ATI R600/700 OSS 3D Driver Reaches Gears Milestone

[pingufunkybeat]

Is the plan to freeze the kernel drm once it moves into the mainline kernel? Or will we need bleeding edge kernels to follow the 3D development?

[bridgman]

I think the intention is once the merge to 2.6.32 happens you should not need out-of-tree kernel code - at least for DRI1.

[Maarte]

2.6.30 added EXA and Xv support for 6xx/7xx

2.6.31 added KMS/GEM/TTM support for r1xx-r5xx (staging only)

2.6.32 will hopefully add KMS/GEM/TTM support for 6xx/7xx (staging only) and 3D support for 6xx/7xx (normal, not staging). I think the intent is for KMS/GEM/TTM on r1xx-r5xx to move out of staging but I'm not sure about that.

To clarify this a little for the non-coder-genius people out there, myself included , for those with r7xx or higher cards using the radeon/hd driver, come 2.6.32, we'll have accelerated 2d for kwin (i.e. wobbly windows in kde etc etc), but games will still remain un-accelerated?

[rvdboom]

To clarify this a little for the non-coder-genius people out there, myself included , for those with r7xx or higher cards using the radeon/hd driver, come 2.6.32, we'll have accelerated 2d for kwin (i.e. wobbly windows in kde etc etc), but games will still remain un-accelerated?

I don't think so : 3D support without KMS still means 3D support, so accelerated 3D in games, just as most cards ATI currently accelerate 3D.

By the way, I switched over to KMS/TTM/GEM using the 2.6.31rc8 and latest git on a laptop with XP200M chip (I think it's something like RS480 or something) and it's quite stable already. Can't I see much difference with the situation before that, but it's surely stable and if that means getting better things in the future, it surely is a good job done! I guess the next step is to check Gallium3D there. :-)

[Maarte]

That's great news! Thanks for the heads-up. Amazing to see the ATi open drivers progress over this last year. Excellent work.

[pingufunkybeat]

we'll have accelerated 2d for kwin (i.e. wobbly windows in kde etc etc)

With 2D acceleration (XRender), you can use compositing with KWin. Unfortunately, not all fancy desktop effects work with the XRender backend. Desktop cube, for example, needs OpenGL, and wobbly windows too.

But transparency, fading, moving windows around, expose, and many other cool effects work, and are fast and stable in KWin. You don't need to wait for anything, you can already get this with the .31 kernel and recent radeon/radeonhd driver.

For some of the remaining effects, you'll have to wait for 3d. The kernel part of this should hopefully get merged into the .32 kernel. But that doesn't mean that everything will work perfectly, as there are other parts needed for 3d which are developed outside of the kernel (Mesa). The KWin with OpenGL backend still doesn't really work for me.

[89c51]

just a question

is the infrastructure needed (in the kernel) for Gallium ready??

and if not in which kernel version is going to be ready??

thanks

[agd5f]

just a question

is the infrastructure needed (in the kernel) for Gallium ready??

and if not in which kernel version is going to be ready??

thanks

gallium uses the same ioctls as the kms-enabled ddx and 3d drivers. 2.6.31 has everything you need for r3xx-r5xx, and 2.6.32 will for r6xx/r7xx. However there is not yet an r600 gallium driver.

[tormod]

It looks that libgl1-mesa-dri package (libgl1-mesa-dri 7.6.0+git20090902.dc9de806-0ubuntu0tormod) doesn't have r600 module. Only r200 and r300 are exist.

Oops, I forgot to add r600 to that package. I uploaded a new right now.

[d2kx]

I for the first time tried the R6xx/R7xx 3D stuff on Kubuntu 9.10 with my AMD Radeon HD 4850 today. The composite performance (KWin desktop effects) is better than fglrx + the 1-2s freezes when maximizing windows/etc. are gone :P It isn't fully stable though (of course).