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NVidia, SGI, and VA Linux Working on OpenGL
Milkman Ken writes "I just received an email from NVidia's Dave Schmenck
about this press release about VA Linux, NVidia, and SGI
collaborating on a 100% OpenGL 1.2-compliant graphics subsystem
for Linux.
According to the press release, this graphics subsystem
should make OpenGL apps as fast or faster than they are currently
in Windows. They're going to be demoing it during LinuxWorld
in Feburary.
"
Certified GL implementations have been around for YEARS actually. XiGs even does hardware acceleration these days. If someone is waiting for a sign to release Maya, then this nvidia announcement isn't it.
If VA wanted to start selling serious CAD workstations they could start bundling XiG's GL Xserver TOMORROW.
You do if you want Carmack to help tweak your driver.
If someone is looking for Oxygen support, this annoucement is the wrong place.
SGI and VA Linux both have shown their dedication to Linux and Open Source. But why are they getting nVidia in on the act. The now you see it, now you don't game that nVidia played on the Linux and XFree community of obfuscating source code doesn't seem like acts of a company that cares to assist in the next big "breakthrough for the Linux market." The fact that nVidia had to toot their own horn on this press release to get it into Slashdot furthers my impression they are just out to make an extra buck. Where is it in writting that they aren't prepaired to just go back to playing dirty business if they actually had to do real work to make money off the Linux community?
Non-smargles can't have that information!
I tend to disagree with you on the SGI part. I believe IRIX is here to stay. So many years have been invested in tweaking IRIX, they won't give it up anytime soon at least. Linux just will never be able to beat IRIX on their MIPS based workstations. Most all of the SGI user base if perfectly content with this. However, I think they would like to switch the whole damn Intel division to Linux, as opposed to Microsoft Windows NT. *That* is their interest in Linux.
Any respectable programming system has two video cards/monitors.
S3 released the specs on their savage3d, 4, 2k cards????? url's?
more like 2.5 MB/seconds (yeah that dot is where i intended it to be ... though in theory up to 8 MB i think ) /sec (theoretical) :-))
AGP 4x is ~1 GB
AGP 2x is 532 MB/sec (same as above)
AGP 1x is 266 MB/sec (again)
PCI is 133 MB/sec (you guessed it
I don't know too much about Berlin but I'd guess (and hope) that the API would be a hell of a lot eaiser and nicer than X's
Hopefully with the mention of va linux that does not mean raster and mandrake. That duo puts out more bloated code than my institutions.
It does work, but it doesn't render everything correctly. P Projective textures are rendered incorrectly if you are using nVidia cards. 3dfx cards, however, work properly. The *really* shitty thing about 3dfx cards is the small texture size (256x256), but at least they work.
Where am I going to find room for a wall and wall socket inside my computer?
TinyGL Fabrice Bellard - December 05th 1998, 15:36 EST TinyGL is a free implementation of a subset of OpenGL. It is very small (about 40kb) and very fast, especially for texture mapping. It supports displays with 16 and 8 bit depths. It is mainly intended for games and embedded applications. http://apps.freshmeat.net/homepage/912890171/ http://www-stud.enst.fr/~bellard/TinyGL.html
Gee, some braindead Win95 user brags about enormous Win95 uptimes, then somebody points out a particularly stupid and relevant deficiency of said operating system, which then gets moderated down as flamebait. Good to know that the good ole boys on Microsoft's astroturf team are working Slashdot. Perhaps we need another negative moderation category: "The Truth Hurts"?
Just a thought.
What does MOTAS stand for?
I've done all of the above with females, and some of it with males, but what's a MOTAS? Is it a kind of donkey? If so, I haven't done that. Yet.
cLiCk
Woohoo, catching up to the 90s! Let's party!
E.
Next up: Voice recognition software!
I also have a win95 box that runs a series of National Instruments LabVIEW VI's to take data in my lab. It's a Gateway PPro 200 w/128MB RAM running the factory install of Win95, LabVIEW 4.1, and reading 64 channels of pressure info.. I'll probably move to Red Hat (National Instrument's supported distro) if I ever have problems with this machine...
Of course I also have a DELL PII 450 w/128MB RAM running NT.. What a piece of garbage!!! It crashes if I try to run even the simplest LabVIEW routine and the FlowMap software for our PIV system.. Linux is not an option in this case, as the FlowMap software is Windows only, and I can't afford to lose the PIV system.
Nah. Matrox currently has the best linux hardware. Matrox G400 MAX. Nice. Jon Carmack likes 'em.
here
Ponder a Matrox Card, too. They're currently the nicest on linux. Get a G400 MAX.
The reason D3D is faster in UT is the fault of the game coders(its still an excellent game, just heavily favored towards the glide API), and not the driver authors(nvidia im assuming in this case). Its a well known fact UT(and even original Unreal) is not up to par
You must really like high foreheads :-)
Natalie is young, shapely, and also has a funny accent in Star Wars, and everyone knows men always go for the girl with the foreign accent (possibly to maximise genetic diversity of offspring...)
BeOS is free as in it won't cost you any money. Jean Louis Gassee has kept the source closed to everyone but Be employees.
Actually most cards (Matrox, nVidia) are driver/software limited right now. With the DRI coming RSN this should improve. -AX
Your pathetic meager mind makes me sick!
Fix your damned quote!!!!!
Thanks. HE Who controls the past controls the future. HE Who controls the present controls the past. - George Orwell, "1984", 1948 If you want a picture of the future,
The proof is the patch that MS released for this very "issue."
I got it when I used to run win95 to log simple experimental data on the parallel port.
win95 can run for a while if you install it, strip it down, and then don't install any drivers or extra software.
Something that I believe a lot of people miss. I'm not sure if you've missed it or not, but anyway.... Open source software doesn't have to be free! It doesn't even have to be freely redistributable. Open source just means that anyone who buys the software can read or modify the source code.
You don't like the way this feature works? Change it. You want to see if the software is doing Sneaking Things? Look.
I believe that most Open Source software projects right now are free. But they don't have to be. I think that until more people are willing to spend money to support the development of Free Software, we'll continue to see mainly commercial software.
I'd like to know a) Would he accept this in principle I mean cetification. b) How much would it take? I am very willing to contribute some $ As much as i paid for my TNT2.
Yes, friends, the same people that brought us Marxism and the failed concept of scientific determinism have once again deemed it necessary to intrude into our lives with the socialist OpenGL API. It is not at all surprising that the slobbering liberals who worship at the throne of the Linux operating system have decided to line up in support of this horrendous, ungodly mess. The liberals are beside themselves with their unwavering support for OpenGL. And why not? As an API it embodies their quest to enslave our children and topple capitalism forever.
It is well-known in all technical circles that Microsoft's Direct3D technology is the only moral choice when one is searching for an accelerated 3D graphics API. It is a wholesome toolkit that stands head and shoulders over OpenGL. Since it comes from Microsoft, developers can sleep well at night, knowing that they are in the capable hands of a large, Godly, purely capitalistic American corporation. But when one looks at OpenGL, the gut instinct is to wretch with revulsion. The "Open" part of the name is very telling; it smacks of the same pseudo-intellectual "information sharing" that the open source Communists love to worship.
When shameless liberals like John Carmack openly endorse OpenGL and urge the rest of the developer community to openly defy capitalism and shun Direct3D, they have committed an atrocity. Defiance of Microsoft is indeed a crime against humanity, for if one defies Microsoft, one defies capitalism; it is clear that a defiance of capitalism is in fact an endorsement of communism. This, my friends, cannot and will not be allowed in a decent, God-fearing society. It is well-known that capitalism is God's economic model. No others shall be even remotely considered.
So when you look at OpenGL, I advise you to keep all of this in mind, friends. Can you openly spit in the face of Microsoft and the noble Bill Gates without asking questions about the ultimate destination of your soul? The road to hell is paved with OpenGL developers. But to those of you who may have experimented with the "dark side", it may be of some solace for you to learn that it's not too late. You can still turn back. You still have control over your eternal destiny.
But don't wait too long, friends. Because sooner or later, it will be too late.
But just browsing through the threads I have noticed that a lot of people seem to believe that GL == Games.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the first time I saw anything GL was at a CAD demonstration.
And it kicked major assage too.
Who cares about Q3 when I have a job to do?
There is actually a driver for the
Terratec ews64xl for Linux.
you can find it at:
http://www.anime.net/~sam9407
The codec is supported by the cs4232 kernel
driver, but you need to use isapnp to get it
to work.
HTH
SGI is currently sueing Nvidia for patent infringement?
if that link actually works. look at what VA linux is claiming to represent.
Except Xfree 3.x is about to go the way of the dodo...
Umm... sorry, it wasn't windows instability that drove me to linux. It was the fact that I wanted unix on my machines, and back in '93 linux started to come along really nicely.
/Helge
I'd rather see that games didn't come to linux, because imho, many gamers lack the spirit and technical knowledge required to appreciate a good unix system (clone in linux' case). And remember, Linus' reason for developing linux was that he wanted a better "unix" than Minix, and couldn't afford a commercial alternative (being a student). Later on he moved towards "world domination" (which imho is idiotic, because UNIX isn't about office desktops), and that's too bad.
I have a "wintendo" for games, playing music and such, a 386 for really old games, and my beloved linux box for _serious_ work. I don't want people moving to linux because of games, because they will eventually (and are already so) demand fundamental changes to linux which isn't adding to it's productive value. Hot 3d graphics to play quake3 is just an example (and yes, I know some want it for serious work, but after reading the posts on this one it seems most people are just quake horny). If you just want linux for playing games or being 3l33+, stay in windows. If you want it because you want UNIX, you're quite welcome.
Some may think I'm elitistic when I say I don't want windows people moving to Linux if they don't want it for the right reason, but that's the way I see it. As I wrote above, most users aren't skilled enough to appreciate "raw" UNIX or Linux, and therefore will demand simplifications which are not in line with what linux (or UNIX) is all about, namely being a technically advanced and powerful workstation and server platform. Learn how to play the game, or stay away.
If "conformance" is that important to you then you're not going to be running consumer grade cards. You'll be the sort that's already being covered by XiG.
Otherwise, you're prime concerns will likely be price and/or openness. It's not clear whether or not either of those will be served by VA's little project.
What DRUGS are you on? Win95 stability is a joke. Even NT has it's problems but it's not nearly as bad as '95 is.
I'm sick of all the abstraction in Linux. Get rid of X, get rid of all the layers of cruft around this otherwise beautiful kernel. Get rid of portability. Make a standard API for everything and only allow other APIs to run on top of it. Have all native applications interact directly with the API which interacts directly with the drivers. Don't keep losing binary compatibility in glibc and stop making all the extraneous libraries. Bandwidth is cheap, statically link in imlib.
Epic is going to make it's next game in D3D, which will result in another bad, unfinished port for linux users.
look to id for real OGL support, and a working linux version of their game.
XiG already BEAT them to it. If you want commercial, hardware accelerated OpenGL, you can get it from XiG today. It's also on the way from Metrolink. I'm not sure how to characterize SciTech's project.
http://www.unrealtournament.net/shock/index2.htm UT Linux Distribution (400A) ftp://ftp.gtinteractive.com/pub/games/ut/linux/UT- Linux-400A.tar.gz http://www.lokigames.com/press/archive.php3?120219 99 http://www.lokigames.com/products/quake3/
UT is faster in D3D mode for me. No wonder D3D has become pretty damn popular.
