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Hardware-Accelerated Graphics On SGI O2 Under NetBSD

Posted by timothy on from the progress-in-unexpected-places dept.

Zadok_Allan writes "It's a bit late, but since many readers will remember the SGI O2 fondly, this might interest a few. The gist of the story is this: NetBSD now supports hardware accelerated graphics on the O2 both in X and in the kernel. We didn't get any help from SGI, and the documentation available doesn't go beyond a general description and a little theory of operation, which is why it took so long to figure it out. The X driver still has a few rough edges (all the acceleration frameworks pretty much expect a mappable linear framebuffer, if you don't have one — like on most SGI hardware — you'll have to jump through a lot of hoops and make sure there's no falling back to cfb and friends) but it supports XRENDER well enough to run KDE 3.5. Yes, it's usable on a 200MHz R5k O2. Not quite as snappy as any modern hardware but nowhere near as sluggish as you'd expect, and since Xsgi doesn't support any kind of XRENDER support, let alone hardware acceleration, pretty much anything using anti-aliased fonts gets a huge performance boost out of this compared to IRIX."

5 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. What a waste of time by fluffy99 · · Score: -1, Troll

    Why on earth would you invest time on such a project? Why not start with a more modern platform and work to improve something more than a handful of novelty SGI enthusiasts will use? Even with the hardware acceleration working, it is a dog compared to a 3 year old PC motherboard with onboard graphics. Linux could still use a lot of help getting hardware graphics working well.

    Or maybe you could join the 2 or 3 people that have a penchant for reviewing Linux kernel code and finding all those huge gaping bugs? See CVE-2009-1265 for a great example of why Linux needs better code review (and that bug has been there for how many years?).

    1. Re:What a waste of time by fluffy99 · · Score: -1, Troll

      I'm not against a hobby, just pointing out that he could have had just as much fun and produced something more useful to others. Just don't expect a world of praise for laboring (even if you like it) on something rather esoteric.

  2. Re:Hmmm... by Jurily · · Score: -1, Troll

    Please go back to your i386 Ubuntu.

    You mean my amd64 Gentoo? Gladly.

    I miss the good old days, too. I liked BeOS. But not that much.

  3. Get Rid of Patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Patents need to be done away with. They do nothing but serve to make someone rich off of coming up with an idea. Anybody can sit around all day and come up with ideas.

    If a person is to make money off of a good idea, they need to put that idea into motion and produce a viable product. Basically, they need to work to earn their money.

    The same thing goes for musicians and film producers. They think they are special, and all they have to do is work one time, record their efforts, and then they think they can charge people like they are actually performing real labor when they sell them a recording of their efforts. Musicians and actors should only be paid when they are actually working, like at a live performance. Get rid of copyrights.

  4. Hi I'm a 40y/old virgin, married twice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    We licked eachother alot, but didn't bust my hymen so that makes me still a virgin according to the Cathaholic Chruch. Maybe we can start dating and if it leads to a better relationship we can take it to the next level. Must be clean with no STD's, though I take a shower and am "clean" every day and that gets rid of this horrible rash of oozing pustules that form maybe 1 out of 4 months.

    Cal me, lover...

    X0x0>O