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VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative

Posted by kdawson on Tue Apr 08, 2008 05:37 PM
from the itching-for-source dept.
Software Linux Technology
Aron Schatz writes "VIA has announced that they will start a new site (http://linux.via.com.tw — doesn't exist yet) specifically for the development of open source drivers. From their press release: 'Over the following months, VIA will work with the community to enable 2D, 3D and video playback acceleration to ensure the best possible Open Source experience on VIA Processor Platforms. 'To further improve cooperation with the community, VIA will also adhere to a regular quarterly release schedule that is aligned with kernel changes and release of major Linux distributions. In addition, beta releases will be issued on the site as needed, and a bug report and tracking feature will also be integrated.' Nvidia should be next."

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Firehose:VIA Announces New Open Source Driver Initiative by aronschatz (570456)
[+] Technology: VIA Releases 16K-Line FOSS Framebuffer Driver 159 comments
billybob2 writes "VIA has released 16,434 Lines Of Free & Open Source code that enables Linux natively to use the framebuffer on VIA's graphics chipsets. This comes a month after VIA announced that it will provide Open-Source drivers and documentation on its Web site so that its hardware will work out of the box with Linux distributions. This gives VIA-powered systems that come pre-installed with Linux — such as the gPC, 15.4" gBook, CloudBook, and Zonbu — the ability to output graphics through digital connections such as HDMI, and probably makes them the best-supported framebuffers Linux has ever had. Look forward to documentation and X.org drivers from VIA as well in the near future."
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  • Already big in little markets (Score:4, Informative)

    by dotancohen (1015143) on Tuesday April 08, @05:41PM (#23005774) Homepage
    For those who don't know, the Zonbu is really a rebranded VIA Artigo: http://what-is-what.com/what_is/zonbu.html [what-is-what.com] (disclosure: my site)

  • Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08, @05:45PM (#23005828)
    NVidia use a whole lot of IP from other vendors, and they CAN'T make everything open source because of that. NVidia has made massive efforts in helping their products work on linux as smoothly as possible, and should be praised for their efforts, not berated.

    If Via own all the IP they use, great! They'll be able to open source the lot. NVidia doesn't, so can't, so why give them a hard time after all their efforts to open source as much as possible?
    • Because no one asked for their IP. All anyone wants is details on the API. They can keep their drivers.

      Nvida has also not open sourced "as much as possible" They got dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way. They didn't assist with open sourced drivers for their on board chipset devices until the open source folks reverse engineered the NVidia's drivers and did a better job than NVidia did.

      Intel can do it. ATI has promised to do it and now so does VIA. Why is NVidia different?

      I'm about 4 months from my next video card purchase and I will be taking a hard look at who has the best Linux support. A 10 FPS difference is not worth drivers that seem to need reinstalling every reboot (thanks NVIDIA).
    • The real meat of it for me is the video playback.

      From what I can find online NOBODY has h.264 accelerated playback in Linux, and the best solution is to use a hack that loads a commercial software decoder made for Windows.

      Until I read this I thought my next HTPC would be ATI if things ever came to be, but now it may be VIA.

      I will build my next PC as soon as I find a fairly inexpensive card/chipset that will do HDMI out, and hardware H.264 in Linux. I don't care whether it is good closed source (like Nvidia graphics)or open source support either, Just that it works well and is fairly low power usage (pegging a fast multi-core CPU does not count).

      Until Nvidia offers feature parity with Windows on Linux or enough is opened for the community to do it themselves they deserve a hard time.

      If someone knows a good solution for this let me know so I can stop waiting.

  • kudos (Score:4, Insightful)

    by immerohnegott (949338) on Tuesday April 08, @05:50PM (#23005884)
    While not exactly a major powerhouse by my estimate, VIA still holds a pretty decent hunk of marketshare. Nice to see one more (relatively) large player see Linux as a valid enough market to make this kind of effort.

  • I'll believe it when I see it working.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by questro (802656) on Tuesday April 08, @05:52PM (#23005898)
    I'll believe it when I see the drivers working on my Ubuntu system with desktop effects active. I've tried the OpenChrome drivers and other things and nothing works with the UniChrome Pro CN400/PM880 video card that I have. Via has been very disappointing so far.

    • I was also thinking this is too little, too late. After a few years of playing around with VIA systems, I've moved to Intel boards where opensource drivers just work.

      Nevertheless, it would be nice to see this work for real. Competition is always welcome. Frankly, it's weird that VIA hardware is geared towards embedded/mobile use, while providing drivers mainly for the most power-hungry OS on the planet.

