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>
> On Mon, 5 Jul 1999, Paul Sargent wrote:
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I wondering if there is any support for AGP specific functions in any
> > of the x86 motherboard chipsets. I'm thinking about any configuration
> > that might be needed to enable AGP Sideband, 1x, 2x and possibly 4x
> > transfers.
> >
> > I've done a grep on the 2.2.x source code and nothing relevent seems
> > to come up. Does anybody have any knowledge on this sort of thing?
> >
> > Paul
> >
>
> Hm... Well, I can say that I've run Linux on a few AGP machines, and can
> use vesafb on them. X is starting to work on support for them -- but just
> *why* would the kernel have to have AGP specific code? (Forgive me if
> that's a stupid question :).
It is not a stupid question, in my opinion. Using AGP Fast Write
transactions instead of PCI write transactions for the frame buffer could
speed up it significantly, for example. This also may apply to X servers.
But, the primary goal of AGP has been to allow 3D engines to execute
textures directly from main memory.
Note that the AGP specifications seem to be close to obsolete before
having really been used. The AGP 4X allows up to 1 GB/s memory bandwitch
but some recent boards have an internal memory speed that is greater than
twice this value.
In my opinion, if something that allows a 64 bit data path (32 bit
currently) and faster memory acces (currently up to 4x66Mhzx32bits) will
not be proposed by Intel in the short term, the AGP will fall into the
"oubliettes" of the I.T. very quickly.
Gérard.
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