Nouveau Companion 36
TiNDC: So who is working on what now? Which task will be tackled next?
Marcheu: I really want nv10 and nv30 gallium both going, so I'll be working on that where my help is needed. After that I'll go for an nv50 as you said.
TiNDC: Now, the Xorg room at FOSDEM isn't only about Nouveau, it's a place were Xorg hackers meet too. So anything interesting coming out of the talks you had with other Xorg projects?
Marcheu: Yeah, the most interesting thing is learning from other's experiments (things like what software architectures work or don't, what solutions are fast or slow...). It can save you a heap of time. I'm not interested in trying every possible solution, since that requires implementing many prototypes which are a waste of time (for example with the TTM or swap buffers implementations). I also exchanged ideas with Michael Meeuwisse (the Project VGA guy) about how we could have shaders compiled as FPGA in real time. That would surely allow very fast shader execution, and dynamically allocating as many gates as possible to whatever is the current use for the card. I think that's one way the Open{VGA,Graphics} cards can have an edge over existing graphics solutions.
TiNDC: Rumors have it that you were not the only Nouveau developer at FOSDEM. So what did you discuss?
Marcheu: Food, beer, and vegetarianism (malc0 and ahuillet are respectively vegetarian and half-vegetarian :). More importantly, I could meet ahuillet, benkai, malc0 and p0g in person, which is very nice (and I hope they think the same about me ;-). Even though we do regular development on the same piece of code, we had never met. The nice thing about those events is we can meet in person and discuss non-technical stuff. When it comes to conferences, I don't think the technical side is the most prevalent, since it can also happen online before or after the event. But the social side can only happen when you meet in person.
TiNDC: Since around December we have been talking about releasing a "2D only" driver as version 1.0. Did you come to a consensus here?
Marcheu: There is a consensus that we have to stabilize the interfaces before. I think Randr1.2 by default and moving mode-setting into the kernel is going to happen quickly now. TTM might take a little more time, depending on how we implement it.
TiNDC: Phoronix was there too, did you meet Mr. Larabel?
Marcheu: Yup, although we didn't have much time to go into much discussions sadly. This year, FOSDEM gathered a lot of very nice X.Org people, so discussions couldn't go into much detail with all of them. I hope I'll be able to attend XDC, so that we can meet again.
TiNDC: A propos Phoronix: How was the donated hardware distributed?
Marcheu: It was not only Phoronix's hardware, but also donations from individuals. Although my usual travel stuff (laptop + clothes + toothbrush) did fit in my backpack, there was just too much hardware, and I ended up taking a travel bag for the hardware only. Thanks a lot to all donators! FWIW, malc0 got an nv4, nv11, nv20, nv40. ahuillet got an nv30gl. I didn't know p0g was coming until I was in Brussels (he took us somehow by surprise), so I didn't have the occasion to bring anything for him specifically. I still have one motherboard+CPU and one CPU left (from Phoronix), I'll probably split those between pmdata and ahuillet, but pmdata still needs to make his mind about that. Or maybe we could run a game between them where the first one to get gears going gets the stuff ;-)
TiNDC: So you lucky ones, come forward and tell us what you are doing with this donation. What kind of Nouveau work do you intend to tackle now?
ahuillet: The NV30GL I got is the most powerful graphics card I've ever touched. No kidding, I was previously stuck at NV28. I will use it to understand shader-based cards - which for now are pure theory to me - by doing 3D work. I hope to start it in April.