Slashdot Mirror
3Dfx seeking Linux developer
PowerPC sent us
a post from 3dfx.glide.linux asking for someone interested
in working at 3dfx. Specifically to work on developing,
evangelizing and maintaining 3dfx under Linux. Glad to
see another vendor joining the fray. I've attached the
full request and contact information below.
From: Marty Franz <mfranz@141.com>
Newsgroups: 3dfx.glide.linux
Subject: Linux Job Opening at 3dfx
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 20:35:58 -0700
Organization: 3Dfx Interactive
Reply-To: mfranz@141.com
All,
I'm looking for a hard core Linux/3D programmer to join the Voodoo Porting Group at 3dfx. This person must live/eat/breath Linux and 3D graphics. Imagine working all day every day in Linux....Sound cool ? Think you have what it takes ? Email your resume to the email address below.
Voodoo Porting Group Job Description
- Answer developer questions in a timely manner.
- Evangelize 3D API?s and 3dfx hardware to developers.
- Develop tools to ease development on 3dfx platforms.
- Develop 3D demos and technologies to promote the use of advanced graphic techniques.
- Help maintain and improve the quality of 3dfx software distributions.
- Develop and present technical presentations at 3dfx developer conferences.
- Help maintain 3dfx developer web site.
- Publicly promote 3dfx and the use of 3dfx hardware under Linux.
Skills Required
- Strong C/C++ experience required. Assembly experience a plus
- Must have a minimum of one year 3D graphics experience.
- Glide and OpenGL experience a plus.
- Strong math background a plus.
- Strong written and verbal skills required.
Marty.
--
Marty Franz
Director of VPG
3Dfx Interactive, Inc.
mfranz@3dfx.com
From: Marty Franz <mfranz@141.com>
Newsgroups: 3dfx.glide.linux
Subject: Linux Job Opening at 3dfx
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 20:35:58 -0700
Organization: 3Dfx Interactive
Reply-To: mfranz@141.com
All,
I'm looking for a hard core Linux/3D programmer to join the Voodoo Porting Group at 3dfx. This person must live/eat/breath Linux and 3D graphics. Imagine working all day every day in Linux....Sound cool ? Think you have what it takes ? Email your resume to the email address below.
Voodoo Porting Group Job Description
- Answer developer questions in a timely manner.
- Evangelize 3D API?s and 3dfx hardware to developers.
- Develop tools to ease development on 3dfx platforms.
- Develop 3D demos and technologies to promote the use of advanced graphic techniques.
- Help maintain and improve the quality of 3dfx software distributions.
- Develop and present technical presentations at 3dfx developer conferences.
- Help maintain 3dfx developer web site.
- Publicly promote 3dfx and the use of 3dfx hardware under Linux.
Skills Required
- Strong C/C++ experience required. Assembly experience a plus
- Must have a minimum of one year 3D graphics experience.
- Glide and OpenGL experience a plus.
- Strong math background a plus.
- Strong written and verbal skills required.
Marty.
--
Marty Franz
Director of VPG
3Dfx Interactive, Inc.
mfranz@3dfx.com
please do not say "We". i consider myself part of the linux community and i do not want anybody speaking for me other than me. i will be happy with binaries if the companies are not willing to open spec their hardware. and i do not believe that FUD that binary only means poor quality. if you are not happy with that then do not buy that particular hardware, scream, yell and cry all you want. but do not act like you represent the linux community, because i disagree with you whole heartedly about the whole "binary only" driver issue.
Wine has partial DirectX emulation (including DirectDraw and Direct3D) already. D3D currently translates the API calls to Mesa equivalents, but I'm sure somebody could write a D3D->Glide translator without too much effort.
It is pretty nice to get some serious interest from a hardware company like 3dfx, and hiring people to work on Linux drivers and support qualifies as serious interest. It is not something to throw your hat in the air and yell about because it is so great (people have already pointed out the down side of 3dfx "style" of support, so I won't elaborate). The news (IMO) should be received with a smile and a silent hope that they "get it" sometime soon.
:-)
...yellow number five, yellow number five, yellow number five...
There are probably some good people out there who would take a pay cut to be able to GPL everything they write and be able to show a friend for some input here and there when they get stuck, I can understand that, becuase it would make the "job" more fun. But I wonder what the acutal numbers are.
I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying, but I had to add a few tidbits o' my own to the thread...
2. Yes releasing full specs would be better
Matrox has done it. Which means that 3Dfx can be convinced to do it. We do need to fight the culture of hardware secrecy that permeates many parts of the electronics industry
While Matrox released most of the specs, they omitted some rather critical pieces that provide the peak speed for the G200. It's the same story with the Millenium/Mystique- it'll do busmastering DMA on data transfers and seems to have texture caching, etc. Try finding anything other than a passing mention of any of that in the Millenium or Mystique specs. While they're better than most of the rest at what they should be doing by our standards, they're still infected with that same culture- just not as bad as companies like ATI or NVidia.
