Hi Martin-Éric, >> I want to know what the plans for the next releases of the driver are. >> Currently >> I am using the geode driver for an embedded system and I am not that happy >> with the speed of the driver with enabled hardware acceleration. At the >> moment >> the driver preforms much better if I disable acceleration. > > That is quite possible, given how libpixman constantly changes and the > driver is, in its current state, having to work its way around it. > This being said, a few Geode developers recently gathered and started > looking into ways to improve the speed of the driver. There's already > a few minor fixes in GIT that haven't been released and more are > coming. >
Today I will try out current git version. > > The main issue we have right now a lack of developers interested in > the Geode. In theory, AMD assigned two engineers to maintain the > driver but, in practice, their assignment was short-lived and they > have been transfered to the former ATI team right after their > contributions to 2.11.9. In other cases, access to the hardware > remains, but the motivation to work on such antiquated hardware is > gone; developers always want to work on the next cool thing, rather > than perform boring maintenance on existing code. This leaves us with > very few people who still have any interaction with Geode hardware > that have sufficient coding skills to maintain the driver. > > Bear in mind that the above only concerns the LX component of the > driver. Meanwhile, the GX2 component is barely usable. On this > point, AMD clearly indicated that supporting anything older than the > LX is of extremely low priority and, as such, they haven't even > provided their two engineers with test hardware that features a CS5535 > and GX2. None of us have access to GX2/CS5535 hardware either, so it's > really up to someoen from the community with sufficient coding skills > to step up and bring the GX2 component at least up to the LX > component's health status. > >> I am using a Debian based system with X.Org X Server 1.7.7. > > I assume that you are using the version of the Geode driver that ships > with Debian/stable? If that's the case, you're already missing on a > few fixes. I suggest trying to build the driver currently in unstable > against stable X development packages. > I will try this... >> Where are the current problems in the area of hardware acceleration? > > Mostly that it isn't well-integrated with the best coding practices of > the X.org community, because that's how NSC and AMD, initially coded > it. > >> Is it planned to introduce a KMS driver? > > There's been some talks about it. See our wiki page (URL in the > README) for details. Again, lack of interested coders remains the > main obstacle. > I am interested to look into the driver and improve the bottlenecks I currently have. I need to run Java based visualizations as smooth as possible. I have experience with driver development but have never done anything graphic card related. > > I hope that the above answers shed some light. Feel free to ask for > clarifications as appropriate. > Thanks your answer is very helpful and informative. -- Christian Gmeiner, MSc _______________________________________________ Xorg-driver-geode mailing list [email protected] http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg-driver-geode