Actually, the matrox glx drivers are being worked on by Carmack and should be in a decent state at this point.
If you're willing to pay, you can get support for the Savage 4 or Rage 128.
It's easy:
"Linux support" does not necessarily mean "Open Source"
But after years of waiting, an almost failing XFree project, I'm glad to get ANYthing 3d-like on my Linux box.
And XFree/DRI will be open source, so you have the choice.
yes, and this is an absolute nonsense-driver. it's just there to keep people silent. it is so unaccelerated that it actually hurts when you compare with Windows.
the real driver probably will never be open source, because gfx vendors are afraid of others stealing their hardware trade secrets.
I'm growing increasingly sceptical of SGI's Linux "support" at this point. It's been over 6 months since they announced they are officially supporting Linux as a platform for their panel, and as best as I can tell, they've made absolutely zero effort to get 3d acceleration out for it.
The platform is still the coolest thing I've ever bought, and well worth the money, but it's a bit disheartning not to be able to run even xscreensavergl at more than 3fps, let alone real 3d.
Man, NOTHING is better than sex, except maybe more/better sex.
based solely on the suject. Thank you.
Given these rather unlikely comparisons with sex, perhaps it's time for a poll to check how many /. readers actually know what they're talking about.
This could be something like the first few questions of a purity test - "How far have you been with a MOTAS:
Well, maybe that's a bit too crude.
Yeah, and I have a NULL renderer which is EVEN faster. The games I run with that just BLOW ME AWAY, except that I can't actually see them of course.
D3D and OpenGL technology are not different enough to cause speed problems, D3D drivers are only faster if the manufacturer spent (wasted) more time on them. Since OpenGL is standard, stable and easily extensible as well as being multi-platform and time-tested, why would ANYONE choose D3D? For the same reason they chose DirectInput (and in some cases even the terrible DirectPlay) because it came from Bill. That's a pretty stupid reason.
So, Olie and Zowie will eventually be able to run SoftImage3D on their own Linux box?
Okie-dokie!
I understand that the whole Natalie Portman thing is just a running troll ... but can someone tell me what is so hot about Natalie Portman... Maybe she's just not my type... but I really don't think she's that hot.
Now...if you want to talk about Tyra Banks... there is one hot little minky.
Haven't you been paying attention?
Smurfs ARE blue smargles!!!
Many years ago, in the War for the Great Oak, all the smargles were wiped out except a small band of blue smargles. They made a vow never to fight among themselves again, and to show the world that they had changed, they decided to be known as the Smurfs.
Rumor has it that a race of mutant smargles known as the Snorks also survived the War for the Great Oak.
I know you probably don't want to do that but hardware companies are trying their damndest to get everything nice and expensive so that everyone has to upgrade.
Explain to me how raising prices causes people to upgrade.
Linux is an open source copyrighted redistributable non-stealable operating system.
Or so you think.....
The fact is that linux's copyright is wholly owned by Linus Torvalds because he requires contributors to make their patches available to him and him **only** in the public domain.
As a direct result of this Linus is seretly making **millions** off the sale of linux code to Microsoft. Why do you think that Win2k is more stable and faster? Because Linus sold them Linux for a rumored **10 million**(*). Also as a result of this sale Paul Allen hired Linus to "work" at Transmeta. In fact he did no work and is paid to have sex with really hot Swedish women.
*10 million yen that is
It's a little late for BeOS, don't you think?. Truck on over to BeNews and see Be's other press release. Be is leaving the desktop market to concentrate on Internet appliances.
It's Linux only. It's too tightly integrated with the Linux architecture (I'm part of the team). You will be dazzled; I guarantee it.
> the real driver probably will never be open source, because gfx vendors are afraid of others
> stealing their hardware trade secrets.
Why are the accelerated 3D drivers for Matrox cards, ATI cards, and Voodoo cards open source then? Those manufacturers obviously aren't worried about others "stealing their hardware trade secrets."
duh. What do you think that agreement with nvidia was all about. SGI is going to sell Quadro based nvidia boxes.
Oh hush with those sour grapes of yours! The more the merrier don't you think? The market will decide in the long run. As the man said ``build it and they will come''. Do your best and there is no need to hang your head in shame to anyone.
Software OpenGL would be too slow for anything useful.
Screw 3dfx! Their cards have horrid visual quality. I salute their support for linux, but I knock their crappy cards. Now, if you want to run some mega high res modes, with at least 85hz refresh rate, then get yourself a Matrox G400 Max. Hook that badboy up to a ViewSonic P815, and you can fits lots of code on the screen at once ;-)
Most people are missing the point. I don't think SGI is interested in making games work better under Linux. They reason they are doing this is probably to provide a stable, qualified environment to run high end modeling, CFD, and other CAD "workstation" class applications. Before any of these apps can be sold to users, the system needs to be able to handle it.
Don't forget that SGI owns Alias|Wavefront and would probably like to see less reliance on MS.
it's xfree86 4.0 with the DRI and Mesa. just go to www.xfree86.org for the development version, which is currently at 3.9.16, and help out.
SO WHAT?? Do you really need the sources of of OGL to play Quake III or UT?? As long as it's fast and isn't buggy, it's allright for me, I will be the last one to go sightseeing in the sources - have no need to understand how OGL works internally, or what the spec's of a card are. If it'll be buggy and slow, it's a whole other case, but lets first see before killing it. I think opensource may be good for a lot of cases, but it is a big step for some companies, just to reveal all their secrets they have been protecting for soo long - and probably have put a lot of mony in it. First step: release their product for linux... Second step: Opensource/Intensive support I can't remeber anyone kicking corel's ass for not releasing the Corel WP 8 sources....
Not to mention support for other binary platforms like PPC, Alpha or Sparc.
You're not supposed to code in xlib in directly. If that's your problem then you are creating it for yourself artificially.
last time i checked quake3 and Unreal Tourny both worked on linux.
Tell a Windows gamer that Carmack has been working on the Linux G400 drivers and see their reaction.
This is far too much of a burden, especially for the target user of Windows. Even for Unix users, it's too much of a burden or rather an annoyance.
Remember, the 'stability' of Windows is what drove us to Linux. And it's not like we're workaholics or masochists. Many of us like Linux specifically because it doesn't break itself or give you a false sense of security.
'kinda working' is worse than not working at all in terms of complexity.
NVidia has hitched their cart to the Linux bandwagon, and have gotten a lot of press because of it, and arguably have increased their stock price because of it. But, they have still not been cooperative on simple things, like releasing the AGP/DMA interface info. I honestly believe they WANT to work with the Linux community, and I think they will have a good solution when XF86 4.0 / DRI is available. They just need to cut through the bureaucracy and work more openly with the community. RELEASE THE SPECS! Then we can have another option besides Matrox and 3Dfx.
By making XFree86 4.0 extremely modular, it will be possible to make closed-source drivers for it - and effectively make high-performance drivers for linux, don't forget the 3D market is ferocious and losing a single second of competition could mean the failure of the company..
Look at XMMS - its iqLinux driver (plugin) is closed-source, and acts as a plugin for the popular UNIX multi-format player -- and the driver sure DOES sound good !!
I've had the opposite experience; I've found that GL/glide games are faster and more stable then D3D.
That's all I can say.
:)
Yet another reason to choose Linux over Windrowse.
I might be mistaken... But wouldn't this be redundant with the current work being done on mesa and dri? Or is this just an opengl implementation that will use dri to access the video cards? Another version of opengl for linux IS great,.. but replacing DRI would be very bad... A lot of work and money has gone into the technology and I would hate to see it unused. But with BOTH mesa and a second opengl lib,.. we have more of a choice in opengl librarys.. (shrug) We will see I guess.
If this is a closed source proprietary solution, we should complain to all the companies involved (VA Linux, SGI, and nVidia) and tell them we want open source drivers and we want them to work with the existing XFree and DRI software.
Some possibilities:
1) It will be closed source. Why start a new Open Source when they could invest in Mesa?
2) It will be expensive, well more than I want to pay anyway. I can't see this being aimed at home or games users.
3) It may mean that nVidia do not intend to support XFree86 4 and DRI. Why do 'their own thing' otherwise??
Of course I hope I'm completely wrong!
> I have heard however that they have not fully open-sourced the drivers
:)
The code has been put through a C preprocessor. This basically means that instead of this:
begin_3d_render()
{
ACTIVATE_DMA_ENGINE();
RENDER_MODE = DIRECT_FLAG|DMA_FLAG;
}
you get something like this:
begin_3d_render()
{
do { *(char *)(__d1+0x000f4233) += 0x4f;
*(char *)(__d2+0x000002dd) = 0;
} while (*(char *)(__d1+0x00002fdd) != 0x3f);
*(int *)(__d1+0x00000dff) == 0x000f0020;
which is not "open source" according to www.opensource.org, since no one really knows what it means, and no one outside of the company can easily change or fix it.
> At this current time, 3Dfx has the best Linux support, but Nvidia has the best hardware (when
> running a "compatible" OS).
So 3Dfx currently has the best Linux hardware
> The question is, should we buy Nvidia products for Linux if this current release of Open GL with
> SGI is closed source?
Not if you want to run it on anything besides a x86 machine.
Not if you don't want to depend upon a single company for all bug fixes.
Not if you don't want one company to decide whether or not you will be able to use it in the future. (by offering upgrades or not)
Not if you like to be able to do security audits of code which runs with full privileges to do anything to your machine's hardware.
This is just an advertizing press release for XFree86 4.0 and the DRI (direct rendering infrastructure). If you want to get the development version, just go to www.xfree86.org and pick up the 3.9.16 sources.
I would be very surprised indeed if SGI released their sample implementatioin of OpenGL under a free license.
--
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
To reiterate, a P100 and SVGA 1Meg video memory under Windows or OS/2 has better OpenGL performance than a K6-400 with
3Dnow, a GB Exxtreme and 8Megs of video memory on Linux.
}
Oh come on. You expect me to believe that a non-3D-accelerated _anything_ is going to beat
Anyway, what's a GB Exxtreme? I have a Graphics Blaster TNT, and it works fine under FreeBSD using the GLX port (ports/graphics/glx).
--
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Well, it seems similar enough in topic so here goes.
l y_game_here) in acceleration.
I'm currently pondering getting either a TNT2 or voodoo(2|3) for my system, but as far as Linux support I'm not sure what would be best. I'd like to have:
a) The ability to accelerate in a window, any programs that link to or compile with Mesa.
b) Run (Quake|Hexen|Myth|Insert_any_spiffy_but_binary_on
So would the TNT2 cause an issue? Are quake2/quake3/unreal runnable on a non-3dfx, or do they _have_ to have Glide?
Yeah. With XFree 4.0/DRI, which NVidia explicitly mentions in their driver README as being the solution to their current driver's performance problems.
Some people have said that this current SGI/NVidia/VA effort won't be open-source. From what I've seen, nearly all of SGI's Linux efforts have been open-source, NVidia was the first to release GPL drivers for their cards, and I don't think VA ever releases anything that isn't open source. I expect that this current effort is EXTREMELY closely tied in with Precision Insight's DRI effort.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
What makes you so certain the nVidia drivers will be closed? Their current set of drivers are available free for download, even in source form. And they claim that they are working with Precision Insight, DRI, and integrating with XFree86.
