The Fallacy Behind Open-Source GPU Drivers, Documentation

[kirillkh]

The hardware <...> might already exist

That was my thinking, too. I suspected that some or even all of the functionality is actually already there.

[kirillkh]

I never discussed remote access to the tools and we have no intention of providing that. Alex and Richard are AMD employees working on the open source drivers.

Sorry for misinterpreting that.

I think we are saying the same thing, you just don't like the way I'm saying it

I made a technical suggestion and took it to its logical conclusion. Whether that was a dead end or an open path is a different question. In both cases it's good to know where that line of thinking leads you.

[bridgman]

Yep, agreed. I mostly pushed back because I felt that we had already responded to the suggestion earlier in the thread, not because the suggestion was wrong in principle.

[bridgman]

Speaking of software-emulated GPUs :

https://attila.ac.upc.edu/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Looks like there has been a major update and recent release of ATILLA.

[marek]

so what is the perfect dev setup?

Get a machine you are comfortable with. Your main machine is okay. There may be important data, don't worry, hardware hard lockups and failures won't damage them. Set up your development environment, so that you can write some driver code, compile it, and test it with a 3D app at any time (no matter whether you are on a plane or a train or at school... you can make drivers anywhere).

I only switch machines when I need to test a GPU which is not in my laptop (or when I want a machine that compiles code faster than my laptop ).

[Silverthorn]

Get a machine you are comfortable with. Your main machine is okay. There may be important data, don't worry, hardware hard lockups and failures won't damage them. Set up your development environment, so that you can write some driver code, compile it, and test it with a 3D app at any time (no matter whether you are on a plane or a train or at school... you can make drivers anywhere).

I only switch machines when I need to test a GPU which is not in my laptop (or when I want a machine that compiles code faster than my laptop ).

Is there a "Hello world" gallium state tracker available anywhere?

[bridgman]

There is a python state tracker which AFAIK allows you to run Gallium3D API commands from a simple python program.

[marek]

kirillkh and others> The basic inescapable fact is you won't be able to achieve anything useful in the 3D driver development world without deep knowledge of either OpenGL or Direct3D. As a driver developer, you fully implement the OpenGL API, so you should know it more or less fully!

[smitty3268]

Get a machine you are comfortable with. Your main machine is okay. There may be important data, don't worry, hardware hard lockups and failures won't damage them. Set up your development environment, so that you can write some driver code, compile it, and test it with a 3D app at any time (no matter whether you are on a plane or a train or at school... you can make drivers anywhere).

I only switch machines when I need to test a GPU which is not in my laptop (or when I want a machine that compiles code faster than my laptop ).

I think the key here seems to be that new developers should focus solely on improving bits and pieces of Mesa at first. This is easy to get into and won't constantly crash your machine. Moving on to work on the kernel KMS bits is much more likely to cause crashes, more difficult to debug, etc., and should only be done after someone is much more comfortable. Probably start by looking into a couple other kernel device drivers, that work with simpler hardware, just to get familiar with kernel development.

[Drago]

kirillkh and others> The basic inescapable fact is you won't be able to achieve anything useful in the 3D driver development world without deep knowledge of either OpenGL or Direct3D. As a driver developer, you fully implement the OpenGL API, so you should know it more or less fully!

Marek, is "Addison-Wesley OpenGL SuperBible 4th Edition" enough?