Wow, XGI Does Something With Its Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wow, XGI Does Something With Its Linux Driver

Remember XGI Technology? The company that was spun out of SiS and Trident back in 2003 and for a while had some interesting low-end GPU hopes along with a few graphics cards that actually made it out to the market. There really hasn't been much talk about XGI in years and ATI had bought up one of their alliance companies in 2006 that further diminished this company...

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

[d4ddi0]

Maybe some hope of release from the hell that is PowerVR

I can dream, can't I?

The dream continues like this:
Embedded Integrators like TI, find that a cheap fully open plaform is a real value proposition for their customers and start dropping PowerVR like a hot rock.

PowerVR responds by open-sourcing their drivers.

xgi and powerVR compete on feature the way that ATI and nvidia do at the desktop and workstation level.

Maybe someday.
Interesting platforms like the beagleboard are often hobbleded by their inclusion of PowerVR video chipsets.

I bought an ATI card on just the announcement that they were opening their specs.

[curaga]

Well well, we might be getting some open ARM graphics after all

[cb88]

Yes I would call an open arm dirver for a gpu a HUGE development!


This is exactly what developers have been whating (see mali dev) board wishlist)

[Svartalf]

This is exactly what developers have been whating (see mali dev) board wishlist)

Heh... If only ARM would listen there.

I'm not wholly sure that XGI's Volari series up to the task. The Z11 isn't anything other than a 2D accel chip. Neither is the Z9. As best as I can tell XGI's only 3D chip offering is the Volari V5XE. Maybe the G6 they've announced as "coming soon" is a credible play there, but I don't think the V5XE is a real play against the SGX-53x series cores.

[agd5f]

Well well, we might be getting some open ARM graphics after all

As long as your arm board has a spec compliant PCI slot, you can use just about any PCI graphics board that has a Linux driver.

[curaga]

Yeah, but I know you know we want tablets etc. with one of these integrated.

[agd5f]

Yeah, but I know you know we want tablets etc. with one of these integrated.

You can integrate one too.

[Adarion]

LOL. I nearly fell off my chair when I read that XGI still exists. But well, if there is really a free and working driver... wow. That's at least a start. Supporting ARM arch sounds awesome though otherwise it seems to have the state of VIA. Just starting to feature at least EXA. Well. Better than nothing.

Maybe some hope of release from the hell that is PowerVR

lol, again. Yeah, I'm also dreaming. But this would be really awesome.
Yesterday I received my Always Innovating touchbook that is beagleboard based. Means: TI ARM CPU and a PowerVR GPU. Hardware-side should be nice (decoding HD videos with milliwatts of power uptake and such) but til now I only know of binary blobs.
Iirc poulsbo on intel is also PowerVR. Made for intel not by intel. But lacking all kinds of driver/specs.

I mean the whole beagleboard thing is open, free blahblah all nice but kinda spoiled if such a GPU is added.

But it is a good dream of yours, d4ddi0. And sometimes dreams come true. I really hope so and I hope it will be soon. Since I am really tired of having e.g. my VIA CLE266 around for years and still no real 3d or EXA. I mean it is so outdated now but since it is on-board in a laptop I can't just exchange it.

I bought an ATI card on just the announcement that they were opening their specs.

Me too. Since then I just put ATI cards/chips whereever possible in my boxes. (Okay I could have used intel but I stay with the cute green/red bulldog that is clawing and biting in the blue giant's leg.)


Would anyone think it might be worth to try a petition or something to convinge PowerVR/imgtec to give specs/open & free driver?

[unix_epoch]

As long as your arm board has a spec compliant PCI slot, you can use just about any PCI graphics board that has a Linux driver.

How are the video cards initialized without an x86 processor to run the video BIOS POST routine?