Doesn't sound too terribly closed to me.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
What's even worse is that the top of the line Voodoo is supposed to come with it's own AC Adapter . It has to be plugged directly into a wall socket!!!
Actually, if you check out 3dfx's Voodoo 5 (or 6 - not sure which), it has an *external* DC power adapter.
Have you even looked at their web-site recently?? Their drivers have been released under the XFree license, The source is available. The GLX module works *really* well...can't wait for their DRI version in XFREE4.0...read NVIDIA's linux faq
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
Why would you want an ISA card? The very speed of the bus would rule out a "decent" card. You could not do anywhere near modern speed with a ISA card.
If you had an old computer with only ISA slots, then you would obvoiusly need an ISA card. But it would not be more than a basic video card.
And then what? Run them on a underpowered $200 Internet Appliance?
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
none Yet.
While we're on the subject of R5 today....
IIRC, Be was planning hardware-accelerated OpenGL in R5. Whether that will make the final release or not, I don't know. Be doesn't like to make announcements like that until they're right on top of their release date.
Given that, Be seems to be closer to NVIDIA than other chipset manufacturers. I wouldn't be surprised if Be was using TNT and/or GeForce as reference chips for HW GL development. So we may just get our wish.
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
This sig intentionally left blank.
Please pardon this stupid question.
Is OpenGL opensourced?
If not, is there an opensource project working on an OpenGL clone?
Thanks in advance.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Does anyone out there have examples to back me up or disprove me?
:)
Well, take Netscape, for example... there's some messy code that didn't really help the project. They wound up doing it again from scratch (if I understand correctly) and they lost a year or so.
Ok so now I'm contradicting myself from my post below
----
I had an old Asus motherboard that couldn't run an AGP TNT card due to the inordinate amount of power required... on the other hand, though, hasn't someone come out with a video card that actually has a hard-drive style power connector on it?
----
For me, this looks like an attempt to work around
the need to put out documentation.
While Matrox released enough docu to make GLX
on the G-400 full-functional, Nvidia put out
sources that don't make full use of the cards and
no documentation to improve it.
Just bought a G-400, for exactly this reason.
As SGI donated all its GLX code, its clear that all this new closed-source OpenGL will still work with open GLX protocol.
So it _will_ work with XFree.
Andrew
Funny, but the Utah-GLX driver for the Matrix G400 gets close to the same performance that the windows version does, while the TNT driver gets about 1/3 the performance. Do you still think that it is related to the X server?
Even the ATI Rage Pro driver performs better than the TNT driver does. That's truly sad.
Just once I'd like to see the press release FOLLOW the code release, rather than the other way around. Just once I'd like to believe that the companies involved REALLY care about the product, and not about the marketing hype they get from it.
This is obviously a plan for VA to develop 3D workstations. Most likely proprietary. Maya has already been ported to Linux, but it won't be released until there is a true (certified) OpenGL system (at least that's what I read on several web sites).
Why SGI isn't doing this themselves is beyond me, but they're a streaming media company now I guess. Go figure.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
They act like Mesa & 3DFX haven't provided this since March 14, 1997 (according to Mesa's Versions file). I am glad that there was one mention of Mesa (by VA, who I also noticed hosts Mesa's web site), otherwise I'd be more irate. But 3DFX has been supporting Linux through glide for some time.
I believe the only reason Mesa isn't officially compliant is because of SGI licensing issues, and that it does pass SGI's own compliance test.
It's a little Celeron 300A (did like the o/c'in, didn't bother trying very hard), BH6, 32MB of RAM, and a 3.2 GB harddrive that is about three months older than the computer itself (I had it in my old computer). It single boots linux.
Oh yeah, it has an old STB Velocity128 (a Riva128 card.. I wish NVidia would just give us the damn spec). Any, it still provides plenty of power for my small monitor :)
Oh yeah, I did tailor the hardware to run Linux, didn't need to do much, but all my hardware is compatible, works fine, and I haven't had any bad experiences with this box.
Jeff
Thanks for that, you helped make my decision for hardware, I am going to send a "sorry I changed my mind" letter to Nvidia (along the lines of the Advocacy How-to) and get either a 3Dfx or Matrox card.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I was planning on buying a Nvidia product since their open-sourcing of their drivers. I have heard however that they have not fully open-sourced the drivers (somthing about being put through a renderer... can't remember for certain.)
I had totally written off 3Dfx, but now they are open-source too.
At this current time, 3Dfx has the best Linux support, but Nvidia has the best hardware (when running a "compatible" OS).
The question is, should we buy Nvidia products for Linux if this current release of Open GL with SGI is closed source? It probably will be, and if SGI is in on it I would expect screaming performance. I think that there is an up an coming generation of Linux users (those who have just changed from windows) who will pick the hardware based on overall performance and not how much the product supports Linux in the long run. (I purchase Creative products almost exclusively due to this).
So, if this driver offers great Q3A (et al) support and its closed should we use it?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Ok, I don't really care at this point if the drivers is closed or open source. All I wanted were fast drivers. I didn't care if they were a little buggy, had rendering artifacts, or didn't work with most games. And most importantly, I really don't give a damn if they are 100% opengl compliant. But why the hell has it taken them this much time to make a fast driver for Quake3?
I use to believe that waiting for DRI and XFree86 4.0 excuse, but with ATI, Matrox, and 3DFX all having direct access without a finished XFree86 4.0, it really seems like bullshit to me. Really, I think most people who want to play Q3 on linux with their TNT's wouldn't mind much if it required root access.
Now I just don't believe them. They were simply dumb to have crappy drivers out for six months with no updates, while their competitors linux drivers smoked 'em, even with much worse hardware.
(Ohh yea, I would guess anyone who would care about 100% compliancy has a $1000+ card. You really shouldn't expect that from a consumer card like the TNT or GeForce.)
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
The voodoo3's are faster, don't require root access, have access to more games (glide only games), have more specs available (the WARP engine still doesn't have all specs released),and I would guess are more stable (seeing as how they have been around longer, and don't require root access). I know the G400 must have better image quility, but that doesn't make up for the other stuff.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
NVIDIA had 6 months, and there drivers are still shitty. Even the pretty much new ATI drivers are better than theirs.
The ATI drivers may require all types of hoops to jump through to get working, and may be unstable (and, then again, maybe not, I havent used them), but they are fast, which is what you really want from a TNT.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
conspicuosity all depends on what you're looking for, and I don't think it's at all clear that this is going to be a closed solution.
Pessimism is bad for your lifespan; besides, if the OSS community can come up with something faster, great. If not, also great. I'll take a closed fast 3d subsystem over an slower open one.
I think you're right about it being possible in software, but I personally am more interested in having it happen with the latest and greatest in 3d hardware.
Like perhaps the Simple Directmedia Layer?
:).
;).
It's cross-platform, and it's what LokiSoft uses to port all their games - after all Sam Latinga (a programmer for LokiSoft) wrote a good chunk of it
I believe it's under the LGPL, but I could be mistaken. Look on Freshmeat, the LokiSoft site, or your fav search engine to find it
Well, there is the issue of certification. IIRC, the way SGI certifies an OpenGL implementation involves a hefty conformance testing suite, and the seal of approval is specific to the hardware and binaries (no recompilation!) involved. Possibly a few developers are uneasy at the thought of users rebuilding their libGL/libGLU objects? :P
/. once posted that the Mesa implementation is actually faster than SGI's (when hardware acceleration is taken out of the picture) as far as texture-mapping is concerned, which would be a win for Linux gaming. (Conversely, a followup posting mentioned SGI's implementation is probably better optimized for rendering huge polysets anyway).
Aside from that, I think it would be a real shame if they were to ignore the excellent codebase found in Mesa. It's all but certain that the Mesa code is better designed. Someone here on
iSKUNK!
It sounds to me that like it will use the DRI infrastructure in XFree 4.0, but provide an OpenGL-certified drop-in replacement for the (Mesa) default libGL.so and libGLU.so that is used for the Open-Source drivers, and presumably a DRI-compliant XFree4.0 driver module and linux kernel module, which could all be in the form of closed-source replacement files.
There was a move to standardise an ABI for GL applications on linux a short time ago, so that commercial offerings would be possible within the DRI/Mesa/GL framework.
Link:
reality.sgi.com/opengl/linux/linuxbase.html
Choice of masters is not freedom.
I'll bite.
:-( Don't see the reason as an OpenGL renderer was released for it)
The processor and mobo in mine has been the same since I believe early 1997. (like January early)
VS440FX mobo with PPro 180 o/c to 200 (big f'ing deal)
I still have the original hard drive, albeit now as a secondary.
The last upgrade I did was I believe last summer when I bought 32 additional megs of RAM to double my complement because Solaris was swapping ALL THE TIME. It still could use more though, especially when running GNOME + Enlightenment (sawmill doesn't work?! so I am using icewm)
Here's the stuff I really need to get though:
* AMD K6-III @ 400 MHZ with mobo and 64 MB SDRAM
* Logitech Wingman Formula Force wheel
And I think that will be sufficient to let me enjoy Grand Prix Legends (a bloody Windows game, the petition to port it failed
I will mention that my anemic computer still probably runs Quake 3 Arena better than the Nintendo 64 could
If it weren't for games, IMHO the need to upgrade would be much less.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
My video system is a Stealth 3d 2000 Pro ("upgraded" from Stealth 3D 2000 -- what a waste of $$$) and a Voodoo Graphics. So that's moldy as well.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
The impression that is given is you all would rather take sloppy open source implementation over closed source productive and functional code. The issue here is not whether the source code is going to be available, but that linux is finally shaping up to be a serious platform for 3d applications. Releasing the source is a Good Thing, but don't forget what we are really gaining.
Gee, could it possibly be that the reason OpenGL is slow under Linux is that XFree86 3.x is using a non optimal path from the application to the screen? Could it be that nVidia has identified this as a problem and is working towards a solution because they want to insure that their OpenGL performance under Linux is top notch?
Without patches, Windows 9x will die after about 48 days because of the timer rollover.
cpeterso
looks like we will have to pay for this support hopefully they will atleast give us a DRI driver for XFree 4.0 but i think this will be a closed-source drivers
Nope, sorry. I did that and even disabled the CDROM drivers via the system manager, checked the config.sys, autoexec.bat, and all the windows setup files via sysedit and commented out all info regarding the CDROM, even ventured in to the registry. Still crashed. The only thing that worked was going in to CMOS and disabling that IDE bus. I stand by my words: windows sucks.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
Yeah, I feel the same way. I used to be obsessed with getting the very latest-and greatest, bleeding-edge graphics hardware. I'd spend whatever it took to get the card that had the best numbers that week. But of course I always got royally screwed when it came to drivers, especially for Linux. Either there would be no XF86 server, or crappy Windoze drivers, or no Linux support at all.
Feh! I'm sick and tired of it. Graphic card manufacturers, listen up: from now on, I'm buying whichever card has the best Linux support, PERIOD.
