VIA OpenChrome KMS Support Might Be Revived With Mainline Ambitions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VIA OpenChrome KMS Support Might Be Revived With Mainline Ambitions

While it's becoming increasingly harder to find VIA x86 hardware out in the wild and it's been a long while since last writing anything about VIA x86 Linux support, an independent developer is hoping to revive the OpenChrome VIA kernel mode-setting driver and ideally wants to see it mainlined in the Linux kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VIA-KMS-Revival

[Adarion]

Maybe not in the wild to be found, but surely with me. I still have a couple of these boards; mainly CLE 266 and CN 700. Not that I really saw much of a bright future for these boards GPU wise, but if any progress happens it's welcome. Especially since this is not yet another announcement from VIA to do something (and then nothing happens for the next 5 years until they announce again to do KMS) - but from a community dev.
Iirc. later models of the OLPC also switched from Geode LX to some VIA design, so maybe some more units would benefit from that.


I probably repeat myself but VIA really missed a great chance. They were about the first (let aside Transmeta) to have a low power, cool, SFF HTPC format solution in the x86 market. Not strong numbercrunchers, but, considering the helper-ASICs, enough power for daily jobs, HTPC and media centers. But without GPU support it was doomed to fail.
They could have had a corner in the market with a lot of fans (carpc, htpc, small servers and so on). But now there is ARM with lower power (but horrible GPU situation) and from "above" intel's NUC stuff and AMD's G-Series, Kabinis and whatsnot. All with low power, more computing power, much more GPU power (AMD) and a freedom driver stack that works.

[Azrael5]

Maybe not in the wild to be found, but surely with me. I still have a couple of these boards; mainly CLE 266 and CN 700. Not that I really saw much of a bright future for these boards GPU wise, but if any progress happens it's welcome. Especially since this is not yet another announcement from VIA to do something (and then nothing happens for the next 5 years until they announce again to do KMS) - but from a community dev.
Iirc. later models of the OLPC also switched from Geode LX to some VIA design, so maybe some more units would benefit from that.


I probably repeat myself but VIA really missed a great chance. They were about the first (let aside Transmeta) to have a low power, cool, SFF HTPC format solution in the x86 market. Not strong numbercrunchers, but, considering the helper-ASICs, enough power for daily jobs, HTPC and media centers. But without GPU support it was doomed to fail.
They could have had a corner in the market with a lot of fans (carpc, htpc, small servers and so on). But now there is ARM with lower power (but horrible GPU situation) and from "above" intel's NUC stuff and AMD's G-Series, Kabinis and whatsnot. All with low power, more computing power, much more GPU power (AMD) and a freedom driver stack that works.

I agree ,VIA missed a great opportunity. Nowdays x86 has begun its decline. In the middle of 2 thound years (2005-2007) VIA was a great producer of technological solutions (I think for example to PT880 chipset and other good chipsets as vt8261 never used), to establish itself as leader. In my opinion the big mistake was to not promote pt880 vt8261 match. One of the most sold motherboard in the story of mainboards has been 4coredual-sata... and it's not a case. Other mistake was to not understand the necessity to promote own motherboards in the market. Now it's late. Currently I use both 4coredual-sata2 and pt88bspro provided by pt880 pro ultra chipsert.... good solution for AGP although poorly supported on bios or technology so to take advantages from ram or hard drives.