3. But binary only is fine for now
At least they're making an effort at OS support. It's their hardware, and Glide is their code. They should have a choice about how they want it used. Why should we turn down binary support for an important API?
We shouldn't- but by the same token, I'm not going to be as inclined to accept them because they didn't go far enough with programming info for their chips. In this regard, they're only slightly better than ATI. Today, we'll accept them because they're the only game in town for 3D. Tomorrow, that's another story altogether- it's up to them how the play goes down.
4. Writing our own drivers, even from the specs, is hard
I know they're doing it for Matrox with GLX. It remains to be seen whether it will ever be a usably fast GL tho. 3DCards are about the most complex peripheral you could put in your computer. Writing drivers for them isn't trivial, and the drivers need to be really good to be usable -- right now the G200 drivers aren't even near there yet. I would like to see the Open Driver movement prove itself with truly excellent G200 drivers before we go demanding the right to write drivers for other hardware.
It is hard- not so much the complextity of driving the 3D functions, that's moderately easy. It's pushing all that data to the card in a way that's fast. I know- I've been working at the Millenium GLX driver (the baseline for the G200 work) and I'm working on a driver for the SiS 6326 chip. (Time permitting, of course- work's got me doing a Linux version of our product and I want to win that design win!)
I agree, we need to come forward with one or two winners before we really start putting the screws to the other vendors for open sourced support- but I don't know how far we're going to get with the G200. Like I said, some critical info's been withheld from us. Some of it is Matrox's doing- we're missing some tech data in that release of the G200 programming specs, like the information to drive the WARP triangle setup engine. Some of it is Intel's doing- try prying details of the GART's programming from them (hint: it's needed to at least some extent to be able to really use the AGP spec to it's fullest for system memory textures, etc.). Without these, I don't know how fast we're going to get it. I'm hoping 30-ish fps with a decent PII or equivalent running against Quake II or III. As for my efforts on the SiS, I don't know how far I'm going to get- I'm looking at having to do the X server fixes (No X accel is not acceptable- we've had the specs for this chip for a while now!) and the driver files as well as doing my work during the day- time will tell.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
by the level of animosity here. It's not professional, and it's clear most of you are running your mouths without having a clue what you are talking about.
/. posting. Meanwhile, let's demonstrate that Open Drivers is a viable option. That's the best way to convince companies like 3Dfx and nVidia to open their specs.
1. Glide doesn't suck
It's not a perfect API, but at least it's fast, easy and flexible. In fact, as far as we can tell (using VTune to benchmark) it's actually physically impossible to make a D3D card faster than a V3-2000 running Glide -- M$'s code is slower than Glide, so even if the card was infinitely fast, it the program would run only as fast as Glide on a V3 (it turns out D3D runs code in two chunks, the M$ part and the card driver part).
2. Yes releasing full specs would be better
Matrox has done it. Which means that 3Dfx can be convinced to do it. We do need to fight the culture of hardware secrecy that permeates many parts of the electronics industry
3. But binary only is fine for now
At least they're making an effort at OS support. It's their hardware, and Glide is their code. They should have a choice about how they want it used. Why should we turn down binary support for an important API?
4. Writing our own drivers, even from the specs, it hard
I know they're doing it for Matrox with GLX. It remains to be seen whether it will ever be a usably fast GL tho. 3DCards are about the most complex peripheral you could put in your computer. Writing drivers for them isn't trivial, and the drivers need to be really good to be usable -- right now the G200 drivers aren't even near there yet. I would like to see the Open Driver movement prove itself with truly excellent G200 drivers before we go demanding the right to write drivers for other hardware.
The way I see it, the ball's in our court, not theirs. I'm sure they'll find the right person with all the resumes they'll get after a
First off I see references in all of the postings to negativity... I didn't read any negative replies... but my theshold is set to 1.
Secondly 3dfx is evil here is why: Glide is a propriatary protocol. 1) My roommate is the author of the GLIDE wrapper for windows and the G200 (it now supports all cards but the G200 was his goal.) They have retro activly aplied a licence to there SDK to make it illegal to use to write glide wappers and sent cease and desist orders to all glide wrapper authors. 2) Most Windows games that use glide Don't use glide wrapped around OpenGL they use straight GLIDE. This means 3DFX had a monopoly. I say had becuase most new games support GL or D3D. 3) 3dfx doesn't embrace the linux ideals. They sure as hell won't open source there drivers and no they make no indication of doing so in there post. 4) The 3d produced by a 3dfx card is at the bottom of the visual quality spectrum yet all anyone talks about is the frame rate.... the frame rate when frame syncronization is turned off!