Now that there are good games for Linux, and more coming all the time, this is of critical importance to me. When there were no games for Linux, I could get by with half-assed X support. But now Linux support is going to be my first and most important criteria for selecting a graphics card, and I don't care if your speed numbers are supposedly a little faster. I'd rather have a card that *works* and only gets 59 frames per second instead of 61.
The most ridiculous and incomprehensible thing is that video card manufacturers have an opportunity to greatly increase their sales, for FREE, by doing nothing more than giving out information that does no one ANY good except people who want to make their product work better. They could spend less on engineering, more on software support, and increase profits. Talk about the Pointy-Haired Legions!
Huh? I believe nVidia is one of best Opengl/
Linux supporters! I'm running a TNT2 chip with
Linux right now; Quake III is great.
I spoke with a few of the tech reps from nVidia
at SIGGRAPH last year and they were all excited
about the whole SGI/Linux/nVidia package.
They did release Xfree86 mods to support their
TNT chips, no? That doesn't sound like "apathy"
to me!
--- witty signature
With games like Quake III/II and Unreal Tournament native in linux, I think OpenGL has a good chance of becoming the de-facto for 3D rendering using hardware acceleration.
OpenGL used to be real popular on Windows, but M$ just keep pushing DirectX. And quite frankly, they've succeeded. Most games employ DirectX, with total disregard for OpenGL support.
I play Q3 and Unreal Tournament on linux and find it amazing. The stability and speed of linux + quality games = unmatched fun.
(July 20, 1999) SGI and NVIDIA Form Strategic Alliance, Settle Patent Litigation
"Yeah well
On a twisted note, the Mesa domain is hosted by VA Linux.
The article does not mention anything about which license this is going to be released under, weither it is going to be based on Xfree 4/DRI/Mesa or if they are going to roll their own implementation.
:)), so they might be wary of allowing their competitors access to the driver source.
Since it looks like crystal ball time, here's my take on it:
Nvidia wants to sell hardware. Rolling their own could be expensive, especially considering that the Linux market is a lot smaller than the current Windows market where the volume would justify the cost. The GeForce is currently the performance leader in the consumer 3D market (which is kind of hot these days
VA wants to sell preinstalled servers and desktops. This deal will allow them to offer low/mid-range CAD/3D graphics workstations. With closed drivers, they could gain an edge compared to the other Linux hardware companies out there. It is however questionable if the volume is big enough to justify the development cost, and if it is worth the risk of pissing off the open source community by using a proprietary 3D implementation.
SGI is currently investing heavy in Linux. It seems like their plan is to gradually phase out IRIX on their low and medium-end desktops and servers, and maybe even on their high-end hardware once they have ported down the needed features from IRIX. They have one huge problem, though. By doing this they might be perceived as "just another Linux hardware vendor". Since their core market is in 3D workstations and servers, they might want to run the proprietary line on at least the 3D drivers/infrastructure to give their products a competitive edge. This does not fit well with them donating GLX and funding/helping Precision Insight with the 3D elements of XFree 4, though.
My guess is that this is going to be Mesa/GLX/DRI based. That does not guarantee source code. All that software is under X/BSD/MIT style license, so they could choose to make it binary only.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
They have at least hired Mark Vojkovich, a principal XFree developer, who has made or worked on XAA (the acceleration part of X), Xinerama (multihead), DGA (direct graphics access), Xv (video extension) and most of the drivers. So he alone is very valuable addition to the team.
// Jarno
>>...and you get blasted for bugs, particularly if you leave 6 months between releases as nVidia has.
Actually they've been releasing new snapshots of their updated GLX and XFREE servers lately. They've been hitting the net about every 2-3 weeks.
>>Contrast with nVidia, who currently ship abysmal drivers...
If you take 5 seconds to read the README file that comes with the GLX drivers, you'd realize these drivers are experimental, developer releases that aren't ready for prime time. It even mentions that good 3d support will come in XFree4 and to check out Precision Insight's site for more info on their DRI progress. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure should be bomb. We shall see.
We should all support Nvidia's decision to contribute to Linux development, regardless of whether or not they open source their drivers. We need all the vendor support we can get.
SGI's early funding and engineering assistance was used by PI, in part, to make sure that high end boards, as well as commodity and "rasterization only" boards, could run under the DRI . PI is not as concerned about IHV's using the DRI as we are about encouraging IHV's to make sure their drivers at least cooperate with the DRI. Cooperation in this sense is simply to make sure that whatever they do with a driver will allow, for example, another display to possibly use a DRI driver. It is also important for managing display space and X Server compatibility that whatever driver is present makes use of the appropriate DRI structures that will be integral to XFree86 4.0. Initialization and configuration of graphics boards is also a part of DRI cooperation. If drivers don't at least cooperate with the DRI, then end users will suffer in the long term when they try to get technical support, or upgrade to newer Linux distributions, kernel modules, or GLIBC versions. These same upgrade and support issues will exist in the DRI, but the mechanism for maintaining compatibility with future software will be greatly simplified for end users if they can receive the appropriate versions of all of the software required in a Linux (or other OS) system from their single distribution vendor of choice.
The real question people need to ask is if there will by any royalty fees required from IHV's or end users in order to use OpenGL on Linux. Are we going to see another iteration of the Sun Java scenario? The disturbing part of the press release to me, was the reference to "real OpenGL". This was a very clear message that any independent implementation of the OpenGL API, no matter how well done, would not be "real" unless there was some license executed between the purveyor of the software and SGI. PI would strongly support a royalty free license from SGI to use the OpenGL trademark. We would also strongly support a requirement that the integrity of the trademark be maintained by requiring any users of the trademark to submit to whatever tests were required by the ARB. However, we believe that the open source community should also have some representation on the ARB.
To summarize, there are really two issues: 1) cooperation with the DRI mechanism that will be part of every copy of Linux that uses the industry standard XFree86 4.0 X Server, and 2) OpenGL license and royalty issues. The open source nature of the upcoming SGI/NVIDIA driver is a red herring. The market will provide the business reasons to open the driver source - or not - just as it has done in many other cases. We should be focusing on the real issues.
*DMA*
The reason why the Nvidia driver is butt slow is because they do not support DMA. What's worse, they released obfuscated "resource manager" source releases for linux that can't even compile.
The problem with Nvidia is they want to get publicity without fully commiting. Yes, they have a problem with commitment, and yes they are run by egotistical males.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Have you even looked at their web-site recently?? Their drivers have been released under the XFree license
Yes, I have, and I run them. I have a TNT2 Ultra. I disagree that they run *really* well, though. Compared to NT, they run poor at best. Yes, you can play Quake3, but for the applications I want to run, mainly molecular modelling applications, they are not up to the task. Hopefully that will change with Xfree4.0 We'll see.
Also, the drivers they have released are based on Mesa, which this press release makes no mention of, just that it is a "fully compliant OpenGL 1.2 solution." I bought a TNT2 Ultra based on their releasing the source code. I am disappointed lately in the progress of those drivers, caused mainly by Nvidia's ambivalence. Look at the G200/G400 progress for comparison, by all accounts they are leaps and bounds better than the Nvidia products for Mesa in Linux.
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
You major jackass. what kind of pompous nutball talks about "raw UNIX" or "wintendo" UNIX is not the ultimate OS. The UNIX designers were not gods. A lot of stuff about UNIX sucks! What is this layered crap? Everything including networking in the kenel yet the graphics on the outside! Relience on ancient standards and hundreds of independant libraries! UNIX does have its good points, which is why people still use it. But it was not made of media, the desktop, or for anything but sysadmins. Linux, Sun, SGI have come very far with it, but has had to introduce layers of crap and libraries and hacks to do it. X should not exist. Neither should ESound, Gnome, KDE, ALSA, Mesa, etc. All these should be part of the OS, but had to be grafted on. The second thing I take offense to is your classification of the gamer. By your logic I could say that all Linux users are pompous sysadmins who think that "raw UNIX" make them more manly. gamers are among the most knowledegable of computer users, and many go on to become good programmers. Games drive hardware technology. If it weren't for "silly" things like Quake, Linux would not exist. x86 hardware would be too weak to support a server OS and we would still be looking at a green monitor that beeps at us every few minutes. Everyone who wanted a server would have to pony up $60K to Sun or SGI and the internet would not exist because home computers did not have the power to browse it. And the only application of 3D is not gaming. Believe it or not, programming isn't the only thing that can be done on a computer. There are these people called "artists" who use 3D to make movies, like, oh, I don't know Titanic, Star Wars, Jurrasic Park, Matrix, etc. They also make these things called "commericals" and "billboards" and "magazines" all on a computer! Isn't it mind expanding! If you came out of your basement, maybe you would have heard of them.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sorry, but under REAL 3D operating systems, like windows 98, TNT 2 was the fastest consumer card available. (esp. The hercules TNT 2 Ultra, 175 mhz core, 200MHz memory!) I don't know about Linux, but since linux 3D is still a piece of junk, you can't judge a card or company by it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I think that nVidia's history in OpenGL can be related to Linux in anyway. Linux is still a perehprial market, and even the best Windows OpenGL ICD (The GeForce's) is not implemented in Linux. Sucks, but you can't judge nVidia's OpenGL history by it. Comments like that make it seem as if nVidia doesn't know how to do OpenGL (like 3Dfx, Matrox until recently, and Ati (hmmm, all the manufacturers who released register info to Linux) none of whom have developed good OpenGL drivers. (You may think Matrox's or 3DFxs are good on linux, but try using Windows sometime. The quality of the current matrox drivers are nowhere near that of the nVidia ICD) It also sounds like nVidia doesn't support OpenGL. Not true, nVidia was the first major manufacturer to have a FULL OpenGL ICD (not miniGL like 3dfx). So please refrain from making comments that only make sense to Linux people, but are wrong unless one has a similar linux zealot state of mind.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Alright, so it sounds just great, but I have to ask: How is VA Linux involved in this? They are a Linux reseller who basically build Intel machines and install Linux on them with a decent warranty. They are in no way connected to hardware develeopment, and I doubt that they'll be the only one's distributing the hardware component of this new standard. Sounds like a stretch to keep the run going after their IPO has been forgotten.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Word! Wish I had some moderation points to push this post up. Thanks.
---
I think you are right today, in terms of "THE STANDARD" and the advantage that SGI/MIPS hardware enjoys. But you have to throw price into the mix, and the evolution of both Intel and AMD CPUs and core-logic chipsets. This is really a set of questions:
1. SGI has been loosing $ hand over fist--they make great iron, but for a very limited market (mainly US Government and some movie studios). Doesn't a move toward x86/Linux open new markets for lower-cost machines?
2. How much of an advantage does the SGI/MIPs architecture have over PC hardware in one year? Two years? We will probably looking at CPUs running well over 1GHz, and probably approaching 2GHz toward the middle of this decade. With RDRAM and DDRAM (and very high memory bandwidth), AGP 4X, and the Athlon's EV6 Bus?
3. More important: what will give you more bang for the buck in 1 or 2 years? SGI/MIPS/IRIX or, say, an SGI/VALinux workstation with full OpenGL support for a Quadro, with an optimized memory bus architecture (either Intel i840 or hopefully much better Athlon chipset) running at 1.2GHz?
Prediction: They will call it Mesa from precision insight, to satisfy the lawyers, but it will be more OpenGL than OpenGL, and it will be open sourced.
