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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.
"
You're missing the point by about 10 miles. Assuming you aren't simply astroturfing (and the bit about "productive and functional" makes me wonder), sit back and learn.
It's been proven time and again that in the case of video drivers, open source wins every time. 3Dfx, ATI, and Matrox have all opened up specs for their cards (if not actual code), and all have benefited from the ongoing work on the utah-glx code and their drivers. Not only that, the common codebase for things like Mesa means cards can be as equal as possible given their hardware. A fix for the ATI Rage Pro can magically propagate to the G400 driver.
Contrast with nVidia, who currently ship abysmal drivers (partial texture uploading is horribly broken, for instance, which breaks a very interesting application I'm beta testing). Source is indeed available for these drivers, but it's been obfuscated into uselessness so nobody can read it, let alone fix it. Presumably this is related to the ongoing patent lawsuits against them - they would appear to have something to hide at the register level.
As a simple result of being effectively closed source, nVidia not only has the worst and slowest Linux 3D support of any graphics board maker (the open-source ATI Rage Pro driver, for a hideously bad old chipset, kills the TNT on Quake3), but they're going to have to rectify the situation themselves. Note the contrast: if you're open, smart guys like John Carmack will fix your drivers and everyone will think you're cool because of his and others' work. If your closed your drivers are only as good as your last release, and you get blasted for bugs, particularly if you leave 6 months between releases as nVidia has.
Finally, as far as Star Wars, we aren't the ones being hurt by the disadvantages of closed source there - LucasFilm is. Movies can be and have been rendered on Linux (Titanic being the usual example), and it makes no difference to us the viewing public, it's just more uptime for the animators.
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
Although nVidia did release something that could be called open source, the state of the code made it very difficult to use. It was run through a preprocessor. To me that doesn't count.
- |Daryll
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.
Will you buy a whole VA Linux rig to get it? I am sceptical along with some others that this will benefit "Linux users" anymore than the existence of fully OpenGL modules for XiGraphics. Maybe even less. XiGraphics requires you to purchase some software. This press release (hinted at on MaximumPC site yesterday) sounds to me like VA's bid to produce an essentially proprietary workstation platform which is based on, but not sharing with, Linux. I don't fault them for doing it, but I doubt I'll benefit from this move despite the fact that I own a TNT2.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.