ATI R300 Gallium3D DRI Support Is "Done"

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ATI R300 Gallium3D DRI Support Is "Done"

A month ago we shared that the Gallium3D driver for the ATI R300/400/500 graphics cards (up through the Radeon X1000 series) was mostly done. Now today, the key author of the R300 Gallium3D driver, Corbin Simpson, has updated the status wiki to reflect the latest changes...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzY4Ng

[monraaf]

Congrats, AMD should hire this guy to work full time on the R600 driver.

Now for the questions, sorry for my lack of knowledge on the subject but what exactly is the difference between the DRI and mesa state trackers, and which one is the one we are waiting for to get GLSL support?

And on a side note, I noticed that the tungstengraphics.com domain has expired, whats up with that? There are now a lot of dead links to info on Gallium3D...

[krazy]

Thanks Corbin, MostAwesome!

[kersurk]

That is good news.


Though I'm not sure how will it really affect me as end user.

[Louise]

Looking at the Gallium3D features I see:

* mesa
* vega
* exa
* g3dvl
* python
* dri
* xorg
* egl
* wgl

Which deprecates which of the classic?:

* DDX (X server) Modesetting
* Kernel Modesetting
* DRI2
* ShadowFB
* Old 2D Acceleration (XAA)
* 2D Acceleration (EXA)
* Overlay Xv
* Textured Xv
* XvMC
* Primitives
* Textures
* Hardware TCL
* Vertex Shaders
* Fragment (Pixel) Shaders
* GLSL
* OpenGL Compliance (Driver/Hardware)

[smitty3268]

For the most part, I don't think any of that is being deprecated. It's more like Gallium is an architecture-independent layer on top of those existing technologies, rather than having each driver fully implement them from scratch.

(With the exception of DDX modesetting and XAA, which have already been deprecated)

Also, apparently GLSL is completely separate from Gallium3D, unlike what everyone thinks. So you could have a fully complete gallium driver without GLSL support. Or at least that's what I was told.

[MostAwesomeDude]

Congrats, AMD should hire this guy to work full time on the R600 driver.

Now for the questions, sorry for my lack of knowledge on the subject but what exactly is the difference between the DRI and mesa state trackers, and which one is the one we are waiting for to get GLSL support?

And on a side note, I noticed that the tungstengraphics.com domain has expired, whats up with that? There are now a lot of dead links to info on Gallium3D...

The dri test is basically, "does glxinfo report sane numbers?" And it does. The mesa test is piglit, a very exhaustive GL test suite. We're nowhere near passing.

In more layman terms, glxgears works, openarena is getting there, compiz is nearly there, and I haven't really tested much else.

TG's site kind of vanished because VMWare didn't renew it for some reason. Don't worry; all the important info already got migrated to X.org and DRI wikis.

That is good news.


Though I'm not sure how will it really affect me as end user.

That's really up to your distro; I'm not sure which distros will pick up Gallium drivers. i915g has been shipping with Mesa 7.6, but I don't think any distros that carry 7.6 are actually building the Gallium drivers.

Looking at the Gallium3D features I see:

* mesa
* vega
* exa
* g3dvl
* python
* dri
* xorg
* egl
* wgl

Which deprecates which of the classic?:

* DDX (X server) Modesetting
* Kernel Modesetting
* DRI2
* ShadowFB
* Old 2D Acceleration (XAA)
* 2D Acceleration (EXA)
* Overlay Xv
* Textured Xv
* XvMC
* Primitives
* Textures
* Hardware TCL
* Vertex Shaders
* Fragment (Pixel) Shaders
* GLSL
* OpenGL Compliance (Driver/Hardware)

KMS is required for Gallium. xorg + exa can replace a DDX and provide Xv. dri + mesa can provide a GL driver, which does all of the regular GL features including GLSL.

That list looks suspiciously like RadeonFeature from X.org's wiki. :3 I intentionally didn't add very many features to that list, because at the end of the day, what people use Gallium drivers for is very independent of what a traditional DDX does. You could say that KMS + Gallium can replace a classic DRM + DRI + DDX stack, but that's only one possibility. Other things, like Wayland + EGL + Cairo, are also possible.

[Louise]

KMS is required for Gallium. xorg + exa can replace a DDX and provide Xv. dri + mesa can provide a GL driver, which does all of the regular GL features including GLSL.

So they replace each other in groups?

Gallium     Classic MESA
------------------------
xorg+exa    DDX+Xv
dri+mesa    GL+GLSL
dri         DRI2              (???)

What about vega, g3dvl, egl, wgl? Do they have equivalent classic mesa counter parts?

That list looks suspiciously like RadeonFeature from X.org's wiki. :3

I intentionally didn't add very many features to that list, because at the end of the day, what people use Gallium drivers for is very independent of what a traditional DDX does. You could say that KMS + Gallium can replace a classic DRM + DRI + DDX stack, but that's only one possibility. Other things, like Wayland + EGL + Cairo, are also possible.

Cool. Are there other possible combinations?

What does vega, g3dvl, egl, wgl stand for?

[Xheyther]

And also what does the python state tracker means ?

[fiete]

The dri test is basically, "does glxinfo report sane numbers?" And it does. The mesa test is piglit, a very exhaustive GL test suite. We're nowhere near passing.

In more layman terms, glxgears works, openarena is getting there, compiz is nearly there, and I haven't really tested much else.

I am confused. To my understanding there is no OpenGL (except OpenGL ES) state tracker yet. How is it possible to run glxgears, openarena and compiz then?