---
First, thank you for a very informative and gracious reply. If you care about moderator points, which I somehow doubt, you deserve a 5.
Second, I apologize for my ignorant, sweeping conclusions in the above post. I really look forward to enjoying the benefits of your work on the DRI and XFree86 4.0.
Regards,
---
I think the main point was, Linux users want quality and fast drivers: why should we have to pay for drivers that should be provided by the video card provider? I don't have to pay for D3D or OpenGL drivers in the Windows world.
Unfortunately getting "direct access" to the 3d card under Linux really isn't standarized at the moment.
You do have a point though.
> VS440FX mobo with PPro 180 o/c to 200 (big f'ing deal)
;-) ;-)
I had the exact same config (w/ 64MB ram), until I upgraded 2 months ago:
2 * $35 cel 366 o/c to 550
2 * $30 heatsink/fan from www.3dfxcool.com
1 *$135 abit bp6 - dual cel board
1 *$300 pc100-128MB
I kept my Voodoo2 and Matrox Millennium 2, since they work fine.
I upgraded cuz Thief was starting to bog down around level 4. The levels are HUGE.
The dual cpu's make compiling a joy.
Cheers
> I like it when I see game developers choose OpenGL over Direct3D in the windows environment
You're not alone. As a 3d game developer, I get slightly depressed when I see other programmers in the industry, "sellout" to using D3D. Non-portable code, bad. Portable code, good.
OpenGL is sure joy to deal with. The spec is very orthogonal and complete.
Let game developers (and publishers) know that you want a OpenGL/Linux port. With enough people petitioning, something might actually be done.
Cheers
- Only mentions what this new "graphics standard" will mean to developers, not users...
- Sounds like it will not be implemented using DRI under XFree86 4.0, but rather talks about "complementing" it.
I wonder if whatever actual software they develop as a result of this new effort will be free, or if developers are supposed to buy it from them? If so, then I'm doubly worried about the effects on users, who might not be ready to pay for what they get for free under Windows.main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Oh, I *think* the latest X server and OpenGL drivers available from NVIDIA (right here, for the surf-impaired or license-ignoring), do indeed work with the GeForce 256. Then again, I don't think they actually benefits from the T&L hardware etc...
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
The announcement lacked technical details. Firstly, it didn't mention in what part of linux is it a subsystem. Is it related to the XFree86 dri? Its mention of multiple monitor support is strange. I've never heard of games using multiple monitors. Could it have been refering to X? BSD was also not mentioned. If the subsystem is open source, would it compile exclusively on linux. The press often describes software being exclusive to linux when it could be compiled on any unix platform.
This is not flaimbait, merely information.
Shortly before releasing the GeForce, SGI was broke up its departments. One of the results of this breaking was that they transferred 50 engineers to Nvidia, some of whom helped write the original OpenGL spec, and some who worked on their best hardware.
This thread to an earlier slashdot story has a post titled "Why Nvidia is doing this..." (sorry, couldn't find direct link) gives a very likely future which we are starting to see more of. SGI's machines are too expensive and are not selling well enough, so do what IBM and Linux have done, migrate away from specialized high end machines.
I share the opinion that SGI and Nvidia are teaming up to make workstations that _destroy_ NT performance based on Open Source Linux. SGI's visual workstations sold very poorly because they were overpriced for the performance their modified NT could give them. Now couple a free operating system with awesome off-the-shelf hardware and you've got a killer workstation for cheap.
And now, I guess VA comes into play because they have the knowledge and experience to really bring hardware and Linux together for maximum performance.
Dave
--------
WWGD? (What Would Goku Do?)
What ever happend to Glide going open source? I heard they did but after that there was silence. With Unreal Tournament being naitivly Glide accelerated (Unreal was written for glide only in the begining), glide would be nice addition to the linux enviroment.
tHx113895 aka tk-421 (why aren't you at your post?)
There's no mention, or indication, anywhere that this will be open source.
Until there's more than a press release from Nvidia, I'll support 3dfx (and Matrox). 3dfx's Linux effort has released specs, open-sourced code, and their 3d cards are better supported/faster.
I thought they were working on making a new graphics library that would be a mix of the best from Open GL and Mesa libraries.
-Ellis of Geeknews.com
Wheee... games. Big Deal. I already have an OS that does that. Windows.
What I don't have is an affordable STABLE OS which runs Alias|Wavefront's Maya software on an Intel platform. At work I use an Octane SE which only crashed once in the last 6 months [and that was due to an hardware failure]. At home I have to use NT.
However with Alias/SGI [ http://www.aliaswavefront.com] moving towards Linux for their product base... proper open gl support is the main remaining hurdle for full ports of graphics software to the linux platform. Linux Maya Renderer and Composer is already gearing up for release, I was talking to two alias engineers at Toronto's Post-Siggraph party who claim the only thing really stopping them from doing a full blown Maya/Designer/etc ports to linux was a lack of a fully complaint Opengl system. Which of course would be coming along eventually but they were not allowed to comment on that aspect of development =). Nice to see things panning out..
Considering SGI is partially backing away from NT and is on the linux bandwagon.... they need to get opengl on linux for their use ASAP.
Houndini's [http://www.sidefx.com] linux port uses Xi's OGL implementation for their display.. since it requires the use of hardware overlay planes. [I was just told that this wasn't the case with newer versions of the software]
Perhaps we'll start seeing some serious Linux graphics applications hitting the market in Siggraph 2000. I can't wait.
Regards,
Oblagon
SGI's GL pipeline is its raison d'etre. If developers stop using it, SGI doesn't exist.
;-). He, a Certified SuperGenius, determines that there is a growing market for Linux-based games, especially graphically intense ones (there is, right? ;-), in which a reinvestment of graphics smarts would really pay off. But, the company's current core competency is deep but not broad: OpenGL, Performer, UNIX, real-time simulation, etc. What would motivate that guy to go to his boss and say, "Hey, we need to start working on this. Linux isn't necessarily there yet, but it will be"?
;-)
I definitely agree and I'll underline it by saying something more general: the reason SGI hasn't died off is because developers continue to use SGI Whatever (be it hardware or software). Remember, the most expensive item in any project is the labor: use the tools that help your developers work fast and well.
This is not about games, this is about taking back/retaining the CAD and visualization markets.
I also agree that this is a big factor but let me put a different spin on it. Say there's a defense contractor who makes his living doing OpenGL programming on government projects (hm, who could he be thinking about
Commitment to standards by the players (or at least some of the players; if there's one, there will be more). We call that risk management: specifically, management of technical and staff risk. "But boss, we already know how to do this part, so we don't have to worry about it. We can concentrate on the new stuff without worrying about our foundation collapsing."
Two points above:
1. It's not just the CAD, etc. market, though that's important.
2. Any technical innovations are good for Linux and the market in general, usually for reasons you didn't expect.
Of course, now I have to shake lose some game development funding....
-- Doctor Bob
According to the press release, this graphics subsystem should make OpenGL apps as fast or faster than they are currently in Windows
That reminds me of Sun's claim that their "hotspot" egine (which they aquired) would be as fast or faster than C++ applications?
The Quadro supports some features that the GeForce does not. The biggest are hardware antialiased points and lines, which is very important for pro CAD use. I don't know for certain whether this is simply a driver issue or if they actually have different hardware, but the simple fact is that the Quadro can do AA lines in hardware, and the GeForce can't. Also, I think there is some tradeoff between speed and image quality, with the GeForce leaning towards speed and the Quadro leaning towards image quality.
I completely agree with the viewpoint that you have. The only question that really remains is: what will a workstation like this cost?
---
rJames.org - illustration
This is awesome! SGI's performance standards backed by VA's $$ on NVidia's hardware! I just can't wait for an accelerated GeForce driver for Linux.
Sounds encouraging - I hope the eventual outcome is an open model on which OS developers can build.
I hope OpenGL gets to be 'the standard' on both Windows and Linux. I like it when I see game developers choose OpenGL over Direct3D in the windows environment, and now if Linux has a officially sactioned version of OpenGL... it may prompt more developers to choose OpenGL (and therefore make games easier to port between Linux and Windows). Now, if someone would just port Need For Speed 4 to Linux... I'd be smilin!
Blender And Linux Fan
Does anyone else find it ironic that the company that makes the video with the absolute WORST 3d in linux is supposedly working on a fully compliant OpenGL subsystem?
I find that hard to believe given their apparent apathy to the current linux market.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Of course the exact same thing can be said about any other manufacturer. You do realize that the first person to produce anything has a stranglehold on the market.
You are pretty much saying that there should be NO producer of Linux 3D hardware, since the first one there will turn the all the others away? I guess Solaris, Irix, *BSD, Linux, Microsoft, etc. wouldn't be around if everyone thought the same as you; we don't need Linux around Microsoft is so big and bad. You pretty much giving up and saying "someone else has a large share of the market, guess we shouldn't put out our x times faster card..."
I really do get what you are trying to say, but all you are really doing is spreading FUD around; and a mighty thick coat of FUD I might add
Here's what I'm wondering. First of all, is this system free for the public, GPL? Or is it an attempt by SGI and a turn-coat VA Linux systems (whose fortunes are built on *AHEM* free software) to commercialize and cash-in on the gamer market? If it's not free (and I doubt it is, gauging by the press release) then I'll be damned to the darkest pits of hell if I ever bother myself about it again.
this is absolutely gay.
People like this are the reason i (usually) browse at threshold 1 or 2.
come on, some one moderate this down.
sig?
Would be really cool and probably not too hard to accomplish... Some really fat OpenGL routines for the media OS... Yummy... Now that it's free(?) and all... :o)
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Will 3DFX be included in this mix up or only nvidia because I have only bought a 3dfx card for it's great support under linux. Now that I bought a VooDoo3 card for it's DRI and great XFree Drivers and ability to play games under linux will everything be swept out from under me. I don't think 3dfx is so evil anymore opensourcing their glide and hardware specs and all but the fact they didn't drop their case against creative gives me a sour taste to my mouth.
-- "I'd rather be dead than cool" -Kurt Cobain
This is one of the greatest things that can happend to Linux. As far as I know there are serveral things Linux doesn't handle as good as Windows, but still - Linux handles all the other things much better. The first thing is the term "User friendly". Some people says that M$ products isn't user friendly since it so instable that it simply is not friendly to the user. That is correct, but what *I* mean with user friendly is, easy enough to make my mother want to run it. Linux isn't. The second thing is drivers. For example, I haven't got my soundcard (Terratec EWS 64XL) working under Linux, which is a bit sad. The third, any one of the most important things is GAMES. Games' speed. The possobility of writing games where drivers for graphic devices exist. This must be improved. This should make more games released for Linux, and that would mean ALOT of people will move on to Linux.
NO! No more "standards." We need to settle on something and OpenGL is a good one to settle on. ESpecially if companies like SGI, Nvidia, and VA or investing in it.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
1) On windows, the chipset manufacturer/cardmanufacturer gets the driverkits from SGI and writes the OpenGL ICD, which actually is the OpenGL subsystem. This is not different on other operating systems. If this driver/subsystem is 1.2 compliant, it will be on windows, linux or whatever operating system they release it on. The OS isn't really important. 2) Due to the crappy design of PC hardware, it's VERY unlikely to see SGI workstation performance on PC hardware. The SGI NT workstations had special hardware which had shared RAM between videochipsets and CPU(s). This made the machines very fast, and is still the main reason SGI workstations are fast. On PC hardware, video hardware is on a separated card, using the AGP bus. It's very slow to read and write data from/to the card's framebuffer for example. It will NEVER be the case that this kind of setup is as fast or 'THE STANDARD' in 3D workstation land. It can for a great deal of purposes, but it will always be outperformed by special tailored hardware by companies as SGI.
