Domain: openchrome.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to openchrome.org.
Comments · 22
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VIA aren't really one of the biggest video makers
By current units sold market share VIA is small. My understanding is that it's roughly 40% Intel, 30% NVIDIA, 20% AMD and everyone else is crammed into the remainder 10% (that's total shipments of both desktops and platforms, discrete and integrated cards). (Rummages around web) Here's a link to GPU units sold in the second and third quarters of 2007. It looks like VIA sold almost 3 times less than ATI (but they seem to be on an upward progression).
It's the timing that makes this more interesting because Intel have pushed so much work on their open source drivers they are now the easiest "current" GPUs to get going on systems like Linux. Intel have done this by hiring engineers to work on Linux AND releasing specs which is kinda a double whammy. If this turns out to be the only way companies can achieve a similar smooth out of the box operation on FOSS OSes it's not going to cheap for others. It's also interesting that AMD had also taken big steps in specs and drivers direction before this move by VIA. Some would argue VIA's hand has been forced into this if they wish to remain relevant in the FOSS playground. Others point out that this is a process that can only be started by a willing company.
This is a brave play by VIA but there are more challenges to come. The next question is what they do with regard to the OpenChrome and Unichrome drivers and how to integrate the work they've done into the xorg development process. Judging from their Linux kernel integration it looks doable so long as VIA have some help.
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Re:Unichrome Pro support
Even with the released documentation, we also need a good leader like Harald Welte to bring together the OpenChrome and UniChrome developers to work on the same codebase. Right now the split effort is really wasteful.
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Re:Just about time - now for the other solutions
I'm running a CN400 on Debian etch. I had the same problems with ubuntu, but then I switched to plain old Debian + the latest openchrome driver, and the problem pretty much went away. I do still get the occasional freeze during rewinding in MythTV, but my average uptime is on the order of three or four months. Have you got the latest SVN checkout of the openchrome library?
This tutorial should work on ubuntu too:
http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Compiling+the+source+code+on+DebianMy main annoyance is the fact that I use TV-Out almost exclusively (it's a MythTV box), and the OS driver doesn't seem to be able to correctly sync interlaced video. Sometimes it syncs on the odd 50Hz interlaced frames instead of the full 25Hz full-screen refresh (it's a PAL system). Unfortunately, after a brief scan of these new docs, I can't see anything that would indicate an odd-even frame timer, and I don't know that any of it is applicable to the CN400
:-( -
VIA to (finally) Open their specAre they opening up their specs with this and allowing real DRI support, or keeping it proprietary. They're opening their Spec.
They've announced around 1~1.5 month ago that they were going to join the open-source fest of Intel and ATI.
At first, due to the lack of ouput, some called bluff and though VIA only pulled a PR stunt.
But recently VIA finally released huge chunks of code under GPLv2, and thus opensource project like openchrome and unichrome will definitely get a boost.
Specially since the VIA openbook is more based on classical VIA platform (instead of, say, an Isaiah with either their newest chrome chipset with hardware H264 decode [the one for which they where hiring opensource talents] or with that nVidia integrated solution as world's cheapest Vista Premium platform) I think it could benefit from full opensource support very soon.
We need to pay close attention to the future development of the VIA opensource drivers. -
Leverage existing projects
I sure hope they get in contact with the folks at the openChrome Project. They've developed a very capable drive for the VIA Unichrome embedded video chipset, which is used on most of their boards nowadays. It'd be good to see some collaboration on this front.
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Were are speaking about HARDWARE H264
Browse the mythtv lists and you will find many h.264 on linux users, I actually watched h.264 yesterday on my linux box.
All this reports of h264 on linux are H264 played back on the CPU (using mplayer's ffmpeg library).
A normal mid- to hi- range CPU on a normal or small form factor motherboard.
What the parent was hoping for was support in Linux for *HARDWARE* assisted decode, the H264 decompression being handled in some hardware chip, either a dedicated chip (as it was the case back in the beginnings of MPEG2/DVD and DXR3/EM8300 chips) or using a graphic card that has hardware H264 acceleration, and coupling this with a cheap low power CPU on an embed motherboard (Mini- to Nano- ITX board).
The current problem is that the decoding function on VIA Chrome serie is only partially implemented (MPEG1/2 only for some older models, none of the MPEG4 that some chip offer function is available on Linux).
As the next Chrome 400 serie will probably handle h264 in hardware, if good opensource drivers are developed for it, it's going to please Linux users who might be interested into building HTPC solution based on cheap low power MiniITX boards (probably a Issaiah + Chrome 440 combo from VIA).
