Could Graphics Drivers be Included on the Card?

starseeker asks: "With all of the difficulties (both technical and legal) caused by binary graphics card drivers (e.g. the nVidia drivers) the question naturally arises - why is it necessary to have all of this logic at the 'kernel' level in the first place? Why couldn't the necessary logic be abstracted on-board the nVidia/ATI/etc card and just have the OS use one generic driver to access the functionality in all of them? Use OpenGL or similar standards on the software side, and have the card handle things on-board from that point on down? That way, hardware manufacturers wouldn't have to listen to all the flack about binary drivers, and Linux users don't have to suffer with second-rate graphics and/or deal with binary drivers in an open (and dynamic) environment. Are there technical reasons this isn't practical? Or is it simply that it's easier/cheaper to do that type of work in the OS?" There are several issues that currently make such a thing impractical, but the large hurdle at this point is that there doesn't seem to be any interest (neither commercially or technically) to make such a leap.

Comments

Simple: Hardware is expensive

[Theovon]

Note: I'm a graphics chip designer.

Basically, you're asking for the software interface of the hardware to be standardized and abstracted. In a nut shell, hardware is expensive and software is cheap. Anything you can do in software with little or no impact on your performance requirements is something you should not do in hardware. ATI and nVidia have radically different approaches to GPU design. With differing internal structures, the interfaces exposed to drivers is also going to be radically different, but there's no reason not to use cheap CPU cycles to create the abstraction rather than expensive logic gates in hardware.

Hardware is expensive because the cost of a chip goes up roughtly with the fourth power of the logic area.

IMHO, the best solution to the problem of drivers for Linux is simply to not buy hardware that doesn't have open source drivers. Do you think that makes life difficult? The Open Graphics Project has opinions about that.

Re:Make it flashable?

[Ruie]

I think it's a good idea. All of the problems that immediately jump out at me-- things getting outdated and such-- would seem to be dealt with very easily by making the internal software updatable, some simple solid-state memory.

No, it is a terrible idea. The right way is to release the specs to the damn hardware. CPU manufacturers do it, why not video cards ?

We already have driver built in the video card. It is called VIDEO BIOS. The latest VESA specification allows for fancy things like requesting memory map of the framebuffer so one can have direct video access. It is easy to envision making a specs for 3d acceleration as well. It could even be in pseudocode - one could compile the driver to whatever hardware is using it.

So why this does not work ? Because, aside from graphics companies making shitty BIOS to begin with, companies like Dell intentionally cut down BIOS to safe a couple of dollars on flash RAM. Ask yourself - when was the last time you saw a widescreen laptop which video BIOS knew how to setup the widescreen mode ? And this is one of the most basic things.

Good and thorough description of the hardware is a requirement for doing interesting things with it.

Re:I've got a different question:

[Surt]

Why do GPUs need huge drivers when CPUs don't?

CPUs have this enormous driver called the operating system.