:(
It's nice to see large company backing up OpenGL and supporting it. It's however sad they using hype and buzzwords to get attention..
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Actually, from the benchmarks I've seen (check out Anandtech, I think) it seemed pretty clear that there wasn't simply lesser performance in terms of wireframes for the regular Geforce, but they were simply abysmal-- well below much much older cards. Combined with NVDA's explanation that they were disabling certain features in the Geforce, I think it's not too hard to peg this as (primarily) a driver issue. It is not quite clear how they are crippling the consumer level card, but I think their reluctance to issue driver source may suggest worry that open sourced drivers would soon 'fix' their implementation- effectively leaving VERY little performance improvement for that few hundred premium. Tranq
"Oh well its closed source, I'll just wait for someone to write a cheap half assed clone thats a lot slower" Who cares if its opensource? Be happy they are going this far. Take what you can get. I'll use it instantly if its equal/faster than windows.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
do you have proof of this statement? You use good apps on good hardware with good drivers and windows is fine. The system load is not that much, only a spike when it generates a graph. Why is it so hard to believe I can get long uptimes with win95?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What does opening hardware specs have to do with opening software? You want open specs to write better drivers. You want open source to leech from and build something half assed. As for stability we have win95 running on 486's that can stay up practically forever. Its all about the drivers and what software you install. The only reason they get rebooted is to hook up a zip drive and copy some files off. They do data acquisition and control all day.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
win95 always used to lock up when I would drag around some parts while building a VI. It was a k6 166 with 48 meg of ram. After that second lockup I installed NT and its been fine. Uptimes of many months are not uncommon. We use labview for controlling solenoid valves, taking theromcouple readings, and managing mass flow controllers. Just set the amount of run time, come back and your data is there. The win95 box in question is running some ancient 16 bit HP chemstation software. It just keeps going and going....
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Thats autorun looking for something on a cd. It checks every minute or so. Go into control panel and disable it. Its especially noticable with scsi cdroms. BTW my dual celeron 333@500 has NEVER once blue screened or crashed since it was built in september. Its locked up a few times after playing UT, but overclocking is to blame for that.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
In fact its running the original win95 version .950 with no extra drivers, everything straight from the cd. Too bad theres no built in uptime counter.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I'm glad they're doing this. NVidia makes a really, really good card. I'm glad that they're doing something to get back into a market that 3DFX and Matrox have nearly pushed them out of.
kwsNI
Announced back in the fall that they were going to jointly promote Debian in retail stores. Maybe this will be available to the general public as another, professional-workstation, shrinkwrapped version of Debian? that would be rich!
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
now that glide has been opensourced, isn't anything in the works to expand on this open, though a bit outdated currently, API?
Wow... if they can actually get OpenGL under Linux, a lot of people I know will make the switch. But what about the games? With Q3 and Unreal:Tourny being for Windows, what'll be on Linux? I've played Linux versions of Doom, but not Quake or similar titles. But I'm sure someone out there can make the port. Say... if this does happen... Maybe my 80286 will still be useful afterall... WOO HOO!! YEAH YEAH YEAH!! ^_^
The Gray Wolf
My 80286 is like the Bible: I swear by it every night when I try to run something.
No, what I am saying is that if you want hardware accelerated OpenGL in Linux then you should buy one of these two cards because you will be supporting vendors who give out specs.
I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable. I have a Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme. I will have hardware 3D acceleration in Xfree86 4.0, but not having the support now, I am keenly aware of those who won't have it.
What type of graphics chip does it have? Nvidia? The Nvidia OpenGL drivers are horrible and it's all Nvidia's fault for not releasing specs.
To reiterate, a P100 and SVGA 1Meg video memory under Windows or OS/2 has better OpenGL performance than a K6-400 with 3Dnow, a GB Exxtreme and 8Megs of video memory on Linux.
That's fine but writing a super efficient software implementation is not something that 3D graphics hardware companies like SGI or Nvidia are going to care about. I didn't know that software Mesa was so slow but it is simply a problem that most people do not care about due to the cheap hardware accelerators available for $50.
You're right though, one of the hallmarks of Linux is that you can get decent performance out of old hardware but one of the other hallmarks of Linux is that if you don't like something fix it yourself so I suggest that if you really care about a fast software OpenGL implementation that you do it yourself.
While I respect your viewpoint I simply do not think that even the fastest software implementation will come anywhere close to the slowest 3D hardware with reasonable (i.e. not nvidia) drivers.
Running what? An OpenGL screensaver?
Under Linux, you need a specific card to get anything that even comes close. Right now, I have a 3D OpenGL accelerated card, but OpenGL is useless under Linux.
What card do you have? OpenGL on Linux with a 3dfx or Matrox card is pretty good now.
While I think an efficient software implementation is a worthy goal, I don't think it is worth it. A year from now it is going to be virtually impossible to find a 2D only card. Even the integrated graphics on chipsets have decent low end 3D support and with good 3D cards like Matrox G400's available for under $100 I see the trend continuing.
Man I can't wait to see the hyper-rendered wand effects, the photo-realistic snakes swarming out of a cursed fountain, and a glowing, smoking "Elbereth" right under my feet!
Now when I throw a cream pie in the face of Death, I can watch the meringue splatter in real time!
You had better get a real blindfold for the Medusa level with this card!
Huh?
NVidia was the first vendor to release an open-source driver for their cards. While Matrox can be applauded for their spec release, they hid core portions of their specs (Their geometry setup hardware specs) and they took nearly 9 months beyond their promised release date. (Originally September '98, then by Christmas '98, and finally the specs just appeared after no news in mid '99)
Someone else commented that NVidia was a "johnny-come-lately" - More like 3Dfx and ATI are. While 3Dfx had the closed-source Glide long before anyone else, they screwed people over right and left with their NDAs. Darryl Strauss apparently had a working version of Glide for the Alpha at one time - 3Dfx forbade him from releasing it for really stupid marketing/legal reasons. (I don't remember the exact reasons they gave.)
Face it, 3Dfx and ATI wouldn't have become open if they hadn't been forced into it by NVidia. Yes, specs are nice, but full open-source drivers are even nicer.
Someone also mentioned that Nvidia's current drivers were slow because NVidia hadn't released some information. As someone else said, the reason the drivers are slow is because of limitations in the current XFree86 architecture. GLX is wonderful in many ways, but performance-wise it sucks. NVidia even explains this in their driver README files. XFree 4.0 will solve the GLX performance bottlenecks with DRI.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
We'll have to watch what Nvidia does, because they are in kind of a bad situation with thier drivers. They have a gaming board that is extremely fast. A DDR geforce is faster in many, if not all GL tests than a Oxygen GVX1 "professional" card that costs about $350 more. At the same time though, they want "professionals" to buy their Quadro (quattro?) card for ~$800, which is going to be a bigger cash cow than the geforce on a card to card basis. With opensource drivers for both cards, The quadro will only sell based on it's hardware merits and name recognition, rather than also being the only card to have full opengl drivers. If I remember correctly (let me know if I'm wrong) the Quadro has a peak polygon rate of 17M triangles/sec. The current theoretical max on the Geforce is 15M triangles/sec, but realistic peak is 10M. Now, perhaps this will be enough to differentiate the Quadro, but for triple the price? The way that they could "fix" this, (and other cards seem to have done this in the past) would be to simply release a mini-gl driver for games, lacking certain functions that would make the card useful to use in "professional" programs. That means that they either would have to keep the drivers close sourced, or impossible to fix/modify in time before the next generation card hits the market. By the time the new card hits, it doesn't matter if the old one has good GL drivers, because the next generation should offer something useful over the old one.
Personally, I think this is the game they are playing. Develop mesa drivers, but make them fairly hard to understand and don't release Quadro drivers. They can hope that this will delay professional quality drivers for mesa for the geforce and quadro long enough that they can keep ahead of the game. At the same time, release professional quality drivers for the Quadro with a new rendering infistructure that is closed source in some form, and offer this as a solution for Maya and other highend applications. Because your already paying in the thousands for maya, an extra couple hundred for the opengl software that is certified 1.2 compliant probably won't be any skin off thier backs. This way, Nvidia is happy, SGI is happy, the consumer with deep pockets doesn't really care, but the consumer that wants the most out of his "gaming" card that wants it to live to it's full potential might be annoyed.
Why is SGI cooperating here?
Because OpenGL is their baby. SGI's GL pipeline is its raison d'etre. If developers stop using it, SGI doesn't exist. I don't mean game developers, either, I mean developers of real visualization apps (3d packages, CAD, scientific visualization, etc).
Lots of these developers want to extend to cheaper hardware. Lots have NT ports already. SGI's NT workstations tried to capture this market, by using the same GL pipeline, making NT ports of SGI pack. They failed for a number of reasons, including the fact that limiting the market to SGI's NT boxes removes most of the advantages to an NT port of such software.
Now they're focusing on providing this functionality under linux. Why, one might ask? Well, porting IRIX apps to linux, when linux has the same GL pipeline is easier than porting to NT. Developers of 3d apps have shown interest in linux already (Houdini comes to mind - a linux port is apparently in the works). And if these developers stick with OpenGL at the low end, even on non-SGI hardware, SGI will still have a market for high-end GL pipelines (on their own big iron), where they've always been most competent.
This is not about games, this is about taking back/retaining the CAD and visualization markets.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Ok, I can sympathize a bit - they can release whatever they want, or nothing, under any license they choose. But I'm SICK of hearing "it's too complicated for you to understand."
They have the balls to tell the likes of Alan Cox and John Carmack that "it's too complicated for you?!" That's just crap. It's a lie, it's a cop-out, and I'm tired of hearing it.
Binary plugins for XFree will be a very interesting development, and a slippery slope, I think. I DO NOT LIKE the notion of a bug that can't be fixed except by someone who may or may not care.
Ok no more ranting from me tonight.
----
"Excellent Smithers. Soon we'll be able to give away these power-consuming cards to the hapless souls and then charge them through the nose for the electricity! *evil laugh*"
Why, we'll have them eating out of our palms! With free internet access and Quake3 the power industry will be booming in no time! *evil laugh*
Actually, the driver internals are important to *US*. Releasing a binary only driver helps LINUX only. *BSD and so on gain no benefit. Utah-GLX provides drivers for both all of the above. This is a true community effort, and we must rely on others to produce code that is usable by all.
Also, the last closed driver I used worked with only a limited configuration. Will I be able to run this with ANY recent kernel (2.2.* or 2.3.*, and 2.4.* when it comes out), or will I have to wait for updates?
The only reason we ask for source is so that we can maintain the code and perpetuate it. It allows ports to operating systems that haven't had the benefit of huge media hype, and allows interoperability to continue into the forseen future.
