Silicon Motion X.Org Driver Sees First Release In Six Years

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Silicon Motion X.Org Driver Sees First Release In Six Years

The xf86-video-siliconmotion X.Org driver has seen its first new release in six years for supporting the Silicon Motion Lynx and Cougar chipsets found in vintage laptops...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/xf86-video-siliconmotion-1.7.10

[LinuxID10T]

I believe a lot of video display adapters use the Silicon Motion chipsets, it isn't just vintage hardware.

[rene]

Still no 3d accel, which would theoretically be possible:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWVNVsKWESE

[stormcrow]

I believe a lot of video display adapters use the Silicon Motion chipsets, it isn't just vintage hardware.

They do still make embedded GPUs, but the majority of their modern product portfolio seems to be flash memory controllers. Makes sense. The low end GPU market isn't a growth market while flash storage certainly is.

I don't think this particular driver has anything to do with the current embedded GPU offerings though.

[Michael]

I believe a lot of video display adapters use the Silicon Motion chipsets, it isn't just vintage hardware.

As mentioned in the article the more recent SiliconMotion GPUs aren't supported by this driver.

[Elv13]

I believe a lot of video display adapters use the Silicon Motion chipsets, it isn't just vintage hardware.

Right, bought 3 of them so far this year. So here's my little review:

* AsRock M.2 VGA (SM750): Recently no longer back-order. Works well, but require extra power from a MOLEX for other 12v source to run. It requires to compile a Linux Kernel with the staging module when your device BIOS/uEFI (or lack of) doesn't support graphics. That's annoying, but it works.
* "Dual VGA embedded adapter" (SM750): The most common mini-PCI-e graphics card. Great to repurpose old laptops. You can swap the wifi card with this and it just works. It still requires the kernel change from above if you want more than the VESA/uEFI_framebuffer speed. Still, for displaying terminals and things like that, you can live with it.
* SM768 M.2 HDMI adapter: Hit and miss for me. It doesn't require external power like the SM750 did. However you have to email them get a Linux driver, which I didn't do. If the supports get mainlined, it will become a very useful card. It just isn't as it stands right now

The use cases for the M.2 cards is that a lot of "appliance" device like routers, NAS and friends have an M.2 slots in them for internal storage. Having an adapter chain to get full PCI-e slot works-ish, but requires a power supply and doesn't fit internally. With the SiliconMotion card, you can hook them into a PI-KVM or to a screen and get something close to IPMI working.

The use case for mini PCI-e ones are as I said above, cheap old laptop of eBay repurposed into home appliances. You can get 17" laptop with an i7 and a capacitive touchscreen for 50$ these days. Once you fork the wifi, 2 M.2 slots and the thunderbolt/PCcard lanes, you get 4 PCI-e slots (1xGen1, 2xGen2, 4xGen2, 4xGen2) out of them. That's a lot of hardware for 50$

[Eirikr1848]

They do still make embedded GPUs, but the majority of their modern product portfolio seems to be flash memory controllers. Makes sense. The low end GPU market isn't a growth market while flash storage certainly is.

I don't think this particular driver has anything to do with the current embedded GPU offerings though.

Correct, the article states it's only for the legacy embedded GPUs. However another user stated that technically they support 3D... which OpenGL version, I wonder?

Curious about the state of the modern embedded x.org and mesa drivers......

....or is this yet another hobbyist reverse engineering project?

[LinuxID10T]

As mentioned in the article the more recent SiliconMotion GPUs aren't supported by this driver.

I stand corrected, I need to read better. Thank.