Re: OpenGL-based framebuffer concepts

[Alan Cox]

On Maw, 2006-05-23 at 11:41 -0400, Kyle Moffett wrote:
> So a modern GPU is essentially a proprietary CPU with an obscure  
> instruction set and lots of specialized texel hardware?  Given the  
> total lack of documentation from either ATI or NVidia about such  
> cards I'd guess it's impossible for Linux to provide any kind of  
> reasonable 3d engine for that kind of environment, and it might be  
> better to target a design like the Open Graphics Project is working  
> to provide.

Its typically a device you feed a series of fairly low level rendering
commands to sometimes including instructions (eg shaders). DRI provides
an interface that is chip dependant but typically looks like


      [User provided command buffer]
                    |
      [Kernel filtering/DMA interface]
                    |
      [Card command queue processing]


All the higher level graphic work is done in the 3D client itself.

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/