Gallium3D's Softpipe Driver Now Runs Faster

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gallium3D's Softpipe Driver Now Runs Faster

Keith Whitwell has gone ahead today and merged the softpipe-opt branch of Mesa into the master Mesa branch, which will eventually work its way into Mesa 7.7. The softpipe-opt branch brings performance optimizations to the "softpipe" driver of Gallium3D...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzU1Mg

[cb88]

SMP support? that would be nice.

[patstew]

When is gallium going to replace the old mesa/3d drivers?

[nanonyme]

When is gallium going to replace the old mesa/3d drivers?

In a distant future populated by robots arguing with each other which API is the best for accelerating holografic video output?

[crispy]

So we can get software accelerated compositing if you don't have a hardware to run it?

[whizse]

So we can get software accelerated compositing if you don't have a hardware to run it?

You have never tried software rendering in Mesa, have you?

Joking aside, having a finely tuned software rendering option in Gallium would be very nice. Microsoft has shown that it doesn't have to be that slow: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/15968

[nanonyme]

Neat although actually beating a discrete card would have been *far* more impressive.

[mirza]

Amiga demo scene veterans (like me) are amazed Compiz ever needed HW support. That kind of effects was cool back in 1989 on 7-10 MHz machines (albeit lower res then now). Thats why I am always so mad about graphic subsystem and its memory usage. In my mind, X should need this amount of memory: 1680*1050 (resolution I have), * 4 (RGBA) * 2 (double buffering) * 2 (lets have some comfort, memory is cheap) < 30 MB !!! My X is using right now 100 MB of virtual memory (Ubuntu) with Compiz _disabled_. I know, I know, it is storing bitmaps for applications. but it means X is storing such amount of bitmaps it could cover my desktop completely 10 times or more! How can that make any sense to anyone? Thats so wasteful. That, and Get Of My Lawn!

[nanonyme]

Hehe, you're probably right. With good enough low-level coders it could use a lot less system resources than it does. (not that nearly anyone does that low-level coding anyway anymore)

[highlandsun]

Hehe, you're probably right. With good enough low-level coders it could use a lot less system resources than it does. (not that nearly anyone does that low-level coding anyway anymore)

Yes, that's the biggest problem. Everyone thinks that optimized java/python is good. Blecch....