The thought of 3dfx joining in linux development scares me. If linux gaming gets locked in to 3dfx I think I'll switch to console games only! I think this is one of the few vendors linux would be better off not working with. Their products though fast are visually the lowest quality.
... They are merely attempting to exploit it. Folks, we need to remember that the only thing that 3dfx ever did for us was release *ONLY* the 2d specs for their cards, give *ONE* developer access to specs to write a *BINARY-ONLY* GLIDE port, and put up a silly little web page. 3dfx has always been an extremely proprietary company that is openly hostile to open standards and open source. If I recall correctly, there are several independent, clean-room developers of GLIDE implementations that are being sued by 3dfx. 3dfx is not supporting the Linux community, only the Linux platform. We should be boycotting 3dfx, not cheering them along as they undermine the open standards and open source communities that have made Linux what it is today.
3Dfx is serious about wanting to work with Linux. This isn't marketting fluff. They've appreciated the work I've done, and they understand the value.
Glide is a hardware abstraction layer. They use it for their in-house applications. You don't have to write to it if you don't want to. Mesa talks through Glide and that's a fine way to access the hardware. There is essentiantially no performance hit for doing so.
Linux users complaining about Glide only games don't know what they are talking about. Most of the "Glide only" games you see are OpenGL games, that need Glide only to talk to the hardware. They won't be Glide only when more hardware has OpenGL support under Linux. Hopefully that'll be soon.
No, Glide will not be Open Source anytime soon. That might be less than optimal, but I take the position that having it be well supported by the vendor is almost as good. (As an example, do you have the source to the BIOS on your PC? Why don't you complain about that?) Having their own team in house to work on Linux is the way to get it well supported
I asked them a while back to start looking to hire people in house. They really wanted to hire me. I seriously considered their offer, but decided to work for Precision Insight instead. I figured being vendor neutral was better. I hope to continue working with 3dfx and whoever they hire in house.
If anyone from here is interested in the job with 3dfx, please feel free to contact me. They are a great group of people. They want to do some really cool work. I believe it'll be good for Linux in general.
- |Daryll
Even in the Windows world, 3dfx has not been particularly well behaved. Their packages have been claiming OpenGL support for a long time, but they aren't delivering (and I suspect that's a strategic decision rather than inability to deliver). And recently, they pulled out the rug from under all the board makers that used to use their chip sets by deciding that future 3Dfx boards would be done in-house.
There are also technical issues. The 3dfx APIs look to me like they are designed to give the company a short-term competitive advantage on 1998 model PCs. But in the long term, I'd much rather see more powerful APIs like OpenGL widely supported.
There are a lot of nice 3D boards out there that don't have Linux drivers yet, and there are several nice 3D APIs. There is a lot of useful 3D work to be done on Linux. A 3dfx API driver for 3dfx boards would be near the bottom of my list of priorities.
Updating and enhancing Glide for Linux won't hurt GL performance... the MesaGL voodoo drivers are based on Glide. If anything, better Glide drivers will give us better voodoo GL drivers by default.
Besides, there are still a number of games being produced specifically for Glide. This can only help them in getting possibly ported to Linux.
Games are still 99% of the time designed for Windows and then ported. I don't think many companies are going to throw out their OpenGL versions and just make a Glide port for Linux.
Ellis-D> "If we are what we eat, then the only
Ellis-D> real humans are cannibals."
No! This is not wholly correct, as cannibals who ate non-cannibals would therefore not be cannibals. The only real humans would be those cannibals who only eat other cannibals, who in turn must only eat other cannibals. (And unless the cannibals had some non-ingestive means of gaining energy -- photosynthesis, perhaps, or direct injection of nutrients -- they would all die, as the laws of entropy dictate that the system would burn itself out.)
Thus we see that when the act of eating becomes an act of definition ("we are what we eat"), the undecidability problems inherent in all formalized systems of definition pop up.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
See5 204&mode=thread 2 219&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/08/134
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/12/31/115
oh ye of short memories
"Blah blah blah, eveyone should develop for Linux!"
"Blah blah blah, now that they do - they suck!"
This is really p*****g me off. ANY exposure of the name Linux on any high profile product is FANTASTIC NEWS - even if the support actually sucks. Other compnaies will see what they are doing and follow their lead. Competition then ensues, one day someone will take the extra step we all hope for.
Why do some advocates insist that if it's for Linux then it must be utterly free and open from day one, or they shoudn't bother? Have you no sense of history? - Openness *GROWS*, it doesn't magically appear!
I think this is top news (regardless of wether they achieve anything). PHB's and marketing exec's will take notice of this.