This is also good news for all the asian maker of small harddisk set top box, as often they base their product on MiniITX boards. -
Re:Open Video Drivers
Whoops, not nVidia, S3. There are open OpenChrome drivers, but they can't get at the best features like full OpenGL and alpha-blending HW.
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Re:The fine print
I can't find any indication that this is supported by DRI drivers.
Only in Linux as I understand it. There has been a few questions in the xorg@ mailing list about these chipsets and the general consensus is that the 3D portion is not likely to be implemented in BSD in the immediate future.
FYI, here is the DRI Wiki page dealing with Unichromes and such. You'd have to read it in conjunction with man 4x via to know it isn't just the CLE266 chipset it's referring to.
There's also the OpenChrome project here for more information about this chipset's 3D support, particularly this page which suggests a certain version of the Mesa source is required.
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Re:The fine print
I can't find any indication that this is supported by DRI drivers.
Only in Linux as I understand it. There has been a few questions in the xorg@ mailing list about these chipsets and the general consensus is that the 3D portion is not likely to be implemented in BSD in the immediate future.
FYI, here is the DRI Wiki page dealing with Unichromes and such. You'd have to read it in conjunction with man 4x via to know it isn't just the CLE266 chipset it's referring to.
There's also the OpenChrome project here for more information about this chipset's 3D support, particularly this page which suggests a certain version of the Mesa source is required.
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Re:useless suggestion
All you have to do is look at the openchrome project to see the benefit of oss drivers. They have no support from VIA, [...]
The OpenChrome source is based on open source code provided by VIA. Says so right on their web site.
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Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Re:Unanswered Question.
The OpenChrome project may support DeltaChrome for AGP and GammaChrome, Chrome S25 & Chrome S27 for PCI Express one day.
I'm vaguely following progress and here are the useful / relevant posts so far.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000038.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000043.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2005-November/000048.html
and
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-March/000821.html
are relevant to DeltaChrome products
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000648.html
http://wiki.openchrome.org/pipermail/openchrome-us ers/2006-February/000649.html
talk about all the non-integrated S3 Chrome products.
Until then I'm stuck with my 256MB Radion 9250 for which we may one day get XVMC (yay MythTV)
http://airlied.livejournal.com/17114.html
and for which we have open source 3D drivers that apparently don't perform that well,
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=6482
but that can change.
Although that sounds a bit negative I love these cards, they're cheap and drive my desktop at 2560 x 1024 flawlessly, in Linux or Windows and the OS drivers seem very reliable, my only complaint would be the lack of a second DVI port and the slightly undersized heat-sink sapphire permanently glued onto the GPU, even with that I'm happy enough that I plan to build my next system around one using the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 and some dual core Athlon 64.
If / when the OpenChrome project supports the standalone GPUs I'll finally have an alternative to the undeniably ageing R200 RV280 chip. -
Unichrome
My understanding was that Unichrome was a VIA chipset. I happen to have one in one of my little Epia machines, and the DRI etc do in fact work (either with the provided drivers from VIA's website, or from the openchrome project). They are, of course, a bit buggy, and some of the newer-gen chipsets still have issues (we have some at work) which are only currently rectified in the X.org CVS builds.
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Re:Good
What have you tried? I have an Epia system with a Unichrome Pro and got it working with the Openchrome driver. Have you tried that yet?
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Re:PVR
The openchrome drivers support XvMC for hardware MPEG decoding.
It's the MPEG4 part that doesn't have opensource drivers, but my SP8000E plays divx on the plain old CPU with 60-70% idle. (mplayer and Xv output) -
What part of "silent" don't you understandI just don't get uber-powerful media center PCs that have fans, and are therefore not silent.
I can understand the need for lots of processing power, disk I/O bandwidth, and fast drives (distinguishing between disk peak and sustained transfer rates), and that this generally results in extensive heat production, and thus the need for cooling.
But, such a device really belongs in a separate room -- a geek would put one in his server rack.
It might be convenient that it could also provide a convenient UI, with TV output, rather like a TV studio feed monitor, but it's not the sort of thing I want in my media room because of the noise. I'd only accept it if I was desperate and couldn't also afford a front end unit, charged solely with display.
The problem is that everyone focuses on the processor-intensive backend functionality, and does not produce a seperate frontend unit.
MythTV addresses this very issue architecturally, but trying to build a silent Myth frontend remains difficult: MPEG2 decoding, particularly at HD resolutions taxes the CPU, and H/W MPEG2 decoders generally lack Linux support usually due to the absense of documentation without NDA. An exception to this is the work poineerd by David George and later taken up by Ivor Hewett of the OpenChrome project.
