems, introduces support for mobile platforms, offers a new range of test profiles, and other features to further solidify its premiere position within the computer benchmarking industry.