Suppose I want to install systems at my work that run Linux, use a TNT-based 3D card, and use OpenGL to display data. I want those systems to benefit from the latest stable kernel development. So I have to RISK that the drivers will someday disappear, when nvidia and/or SGI decide not to continue supporting them.
Then I'll need to make the decision to continue using the older kernel with the driver that works, or upgrade, and switch to a card that has a driver. I'll probably switch to a Matrox at that point, since the driver has source, and *I* can make it work on a newer kernel if I have to.
This is not a hypothetical situation. A lot of people using Linux are using it as a technical solution, and we *DO* care about internals.
It talks to the X server to set up a window to draw 3D objects in, and then allows the hardware to draw directly into that window at the full hardware performance without further communication with the X server.
There are numerous issues to deal with -- and of course you have to deal with the X server when rendering contexts change; but in general you get good performance in multiple 3D windows. It is true that "this doesn't integrate well with 2D operations" if by that you mean "you can't do X windows drawing in a 3D window". I believe that once you tell X windows that it is a 3D window X washes its hands of responsibility for what goes on inside of it; so you have to use OpenGL to do your text rendering and other 2D things.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Note that Nvidia has hit two out of three here. They are actively supporting the port, they are using a quality, open and standard API (openGL), and the thing will be demo'd within a month.
They should be encouraged to open the source completely, for their good and ours, but lets not complain too much about a vendor going out of their way to provide the Linux community with some new high quality options.
There are three reasons I keep win98 on my hard drive. I doubt I am alone in these motivations:
1) The lack of a complete and seemless solution to the "microsoft office" problem (the consulting company I work for effectively requires employees to have access to office and uses all sorts of goofy and poorly considered microsoft extensions).
2) Good game support. The 3d games require a lot of work go get going well under win9x, but they can be gotten to run well on pretty cheap hardware.
3) Support for fun and cheap commodity hardware. Like the $29 scanner I got at CompUSA, or a $99 640x480 digital camera, etc etc. These things are cheap, fun, and typically only include windows drivers, unless some brave soul cobbles together third party drivers.
If Nvidia does what they say they are doing in the press release, then they have gone a long way to removing one of three significant obstacles to eliminating expensive, mediocre, and hard to support software like windows from our desktops.
Bill Kilgallon
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Perhaps all the folks who were predicting Red Hat would become bad corporate citizens after their IPO, and then shifted their predictions of doom and gloom to VA when they announced theirs, will take note of this project.
VA, I applaud you for giving back to the community in such a big way; but I never doubted you would for a second. Thanks, guys.
"This is a breakthrough for the Linux market," stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. "For the first time, developers will have access to a high-performance, fully native Linux graphics platform."
This is a great slap in the face to those who've been working hard on the utah-glx project for the past 9 months. That effort has certainly produced a very fast and capable matrox driver, and the new ati ragepro driver is coming along nicely.
Of course, while there's no mention 'open source' they don't say it won't be either. I would be hopeful because of VA's involvement, except they quote Brian Miles, vp marketing at VA Linux Systems: "We are excited to collaborate with NVIDIA and SGI to help create high performance, standards-compliant products in the Linux workstation space, complementing the work we contribute to the open source community in the Mesa and XFree86 projects."
It's too bad so many people have bought nvidia cards While they do make good hardware, their windowsland reputation as "the thing to get" is completely inappropriate in the context of free software. If you care at all about the principles of open development at all, save your money for more supportive vendors. Matrox was the first to release 3d specs, and their G200/G400 cards are well supported. The staunch ATI and 3Dfx have recently completely reversed their policies and opened development.
I see this as one of the great triumphs of the past year. Until nvidia joins in, we should avoid them like the plague.
Remember when Voodoo owners looked upon owners of the Riva 128 with scorn? Remember when it looked like there was no way Nvidia would ever knock 3dfx from its throne?
Nvidia is the current leader in gaming 3d cards, and it looks like their chances are pretty good to stay that way; But, it's still a very dynamic market, so I don't think they're going to be scoring any death-blows to their competitors yet.
Matrox, ATI, and 3dfx are all quite worthy competitors, so I wouldn't get to worried about Nvidia achieving any kind of Microsoft-like dominance in this market. Furthermore, when you buy a new 3d card, there isn't any downwards compatibility problem like with most software. When I upgraded from my Riva 128 to a TNT, I didn't for a moment think 'Oh, I'd better stay with Nvidia to remain compatible'.
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Actually, SGI and NVIDIA are doing all the OpenGL driver work. VA is working on the XAA driver, not on 3D.
These drivers are not based on DRI. DRI is just one way to access the 3D hardware, and it's not a particularly appropriate way for this type of hardware. But these details are not important to end users - the API and the ABI are what matter to applications, not the driver internals.
Jon Leech
SGI
"My question is; why is SGI persuing a different approach now?"
I don't know the exact approach SGI is pursuing, but all the other approaches are based on hardware. I am hoping that this project will finally give us a decent software based OpenGL for Linux.
Under Windows, OS/2 or BeOS, OpenGL performs satisfactorily with a generic SVGA card with no acceleration. Under Linux, you need a specific card to get anything that even comes close. Right now, I have a 3D OpenGL accelerated card, but OpenGL is useless under Linux.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I've been building systems a long time, and used windows and linux a long time also. What you say has a _small_ kernel of truth, but even if I sound like a Linux zealot: Windows really does suck worse than you're trying to say. It just isn't robust. For instance, my brother has a nice system, top of the line, non buggy hardware and software. His CDROM drive just broke. Windows just couldn't handle that. It sits there frozen trying to access the hard drive every time you click on start, open explorer, or just randomly. That isn't robust. In Linux, it would just time out, and you wouldn't have any more problems. Unix in general and Linux in particular just has a more robust and sound philosophy and architecture. Every operating system can have buggy software etc., but Linux more gracefully recovers or avoids them altogether. In other words, a well configured and lucky windows system can be mostly stable, and an average Linux system is almost always very stable.
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. -Ghandi
A suspicious person (who, me?) might think that the reason nVidia is participating in this effort is so that they can "support linux" _without_ having to release specs for their hardware. Bah.
I have a TNT2 and I like the performance, but I've been burned in the past by unsupported hardware. So, I've made up my mind to only buy hardware with open-source drivers in the future.
The Matrox G400 MAX is looking like the choice for my next machine... (ooo! DualHead!) but maybe nVidia will see the light, open the source, and I'll get a geForce (ooo! T&L!)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
That's a bad situation you paint. But as long as Matrox, ATI, and 3dfx keep their hardware specifications open, it cannot happen.
That's what's great about open source. Even if Matrox gives up on writing drivers, and Precision Insight dries up and blows away, and nVidia forms an alliance with AOL Time Warner, RedHat, and VA Linux, and the trumpets blow, and the four horsemen of the apocrapalypse come thundering out of the clouds...
...it doesn't matter, because we will have source. And John Carmack likes the G400 and is working on the driver. So are a lot of other smart, less famous people. So I'll be able to play Quake III anyway.
(And people who do actual work with OpenGL will be able to do that, too.)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
From what I've been able to gather from a few discussions with NVidia people, the company is divided into (at least) two camps. On one side, you have the engineers, some who like and use Linux, and who think that releasing source and documenting their hardware interface is a Good Thing. On the other, you have the suits and lawyers who cannot stop saying "Mine! Mine!" with regards to their designs.
:-)
That might explain some of the tension you see in their releases & support, and the conflicting messages you sometimes hear from them. On the other hand, I don't know any of this, I'm just guessing. Maybe they just hate all Linux users personally.
Personally, I like NVidia's products. When they take the time to do it right, they seem to have some of the best stuff available for the PC. It appears that sometimes the suits get their claws into things and cause problems, though.
Sadly typical.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Why are the accelerated 3D drivers for Matrox cards, ATI cards, and Voodoo cards open source then?
Even though Matrox was the first to provide usable register information on their 3D hardware, there are still some things missing. Especially the hot part of the G400 - the WARP engine. So even though the 3D hardware manufacturers have gone from "no way in hell" to "ok, here is some register information", they are still afraid of documenting the parts of their hardware that give them that competitive edge. And since Nvidia is king of the hill for the moment, with T&L and all, they are obviously more tight-lipped than the others.
There was a discussion about this on the Utah-GLX dev-list lately.
Start of thread
Most interesting post
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Not only that, but you'll also notice nowhere is it stated that it will be free, either. I was excited until I realized this may be just another accelerated X server product ala MetroX, etc. Lovely...
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
Jerm
Oh, you're not a real doctor, are you?
They have not yet PROVEN anything. Wait for the performance benchmarks before you start spouting the OS bigotry. And I realize that this is flamebait, but I like both OS's for different reasons and purposes....
The Good:
Linux will finally be a platform that game developers may consider. Many professional rendering programs may now be run in a hardware-accelerated fasion. With nVidia leading the way, perhaps other hardware vendors will provide support.
The Bad:
In the interim, nVidia will be the main producer of Linux-accelerated hardware for video/3D. This gives them a good lead on other vendors, which may turn some companies off of the whole Linux thing, "Well, we're so far behind, why bother?".
The Ugly:
The scenario is that nobody else develops Linux drivers. nVidia now has a stranglehold on the Linux video market.
I realize these are WAY off from reality, but they ARE possibilities. If in six months, nVidia is still the only provider of hardware-accelerated video cards for Linux, I'll be really worried.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
what about the work that still needs to be done on nVidia's existing products ? 3D performance with the TNT2 and earlier cards was mediocre last time I checked, and was essentially on hold until XFree 4.0 brings DRI to the table. And last I heard, 3D on the Geforce doesn't exist yet.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Not only that, but you'll also notice nowhere is it stated that it will be free, either. I was excited until I realized this may be just another accelerated X server product ala MetroX, etc. Lovely...
You know I had this type of a problem with various companies screwing me over because they really don't care about me. Then I came to the inescapable conclusion that the only way I will ever get a really nice experience with any hardware product under linux is either one of two options.
1. Buy the machine pre-installed with linux thereby making at least partly sure that the hardware will allow the machine to boot up and get all of the hardware detected in a reasonable manner.
2. Get something that everyone and their mother has and hope that it works for me to.
I know you probably don't want to do that but hardware companies are trying their damndest to get everything nice and expensive so that everyone has to upgrade.
Qestion for all of you how long have you had your current machine unaltered from the time it was built or bought that you are currently using for desktop purposes (ie. not a dedicated server in a closet in a secret room)?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Pessimism is bad for your lifespan; besides, if the OSS community can come up with something faster, great. If not, also great. I'll take a closed fast 3d subsystem over an slower open one.
I doubt that if I wasn't pessimistic about the state of those mushrooms that I saw in the forest a couple of years ago I might not be able to post today.
I have another question does this mean you must have a 3d graphics card to get it to work? I assumed that a great deal of this could be done in software.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
For those who are unaware, nvidia has a poor history relating to OGL already. I hate to see what they would do to a project like this.
Right now nVidia is poorly supporting thier own OGL glx modules for linux.
First they claimed they would open up and provide all necessary knowledge to write good gl modules for thier cards. They lied.
Then finally they were convinced that *some* level of support was required, so they started to write thier own glx modules. They are actually pretty good and the source it provided....
HOWEVER, they are not fostering any development by other teams whatsoever. They dont document how thier hardware works, and other groups have a very difficult time understanding what the hell is going on within the code.
