James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>>> With a graphics card that uses DMA, you offload the I/O
>>> overhead from the CPU to the GPU, so the CPU can do other
>>> things. This has the effect of lowering the load for the X
>>> server, so it gets a higher process priority.
>>
>> With a graphics card that runs the X server, you would offload
>> even more overhead. :-D
>
>
> True, but is it worth it?
Don't know for sure. This would be a unique product. Although I
note that this wouldn't be a totally new idea. TI was pushing this
idea although I don't think that a commercial product ever made it to
market. DEC used to sell workstations which had a separate processor
to run the X server. IIRC, this was not nearly as powerful processor
as the main CPU.
IAC, it seemed like a way to proved the "Amiga like" performance.
Since the only thing that could slow down the mouse and keyboard
input would be PCI bus contention and the X server would never be
swapped out since it would have its own dedicated memory space.
That would actually be pretty cool. It would keep X from competing
with ordinary application tasks for resources, which is often a source
of hang-ups or slow performance on typical single-CPU Linux desktop
machines.
It might be more practical to just go to dual processors or something,
though I've never attempted that. An X server in hardware though,
as a simple drop-in system has real potential, I would think. Would you
then support the pointing device through the same card (seems like
you would).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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