Open-Source Linux Graphics Stack Improvements Coming For PowerPC 64 LE

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source Linux Graphics Stack Improvements Coming For PowerPC 64 LE

The maintainer of AMD's HSA Linux kernel driver (AMDKFD) and Pixman is now focusing his work on enabling and optimizing the Linux graphics stack for PowerPC 64-bit LE...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Graphics-PPC64LE-Improve

[torsionbar28]

I'd love to see a reasonably priced (<$600) POWER8 board in standard ATX form factor. I think Tyan has/had one at one point? Unobtanium as far as I can tell, at least I can't find any vendors that carry it. POWER is the only real competitor out there to x86-64 from a performance stand point.

[jacob]

Is anyone actually using Linux on ppc64 in prod? Not trolling, I'genuinely asking.

[Nth_man]

> It will be interesting to see what comes in terms of Linux graphics support for POWER8+.

POWER8, OpenPOWER people are very commited, their future is getting brighter.

[odedgabbay]

I'd love to see a reasonably priced (<$600) POWER8 board in standard ATX form factor. I think Tyan has/had one at one point? Unobtanium as far as I can tell, at least I can't find any vendors that carry it. POWER is the only real competitor out there to x86-64 from a performance stand point.

Well, I'll be the first to admit that the user base is not nearly as large as for x86_64, but IBM and other member of the OpenPOWER group are pushing this platform hard, and POWER8 has some genuine performance advantages over Xeon processors, so I hope it will be more and more common in the next few years.

This is a marathon run, no doubt about it. The time and effort it takes to build an eco-system around a new architecture is huge. I hope it will be worth it in the end. At least the road is very interesting

[nils_]

I'd love to see a reasonably priced (<$600) POWER8 board in standard ATX form factor. I think Tyan has/had one at one point? Unobtanium as far as I can tell, at least I can't find any vendors that carry it. POWER is the only real competitor out there to x86-64 from a performance stand point.

All I saw is the Evaluation System Tyan offers, no standalone board. I don't think hardware compatibility is that great either and prices are off-putting as well, if you can even get a quote. There is the runabove cloud computing thing though where you can use a POWER8 server, albeit virtualized.

[cb88]

All I saw is the Evaluation System Tyan offers, no standalone board. I don't think hardware compatibility is that great either and prices are off-putting as well, if you can even get a quote. There is the runabove cloud computing thing though where you can use a POWER8 server, albeit virtualized.

Why would that be the case... it has PCI-e .... so most things except graphics cards should work if it has a Linux driver. and its little endian ... so you won't hit alot of the bugs you would on Sparc (which is big endian most of the time except for some drivers that use a special little endian mode on sparc v9 anyway)

[mparnaudeau]

I'd love to see a reasonably priced (<$600) POWER8 board in standard ATX form factor. I think Tyan has/had one at one point? Unobtanium as far as I can tell, at least I can't find any vendors that carry it. POWER is the only real competitor out there to x86-64 from a performance stand point.

I really would like too. Having a developer workstation would be great and would help to produce apps, provide help on Linux, etc.
And maybe one day, the foundation will work on another core and ecosystem, more oriented to the embedded market.
About pixmap, I wonder if some parts are already identified for optimization on PowerPC targets ...