OpenChrome serves as a fork of unichrome development for the Via Unichrome® CLE266 and Unichrome Pro® CN400 northbidges: the CLE266 contains a "crippled" MPEG2 decoder that is good to SD resolutions, and the CN400 contains an MPEG2 decoder good to HD resolutions (and a bit beyond) and an MPEG4 "accellerator". Readers will recall that the original unichrome drivers were based on reverse engineering of Via's binary-only drivers. I'm not certain, but I think that Via finally opened their own drivers, with the exception of MPEG2 and MPEG4 hooks. These drivers replaced the reverse engineered unichrome drivers, which now lack any MPEG2 or MPEG4 support... except for Ivor's Openchrome work.
The practical upshot of all this is that one can obtain low power Eden C3 CPUs on motherboards with CN400 northbridges that require little (one fansink putting out 14 to 20 dBa of noise on the 1.0 GHz nanoITX board) or no (800 MHz nanoITX) board. The CN400 is also available on some Socket370 motherboards (made known to me thanks to a long thread here with one "evilpiper"), so that one could use a fanless P III or C3 CPU if one wanted.
To be fair, "networked" DVD players exist which can do the same thing, but (a) they all rely on a UPnP host (I'm not sure of the state of UPnP support on Linux), (b) aren't as flexible as a MythTV frontend, and (c) probably won't render anything better than 480p without all sorts of DRM.
So, when I see the latest "media PC" article describing some uberpowerful system with a zillion (zillion, adj.: 1. many. 2. more than zero in the context of a media PC's fans) fans, I ask myself, "Yeah, but what about the silent part in the media room?"
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Re:HD Myth on a Via nano-ITX with CN400Or you can visit the ffmpeg/xine/mplayer project, and read the mailing lists to see what hardware others are using for HDTV playback.
I did.
That's where I got the notion that only a noisy 2.x GHz Intel or AMD proc, with all the associated cooling problems was the only S/W only solution for HD MPEG2 decoding. And H/W-assisted solutions were not supported by open source drivers, for which I had a preference.
I don't know what you're talking about, as far as "build a mobo".
I thought that would be obvious from context. If you throw a bunch of CPU part numbers and specs at me, it sure looks like you think I will build a system around a particular processor, that is, design and build the motherboard from scratch. I suppose I could google for motherboards with particularly interesting processors, but that strikes me as an ass-backwards way of finding an integrated, quiet, system capable of rendering HD MPEG2 video.
Instead, I googled for "slient H/W MPEG2" or some such, and found Via's offerings. I then found the hdmythtv.us site (which no longer exsts) which extolled a Via-based mini-ITX Commell board, employing a CN400.
You can just swap the CPU in your nanoITX if you like.
Are you sure? I know of no Intel or AMD chips in that form factor. Of course, that doesn't meean they don't exist. As you can tell, I don't follow every little CPU variant from the major manufacturers.
The bottom line is that the Via Eden processor with CN400 northbridge looked as the most likely capable of meeting my requirements, and it comes damn close. Even ignoring the nanoITX form-factor, and accepting a bigger mini-ITX or even micro-ATX form factor, all the other options that were easy to assemble involved systems requiring fans, some arguably quite noisy (by people who had done so); or expensive heatpipe solutions (I had actually considered a HushPC system at one point, until I read that even a speedy P4 could not decode HD MPEG2 in real time). Actual success reported with the CN400 on hdmythtv.us was the clincher for me to like the CN400 northbridge.
The system isn't quite as stable as I'd like -- I do see the occasional dropped frame. I'm told Via's binary drivers are better than Ivor Hewett's openchrome effort, but I prefer to support the open source effort. Then again, I haven't optimized the O/S: I slapped a full FC3 install on it, with all the default services, as a first try, to avoid dependency hell.
The bottom line was that reported real-time HD success on a CN400 in a mini-ITX board weighed far more heavily in my decision than anecdotes of what "should be" fast enough. As always, YMMV.
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HD Myth on a Via nano-ITX with CN400I've ben putting together a mythfrontend on a Via nano-ITX board in a Silverstone LC08 case.
What attracted me to this platform was the CN400 H/W MPEG2 decoder chip it includes that is capable of deciding HD MPEG2 resolutions (up to 1080i) -- xine plays 1080i on this platform with the 1.0 GHz CPU about 30% idle.
Of course, this is fairly bleeding edge, and there are the occasional dropped frames. Support for the CN400 comes from the openchrome project, which also supports dri/drm, and xine hooks for the resulting xxmc accelleration that takes advantage of the CN400.
It isn't quite fanless -- there is a processor fansink that puts out around 14 dbA. I'm told the 800 Mhz version of the same mobo is fanless, and once I get this stable, will likely spend the $$$ to try one.