Experimental Code Published For Virtual CRTCs

[dfx.]

this work looks unbelievable awesome, i hope devs will squeeze all the potential it has to offer.

but why those things still called "CRT Controllers" ? are they even have something to do with CRT monitors these days other then deprecated analogue outputs ? and they do support all kinds of outputs, right ?

[curaga]

It'd also be useful to create X servers with virtual CRTCs and expose them via a VNC or RDP server. Great for headless machines. Getting them to start X and create a proper framebuffer without any monitors attached is somewhat painful.

Xvnc and Xrdp have been doing this for years? Or do you mean servers with a gpu, but no screen?

[agd5f]

this work looks unbelievable awesome, i hope devs will squeeze all the potential it has to offer.

but why those things still called "CRT Controllers" ? are they even have something to do with CRT monitors these days other then deprecated analogue outputs ? and they do support all kinds of outputs, right ?

CRTC = display controller. The "CRT" part is just a legacy of the fact that they used to drive CRTs.

[rohcQaH]

Xvnc and Xrdp have been doing this for years? Or do you mean servers with a gpu, but no screen?

Yes, I was talking about a GPU accelerated X server. Xvnc is the next best thing, but software rendering is slow; even more if your CPU is busy with vnc compression.

[PreferLinux]

You already can, it's called Xinerama. Last I checked there were some problems when combining Xinerama with compositing, but if you turn compositing off, you'll have 3d support on both monitors, at the expense of some performance issues for windows spanning multiple displays.

Of course you could use CRTCs to render everything on one GPU, then forward the framebuffer to the secondard GPU for display. But then what's the point of the second GPU? Are you running out of connectors on your primary GPU?

I've looked for stuff about Xinerama with 3D, but couldn't find much. I'll have another look.

Yes, I'm running three monitors on NVIDIA cards, which only support two monitors each.

[dfx.]

CRTC = display controller. The "CRT" part is just a legacy of the fact that they used to drive CRTs.

so, as i suspected, this term is obsolete and misleading :(
too bad that with whole not-looking-back approach in OSS this kind of thing isn't updated.

even term "display controller" is wrong since CRTC is a subset of VDC which is more like a "video card before the age of video cards". thing for generating simple analogue video signal without any real processing power.
nowadays, GPU and output logic are completely separated, no ? and the display, like monitor or projector, has its own quite complex hardware for interpreting digital signal.

as i understand, there is no unanimity in naming those parts but i would suggest calling display video input logic as "display controller" and video card output logic as "output controller", especially since there are many different kinds of outputs these days even on a single card, like there can be several RAMDACs for driving S-video/Composite and analogue pins on DVI and TMDS module for generating digital signal in same DVI ports and HDMI.

[locovaca]

so, as i suspected, this term is obsolete and misleading
too bad that with whole not-looking-back approach in OSS this kind of thing isn't updated.

even term "display controller" is wrong since CRTC is a subset of VDC which is more like a "video card before the age of video cards". thing for generating simple analogue video signal without any real processing power.
nowadays, GPU and output logic are completely separated, no ? and the display, like monitor or projector, has its own quite complex hardware for interpreting digital signal.

as i understand, there is no unanimity in naming those parts but i would suggest calling display video input logic as "display controller" and video card output logic as "output controller", especially since there are many different kinds of outputs these days even on a single card, like there can be several RAMDACs for driving S-video/Composite and analogue pins on DVI and TMDS module for generating digital signal in same DVI ports and HDMI.

Where can I sign your petition to change the "tar" name since it generally does not deal with tapes any longer? I assume you have one of those going since your panties are in a bind over this.

[russofris]

Where can I sign your petition to change the "tar" name since it generally does not deal with tapes any longer? I assume you have one of those going since your panties are in a bind over this.

Trying to remember the last time I tar'ed something to tape... I think it was approximately 1994 to a rebranded Exabyte 8mm drive from my SGI Indigo.

[agd5f]

so, as i suspected, this term is obsolete and misleading
too bad that with whole not-looking-back approach in OSS this kind of thing isn't updated.

even term "display controller" is wrong since CRTC is a subset of VDC which is more like a "video card before the age of video cards". thing for generating simple analogue video signal without any real processing power.
nowadays, GPU and output logic are completely separated, no ? and the display, like monitor or projector, has its own quite complex hardware for interpreting digital signal.

as i understand, there is no unanimity in naming those parts but i would suggest calling display video input logic as "display controller" and video card output logic as "output controller", especially since there are many different kinds of outputs these days even on a single card, like there can be several RAMDACs for driving S-video/Composite and analogue pins on DVI and TMDS module for generating digital signal in same DVI ports and HDMI.

I GPU is basically a collection if independent engines (display, 3D, video, etc.) tied together by a memory controller. The display hardware works independently of the drawing engine. See my blog post on radeon display hardware:
http://www.botchco.com/agd5f/?p=51

[dfx.]

Where can I sign your petition to change the "tar" name since it generally does not deal with tapes any longer? I assume you have one of those going since your panties are in a bind over this.

tar is mainly an archiving format and an utility for it. storage for it changed, format didn't.
but output controller on video card not only capable of driving both analogue and digital signals but also doing so at different timing and in different formats of those at the same time. even its analogue part capable of giving signal to much more than just old-ass CRT. everything about it changed. it just different hardware, controlled by much different software and that software should be named accordingly.
so, go and kindly fuck yourself.

I GPU is basically a collection if independent engines (display, 3D, video, etc.) tied together by a memory controller. The display hardware works independently of the drawing engine. See my blog post on radeon display hardware:
http://www.botchco.com/agd5f/?p=51

which is exactly my point. and this is why i suggest to rename CRTC (in scope of OSS) in a way that it would be clear that it's completely separated from drawing and computing part of the card (as i understand, classical CRTCs where pretty much the main components of unaccelerated graphical hardware) and is capable of providing graphical output in a plethora of ways.