Pasi Kärkkäinen wrote:
Hi!
ARB released a couple of days ago the long waited float extensions..
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/ARB/color_buffer_float.txt
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/ARB/half_float_pixel.txt http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/ARB/texture_float.txt
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/cgi_directory/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=012662
There seems to be some IP issues.. does that mean these extensions can't be
implemented in Mesa/DRI ?
I haven't really looked into it yet, but SGI made a comment a while back that didn't sound too encouraging.
<rant mode on>
Such "inventions" make me sick. If THIS isn't a "triviality patent", i don't know what is. There's no invention at all, and this is even acknowledged in the patent to some degree. It lists all reasons why floating point rasterizations haven't been done before even though everyone saw it as beneficial (too complex chips required, too slow, too much memory required...) and then goes on saying the "inventors" have "discovered" these reasons are no longer valid, so it's now time to patent it! Great invention! Way to go SGI!
I'm not sure if a software implementation would be affected, it refers to s10e5 (16bit half-floats) quite a lot, and software rendering would probably use 32bit floats anyway (well I'm almost sure someone has another bogus patent pending for the same with 32bit floats, figuring with more complex chips and cheaper memory this would now be better...).
SGI used to be a rather cool company, it would be sad to see them doing ligitation as their primary business strategy, which seems to be a common practice for once great, but now failed businesses nowadays (sco, kodak,...).
</rant mode off>
Roland
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