Intel Drops Mode-Setting Rework Patch Bomb

[eugeni_dodonov]

Intel Open Source Team isn´t so OPEN...

You are all putting the work on your codebase so others can't benefit of it.

So once again it came to gallium vs non-gallium battle... I kinda don't have much more to say about it that I haven't already said before - we do not intend to work on Gallium because it does not seems the best way to write 3d driver to us. And I honestly don't think there is any advantage of throwing away the i965 driver that works, just for the sake of rewriting it from scratch with gallium backend.

However - all the code is open, all the documentation on how the hardware works is already available up to the Ivy Bridge generation GPUs, so nothing prevents someone from simple writing a i965g driver again. Please, feel free to do so - this is all open-source!

[entropy]

So once again it came to gallium vs non-gallium battle... I kinda don't have much more to say about it that I haven't already said before - we do not intend to work on Gallium because it does not seems the best way to write 3d driver to us.

Hi Eugeni,

is it possible to point me to your post(ings) about the details
why "it does not seems the best way to write 3d driver"?
This sounds interesting.

[smitty3268]

So once again it came to gallium vs non-gallium battle... I kinda don't have much more to say about it that I haven't already said before - we do not intend to work on Gallium because it does not seems the best way to write 3d driver to us. And I honestly don't think there is any advantage of throwing away the i965 driver that works, just for the sake of rewriting it from scratch with gallium backend.

However - all the code is open, all the documentation on how the hardware works is already available up to the Ivy Bridge generation GPUs, so nothing prevents someone from simple writing a i965g driver again. Please, feel free to do so - this is all open-source!

Well, to be honest, the idea behind Gallium is to create 1 general codebase that everyone shares, so I don't think anyone would argue too much that it is a superior way of writing a driver, compared to writing one from scratch entirely for your own hardware.

The point of Gallium is to reduce labor for hardware that lacks the resources that Intel can put out.

From that point of view, it is unfortunate that Intel's work doesn't benefit other hardware as much as it could. As someone using the r600g driver, that directly includes myself.

However, from an Intel POV the most important thing is your own driver, and I can understand that even if I don't particularly like it.

Though if you did have Gallium support, you'd already have support for certain things (like OpenCL, among others) that your driver currently doesn't have. So it's not entirely a 1-way street.

[DeepDayze]

Yes, the problem with ARM is that it is too low performance.
POWER and SPARC may be more powerful but they're mostly in servers, I don't see them in desktops or laptops these days. Also, they probably very expensive.
MIPS, I don't know.

Also the problem is with Intel being too closed with the x86 and instruction set, architecture, microarachitecture, FSB, QPI, DMI, chipsets, etc.

POWER is used in IBM RS6000 series and are powerful chips...these should be quite suited for the high end deslktops and laptops. If I remember correctly IBM once had reference boards for Power that are in a desktop formfactor.

[AlbertP]

The problem here is of course Microsoft. Windows does not yet support PowerPC. The Linux desktop market is of course too small to invest in special hardware for it.

About hardware being closed, I don't care about that if my hardware works with open-source software. And Intel hardware does that.

[entropy]

The problem here is of course Microsoft. Windows does not yet support PowerPC. The Linux desktop market is of course too small to invest in special hardware for it.

About hardware being closed, I don't care about that if my hardware works with open-source software. And Intel hardware does that.

Didn't PowerPC effectively died years ago with Apples departure from PPC?
IBM Power != PowerPC

[deanjo]

Didn't PowerPC effectively died years ago with Apples departure from PPC?
IBM Power != PowerPC

Well PowerPC was a variant of the POWER architecture and is still in use in quite a few military applications but as time moves on those systems are being upgraded to other power variants for the most part.