Clarifications On Poulsbo's Gallium3D Driver

[Kazade]

First of all thanks for the insight.

I never heared of a company called Imagination, but if I was in charge of Imagination I would think twice about not listening to a huge customer like Intel because it's not like there will be any other serious customers for that kind of shitty GPU's, ever.

Imagination Technologies, they (amongst other things) designed the GPU in the Dreamcast. I went for an Interview there (worst interview ever, seriously, I messed up so bad) and I'm glad I didn't get it, it was only afterward that I heard how anti-opensource they are.

Their whole company is based on selling IP to companies like Intel, they don't product any hardware, they just design it.

[RoboJ1M]

Yeah, they are like ARM now.
They used to make their own hardware though. (KyroII FTW!!)

I believe I agree with the Most Awesome Dude, I find it very likely that it's just a very slow process getting it all done.

And Imagination are very small, I doubt they have the resources to throw at it like AMD/ATI does.

Oh and, "it's not like there will be any other serious customers for that kind of shitty GPU's, ever".

Imagination are VERY like ARM in that they design embedded GPUs that are very VERY low voltage and you probably already own several in your various mobile phones, PDAs, handheld consoles, etc. They may not make it and sell it to you but their global volumes have to be pretty big these days.

Finally: I'm with the Just Works camp for now. I'll have it working first, open source eventually. Because eventually it will all be open source.

J.

[cb88]

Just out of curiosity but will this driver also work for the Pandora(http://openpandora.org/) or is there no arm version of the binaries?

[val-gaav]

I don't care much whether my drivers are closed or open. I just want them to be solid.

...and working with a latest Xorg, kernel etc. which is really not possible with any blob. Nvidia is the best here but the support here is also not from day one.

The other thing is legacy drivers as it is now for ATI r100-r500 ... In this case nvidia is once again the best giving updates also for old legaqcy drivers, however for example my riva tnt2 will not work with new Xorg and nvidia blob. Sure it's an old card but it's in a PC that does not need a better card...

Interestingly, in that regard, I think that if all drivers were closed, the kernel developers would be forced to keep stable ABI and APIs.

Here you have Linus opinion about it :
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showp...8&postcount=78
and here opinion about why having stable ABI and API is not so good idea :
http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.31/D...i_nonsense.txt

[Remco]

This is Intel's fault. They accepted crap. I know this, because they are selling crap. Even now, they are trying to trick me into buying useless plastic with their advertisements.

But regardless of whose fault it is, I'm not buying Intel until this Poulsbo hardware is long gone. They can expect me to look at their hardware again in at least 5 years.

[zoomblab]

@val-gaav
Like with everything in life there are benefits/costs. Linus is basically saying "in any case I am gonna go ahead and do MY THING" which sounds pretty irresponsible to me. That is not the way to make friends and it shows.

[Remco]

@val-gaav
Like with everything in life there are benefits/costs. Linus is basically saying "in any case I am gonna go ahead and do MY THING" which sounds pretty irresponsible to me. That is not the way to make friends and it shows.

How does it show? Hardware support now is better than ever. Linux kernel development is a continuous explosion in rate of change and number of developers.

[Max Spain]

My 2c: Intel is putting its brand name on these products. If they fail to deliver, it is INTEL'S problem, not Imagination whatever company because Intel and Imagination would have signed a contract they both agreed upon. If Imagination is not fulfilling their end, they would have breached their contract, and Intel would not be using any more of their products. If Intel didn't stipulate OSS friendly provisions, then Intel didn't care about their customers.

If it is true that Intel is going to continue using their chips, then the problem is obvious.

[V!NCENT]

If Intel didn't stipulate OSS friendly provisions, then Intel didn't care about their customers.

Well at least Intel is open sourcing what they can and they are, according to MostAwesomeDude, putting a lot of effort into it.

I just hope that none of this Imagination Property is inside Larrabee

[gururise]

Like most others, I just want a working, solid driver for the Poulsbo chipset on Linux! Does anyone know if this will make it into the Moblin 2.1 final release???