For example you know from the code that someone is playing with register XX, but you cant actually figure out what that register does, or how to manipulate it properly... kind of annoying, especially when nvidia has problems fixing thier own bugs (and the performance aint so hot either)
Seeing how SGI has been partially helpfull to Brian Paul and Kilgard in the past, I hope that this project will turn out OK. I just wouldnt expect nvidia to be very much help here...
Most of us actually. For a couple of good reasons:
But I absolutely agree that having a proprietary solution to a problem is better than having no solution at all.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I wonder if VA linux will bundle it. That could be a way of trying to get an edge on RedHat.
Since OpenGL 1.2 is an open standard this shouldn't amount to fracturing of linux, which is good.
-no broken link
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
www.matrox.com/mga/feat_story/dec99/g400_linux.htm and http://glx.on.openprojects.net
How is this done technically? The three usual options on UNIX workstations are to support OpenGL under X-windows in a 2D "hole", support full-screen only, or to send OpenGL commands through the X-windows pipe. The first is tacky, the second is only useful for gamers, and the third has lousy performance. And none of these integrate well with 2D operations. So what approach are these guys taking?
They have a poor history with Linux. They have some of the best consumer OGL drivers on Windows.
Seeing how SGI has been partially helpfull to Brian Paul and Kilgard in the past, I hope that this project will turn out OK.
Kilgard now works for Nvidia. As do many former SGI employees. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Kilgard is actually heading the team that is writing the Linux driver.
Last year, Nvidia and SGI settled a lawsuit by having the entire SGI midrange 3D design team go to Nvidia, and SGI agree to use future Nvidia products in SGI workstations. I believe that this press release is the first indication of SGI's intent to use Nvidia graphics systems. The reason that the current nvidia driver is slow, is because they are waiting for XFree86 4.0 and DRI. Why spend time and resources optimizing a driver that will be obsolete in a couple months? I am hopeful that this announcement refers to their open-source DRI drivers, but they could also be binary only drivers that come packaged with Nvidia Quadro based products. Regardless, it is in Nvidia's and SGI's best interest to provide excellent 3D support for Linux.
Dan
Well, DRI is just another way of getting to the hardware, which actually needs help from the kernel to work. On top of that is the GLX layer (which can be a open sourced driver from someone or a closed source one from someone else). On top of that is the OpenGL library, which can then be either Mesa or a real SGI OpenGL. You should be able to switch any of these components with another one and the entire system should work.
Not that you necessarily need to have GLX in the middle (could be glide or software), but SGI certainly seems to use it in all their stuff, so I'd assume they're not skipping it. It also lets you use 3d apps through the network just like 2d apps.
So, even if they did closed source OpenGL 1.2 implementation that they sold for $$$ you could just replace it with Mesa and in the worst case suffer from a few glitches (most likely it'd work just perfectly as the main author has access to the official opengl test suite)
I think aardvaark here is right. It's not how often it crashes, but how well the system recovers. When Windows crashes (which it does, even on a "clean" system), you want to pull your hair out. When linux crashes (ususally because you did something wrong :)), the program dies and you are safe. My computer time has been much less stressful and exasperating ever since I stopped using windows.
Why not just pay for Mesa to get a license and provide programmers to help Brian Paul? Its great that we will have an OpenGL library that can name itself as OpenGL compliant, but why not support the project that is already there. After all Mesa is not vaporware/idea, there already is a lot of good code that is OpenGL complaint (while not being able to say so due to the licensing crap).
You'll notice that the words "workstation" and "professional" figured prominently in this announcement, while games weren't even mentioned.
Nvidea's Quadro, the big brother to the GeForce, is the real cause of this initiative. The Quadro does to SGI hardware what Linux did to Solaris and all the proprietary *nixes. It made it work on commodity hardware, and made it cheap. You'll
NVidea would have to be braindead *not* to get the Quadro working on Linux. Like Linux, it's a (much) cheaper alternative of comparable quality.
What I don't understand is how VA and SGI figure in this. Surely SGI realizes that the Quadro could hurt them badly.
Notice the conspicuous absence of the words "Open Source". It looks like this will be based on SGI's source, not Mesa, and therefore closed. Hopefully, nVidia's part will be open enough to help the Mesa/XFree team.
The DRI is already available in the work in progress branch of the upcoming XFree86 4.0 X Server. So far we have released a driver for the Voodoo 3, but DRI compatible Intel 810, Rage 128, and G400 drivers will all be released by March of this year. You are correct in your statements about the upcoming driver capabilities, and they will ALL be fully open sourced.
PI uses Mesa, an implementation of the OpenGL API, to bring freely available, open source hardware accelerated 3D to Linux. The open source distribution mechanism and general open source philosophy cannot tolerate the requirement for any licensing fees, so PI and Mesa cannot make any claim about OpenGL conformance. We do have an open source project underway called "Glean", which provides an infrastructure for creation of fully open source test routines that will provide whatever level of 3D verification and testing that is required by open source users. Because all Mesa work is open sourced, anyone who discovers a problem in Mesa can either fix the problem or report it to Brian Paul so that he can make the fixes. We believe that between the work PI is doing, and all the work of many open source developers, Mesa will reach the highest possible level of 3D performance and quality within the industry standard XFree86 X Server.
I agree with you that there will be an explosion of interest in 3D under Linux. We will always welcome any opportunity to work closely with SGI and any IHV, to improve the availability, quality, and performance of open source 3D.
True, the release doesn't explicitly say "open source", and with the hype on those two little words, you'd expect them to say it if it applies.
I see two possibilities:
If we're lucky, their lawyers are just dicking around with which license to use. VA Linux would probably want GPL or LPGL, while SGI and NVidia would want something more restrictive.
However, I'm more apt to believe the latter - SGI doesn't want to open source OpenGL until it absolutely has to. Once OpenGL is source-available, SGI has very little IP left of any value. At least, that's how the corporate lawyers will think.
This may seem like a Bad Thing®. However, functionally, I don't think it will matter as much as we might think. The runtime will have to be free (albeit not open), and the APIs are essentially free, as they're widely published and SGI wants you to write to their code. With dynamic linking, you're free to choose either this (closed) OpenGL (cue rimshot) or Mesa. You'll use whichever one is better. And that will drive the other to improve. "Free Market, Baby! Yeaahhh!"
I suspect that eventually, it will end up being open source, if only because demand will be so great.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Heh, well there are games now, but the performance doesn't really compare to windows counterparts. 3dfx drivers come close, but who wants to only have 1 choice (and that being a company who just continues to rest on its laurels and doesn't make anything really new). At least now we will have two choices. Actually, in truth, were it not for games, I would likely have scrapped windows a long time ago.
[rant] Oh, and btw: if you have everything configured properly, have good hardware, and do not run buggy software, windows is alot more stable for a desktop user than many here give it credit for. Crashes? What are those? Seriously though, my system stays up generally until I leave on the weekend, or get angry at having to listen to it one night. Linux, well, linux crashes too. For the same reasons. Buggy drivers, bad software, etc. It's all about how you configure and maintain your system.
Yeah, windows sucks, but not nearly so much as a linux zealot would have you believe. Linux sucks too. They both suck in their own ways. That's why I use both. Use each in what it doesn't suck at! [/rant]
Did they get that line from CmdrTaco? It sure sounds like him.
(I'm only joking, don't get all huffy and puffy andover guys)
But seriously I think this topic is the next battle front for open source software. We've proven that you can open source code, benfit from the work of the community and still have a valuable company. What has not been proven is that you can release completely unsupported unintelligible, embarassing source code and still profit from it. Both large companies and individuals talk about open source but they really mean only after they clean it up.
As a programmer myself I know how tough it is to go through bad code and fix it or make it work. But I think most people are wrong when they express this need to clean things up before the public sees it. Two main reasons are that:
1) You don't have to support my grandmother trying to hack your code. Just me. I'll be satisfied with a mailing list that other hackers use too.
2) By delaying until after the cleaning there is a danger that the code will never be released. Priorities always change, alternatives may be released, anything could happen.
Does anyone out there have examples to back me up or disprove me?
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
did the work with neoMagic some time ago.
A binary-only driver will be available with a shim to enable the interface with XFree.
It is our hope that the source will be releasedat some point, as we are actively promoting
the benefits of Open Source with the parties involved.
As an alternative to using the binary only driver we plan to qualify the GeForce with the
existing Open Source TnT driver. However there is a performance increase with
the binary-only nVidia driver.
It is my understanding that the drivers will be available free of charge. I don't have any
new information on the status of OpenGL.
Hope this helps to clarify exactly what is going on. If you have any further questions
please email me or Chris DiBona and we'll do our best to get answers for you.
--Kit
cosper@valinux.com
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
you know, I'm a little confused by the inability of people to understand that some people don't choose to give their software away for free with source. why is this a bad thing? why all the hostility towards people who want to develop and market and sell a quality product? if these people are putting significant effort into creating software and free source doesn't fit into thier business model, why automatically discount this software as BAD and why characterize the companies who develop it as TURNCOATS? why can't you just accept this as another option for people who want faster GL?
Precision Insight is also working on drivers for a bunch of cards; with the cooperation of the card manufacturers. These should also be released soon.
With the release of XFree86 4.0, the DRI, and these drivers, everyone will be able to have workstation-class graphics on Linux. I believe that most of these drivers, and certainly XFree86 and the DRI are open source, too.
My question is; why is SGI persuing a different approach now? I am sure that their solution will be have spectacular performance (when it is finished...SGI has been notoriously late in many of its plans).
The press release says nothing about whether the announced systems will use XFree86, the DRI, and whether they will be open-source (although I'm certainly that the NVidia drivers will not be open). It's almost as if SGI was going to try to steal the thunder of the upcoming release of the free software; which, I believe, will be an earth-shattering explosion of interest in 3D.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
So here's the deal. I've talked a lot with NVIDIA folks about the lack of good 3D drivers under Linux. They are sympathetic. This is why this driver is going to be released.
The driver will definitely be closed source, as it is using a licensed version of SGI's OpenGL implementation. They obviously cannot open source this.
The word I've received from them is that the fast, DRI driver will be out sometime after XFree 4.0 is released. The latest beta (3.9.17) did not include any hardware acceleration of all.
I've tried to get more specifications for the chipsets so that the Utah GLX driver could be made to use DMA, but they've told me that the specs are too complicated for people to understand and they would rather spend their resources developing their own driver than supporting everyone and their sister who wants to learn the specs.
Whether you agree or disagree, you must remember one thing: it is completely up to NVIDIA as to whether they want to release ANYTHING. They have been very accomodating to those open source advocates (and zealots) who demand drivers. They have released enough specs and source to create a driver from, and the only big thing lacking is the DMA stuff. I agree that they should have released the full specs a long time ago so that the GLX group could have a better driver for us by now, but by now it's a moot point as we will have a badass driver in a month or so.
And for those anti-NVIDIA-pro-Matrox-types, don't give Matrox THAT much credit. Mark Vojkovich, who I believe originally worked to get Matrox to release the specs that they have, posted the following to the Utah GLX dev list: Matrox have not released full specs for the card. They also haven`t contributed anything along the lines of source code and very little along the lines of support. I think people give them too much credit.