Better Looking Linux: Tungsten Graphics

Several folks have e-mailed about the formation of Tungsten Graphics, which is composed of quite a number of ex-Precision Insighters. Linuxgames is carrying a bit of a conversation with Frank LaMonica, the CEO of the new company. They've got a contract with Red Hat already in place. Frank's statement summarizes what they are doing well: "The work we are doing involves Mesa ^? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL ^? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI ^? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002. "

Comments

Look out nvidia.

[Penguinoflight]

With the Radeon 7500 (the one with the technical stuff to smash a geforce 3), nvidia will likely see a loss in it's sales to linux users. The Radeon 7500 is actually a radeon 64mb ddr that goes a lot faster. The radeon 8500 on the other hand is another generation, too bad it's not supported yet.

To be frank, if it weren't for the heat that nvidia cards produce, I'd probably get one. I just can't afford to have my server go down because a GPU overheated and pumped the case tempurature to 120 degrees. I don't want a video card that has a fan for something other than cosmetics.

2D performance of current Radeon drivers is awful

[Thagg]

The current DRI Radeon drivers are fine for 3D, providing pretty much the full power of the machine to the Linux world -- but the 2D performance is awful. Why, you might ask? Because when ATI contracted with VA Linux to create the drivers, they only funded development of 3D, and didn't specify that the 2D performance should be accelerated.

This turns out to be a real problem in the visual effects community -- a lot of our work depends on having good, fast 2D. Film frames, after all, are still just 2D images.

I hope that this new driver they speak of, and future drivers, recognize this. We'll see. At this point, we have to by nVidia boards, even while the drivers are closed-source, they provide pretty good 2D support.

thad

Re:Isn't the abbreviation wrong?

[rlowe69]

>> On the web page it's TG, but shouldn't it be WG?

>wang grabbing?
>wookie grease?
>womanly grunts?

*sigh* ... W is the chemical symbol for the element Tungsten - incidentally, the W stands for wolfram. Don't they teach basic chemistry in high school these days? Maybe I'm just biting a troll ...

Re:Not very supportive of Open source

[MadAhab]

There is one way, and only one way, to completely close code with no loss to the customers, and that is to put that code in hardware and have open specs for interacting with it.

Anything else means that you can be stranded by the vendor.