Am Freitag, den 05.10.2007, 14:15 +0200 schrieb Matthias Hopf:
On Oct 05, 07 00:22:09 +0200, Syren Baran wrote:
I personaly dont know how the ATI architecture differs that a kernel module might be unnecesarry. Fglrx also uses a kernel module.
It has a completely programmable command processor Neat. Well, on slashdot it would probably be tagged something like itsaprocessorjimbutnotasweknowit . It´s a massivly parallel risc chip, centered mainly around the mad command and a couple other math functions. and all memory accesses (from the hardware side) seem to be virtual, so it might have a MMU. It does, its called MC. As long as the command processor cannot be programmed from user space, this scenario can be made secure for complete user space programming. While the security advantages of this approach are obvious it severly
Am Sonntag, den 07.10.2007, 00:05 +0200 schrieb Syren Baran: limits the GPUs use. Quite a few applications could find this massive computing power usefull.
I have *no* idea ATM, whether this works with the current DRI architecture or not, so this is probably something for later improvements, but not for the beginning. True, more pressing matters to get this thing going. A completely programmable GPU changes things a lot. ATI/AMD should really open their specs on this, this is not only interresting for a X-driver. Actually the specs were released November 06.
I´ll invest a couple of hours now and then. Been a while since i last did low level gfx card stuff and 3D, but i hope i´ll be able to contribute a bit more than just some pci-ids.
Cool :) Thanks, but don't follow that road too far ATM. It'll be quite a while until we will see 3D docs. At least that's my estimation. Now i got a different hunch. Waiting for 3D docs will result in an infinite loop (at least if you are looking for registers to write something like "turn this object by x degrees"). The relevant document is http://ati.amd.com/companyinfo/researcher/documents/ATI_CTM_Guide.pdf . As far as i can tell by now, it contains all information necesarry to write an assembler. But writing a compiler is nothing i have knowledge of. I may be able to write an assembler. Except for flow control its basicly a search and replace. On the other hand, did i mention i HATE assembly language. It´s not that really hate reading assembly or hate writing it, but i REALLY HATE debugging it.
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