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| linux:gpu:about [2023/08/05 10:29] – peter | linux:gpu:about [2023/08/05 10:32] (current) – peter |
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| Out of a few interesting tidbits that come to mind: | Out of a few interesting tidbits that come to mind: |
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| * Other graphics APIs like Vulkan or Direct3D would be implemented as separate user-space drivers. (Mesa actually supports Direct3D 9 on Gallium drivers if you compile it with that option, and apps running on Wine can utilise that.) You could also skip graphics APIs entirely and talk directly to the GPU... if you are brave enough. | * Other graphics APIs like **Vulkan** or **Direct3D** would be implemented as separate user-space drivers. (Mesa actually supports Direct3D 9 on Gallium drivers if you compile it with that option, and apps running on Wine can utilise that.) You could also skip graphics APIs entirely and talk directly to the GPU... if you are brave enough. |
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| * This stack is actually very tightly integrated and is generally a moving target. Various component interfaces change quite often and proprietary stacks historically have had a problem with this as they target specific component versions (often the ones available at the stack's release) and that will be it, good enough, am I right? - so many legacy mobile chip-sets with proprietary Linux drivers are pretty much MIA: the rest of the stack moved on and will not talk to older, less popular hardware despite drivers being out there. | * This stack is actually very tightly integrated and is generally a moving target. Various component interfaces change quite often and proprietary stacks historically have had a problem with this as they target specific component versions (often the ones available at the stack's release) and that will be it, good enough, am I right? - so many legacy mobile chip-sets with proprietary Linux drivers are pretty much MIA: the rest of the stack moved on and will not talk to older, less popular hardware despite drivers being out there. |
| * Mobile GPUs like Adrenos (built into the Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs) and VideoCore (in Raspberry Pis, basically Broadcom CPUs) also are starting to be supported on modern open-source graphics stacks. It is a bit hard to install regular Linux distros on most mobile devices (not in a chroot, but rather natively), so it will not matter for a while, but what used to be a strictly proprietary ground is now worked on in open projects - that is, once they are ready, they will be supported for as long as they're humanly usable and someone bothers to keep them updated, not when their manufacturers slap "EOL" on the package and call it a day. Ancient GPUs like Voodoo still work under modern distros (that's stretching the definition of "humanly usable", but hey, it works). | * Mobile GPUs like Adrenos (built into the Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs) and VideoCore (in Raspberry Pis, basically Broadcom CPUs) also are starting to be supported on modern open-source graphics stacks. It is a bit hard to install regular Linux distros on most mobile devices (not in a chroot, but rather natively), so it will not matter for a while, but what used to be a strictly proprietary ground is now worked on in open projects - that is, once they are ready, they will be supported for as long as they're humanly usable and someone bothers to keep them updated, not when their manufacturers slap "EOL" on the package and call it a day. Ancient GPUs like Voodoo still work under modern distros (that's stretching the definition of "humanly usable", but hey, it works). |
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| * AMD had their own fully-proprietary driver stack (kernel + user-space components, like the current NVIDIA stack) called fglrx back in the day... haha, funny thing, let us forget about it as soon as possible because holy hell that was not good. | * AMD had their own fully-proprietary driver stack (kernel + user-space components, like the current NVIDIA stack) called **fglrx** back in the day... haha, funny thing, let us forget about it as soon as possible because holy hell that was not good. |
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