  • I like VIA's strategy (Score:5, Informative)

    by $random_var (919061) on Tuesday April 08, @05:57PM (#23005966)
    They go out of their way to encourage the growth of an ecosystem in which their products can compete. Not too long ago I hadn't heard of any PC/laptop processors besides AMD/Intel, but thanks to VIA's encouragement of the Ultra-mobile PC market (or 'netbooks' as Intel likes to call them) they have suddenly become a player.

    VIA created the nanobook [via.com.tw] reference design for mini-laptops that use their low-cost, low-power chips. Already the CloudBook [wikipedia.org] has come out based on that design, and in other countries various similar laptops have been released from different distributors. Now they're stimulating essential linux development, which will continue to increase the value of their low-cost platform. This has "win" written all over it; we're all going to come out ahead thanks to their strategy.

  • Extend It To Crypto (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashdotOgre (739181) on Tuesday April 08, @06:02PM (#23006014) Journal
    I hope they consider extending it to their crypto accelerator. Even low end Via boards (like the C3 I bought two years ago for $60 from newegg) include a hardware RNG and low level AES routines, and it would be cool to get some proper support. I've used Sun's crypto accelerators on their T2000's and the difference on certain algorithms is stunning.

    • Re:Extend It To Crypto (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TeknoHog (164938) on Tuesday April 08, @06:15PM (#23006118) Homepage Journal
      Umm, this has been in the vanilla Linux kernel for a while. I've tried it with the C7 with great success, too bad the rest of the motherboard wasn't particularly good with Linux.

    • Re:Extend It To Crypto - already done (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08, @06:17PM (#23006144)
      The Via H/W random generator is used as a /dev/[u]random driver in current kernels, and the AES engine is available as an openssl 'engine', so I'm not sure what else you need.

      Via really stuffed up, however, when they made repeated half-baked attempts at 'semi-binary' drivers which worked only on ancient versions like Redhat 9 and wouldn't provide any support or information on the MPEG decoding chip (in the CLE266 and above) which was essential to getting working DVD and DVB playback on the low power boards like the Nemiah.

      I won't hold my breath...

  • Cool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by markov_chain (202465) on Tuesday April 08, @06:06PM (#23006042) Homepage
    Hopefully they will officially GPL their wireless drivers too. They have source code for a nice, hackable, soft-MAC driver right now but no license.

  • linux.via.com.tw -- no such host (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Big Jojo (50231) on Tuesday April 08, @07:48PM (#23006962)

    Their press announcement arrived before any content, sigh.

    The PR says the website will start with: drivers, technical documentation, source code, and information regarding the VIA CN700, CX700/M, CN896 and the new VIA VX800 chipsets. It'd be good to see docs on their more widely used chipsets, like vt8235 and vt8237 ... detailed ones, including errata. I mean, currently they piss off almost everyone who uses their chipsets, so why would anyone want to buy NEW hardware with VIA chips if it's not even clear the current stuff can be made to work well?

    It's a nice idea, years overdue. But even at that, pre-announced.

    • That's total BS. Once more, it is not the year of the Linux Desktop- OR portable.

      It is the year of the rat:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_(zodiac) [wikipedia.org]

      Learn your lunar calendars, Slashdot.
    • There's a reason (two, actually)
      1: VIA chips, although they aren't known for stellar performance, are usually pretty low-power (but nowhere near ARM-based stuff)
      2: VIA produced something called the Nanobook, a reference design for the subsub-notebooks. Two machines have been released under this design: the Everex Cloudbook and the Packard-Bell Easynote XS

    • Re:Year of the Linux.... portable? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by turing_m (1030530) on Tuesday April 08, @09:11PM (#23007546)
      You are right. The rise of the low cost computer is the beginning of the end for high profit margins on Windows. The only real way they have of combatting FOSS is to release Windows for next to nothing and hope to extract some sort of money with Office. But that is a losing tactic as well. As capable computers approach the cost of a VCR, consumers will have the choice of getting something that does the job, or something that does the job and costs twice as much.

      What other options do MS have? They can't kill/buy off Via or the other commodity PC manufacturers that will spring up as know-how increases. Import restrictions can't stop world trade, are not popular and take a long time to implement.

      Killer apps to increase future price of computers? The average human has only so many needs that can be filled by an increasing number of instructions per second, especially when those instructions must be executed in parallel. Computers are fast enough for our senses (HD video, sound) and communications needs (bottleneck is in the networking). Most of the killer apps are already here. Any extra functionality enabled by some sort of high powered Intel machine is a small percentage of total functionality provided by the current crop of computers.

      In this sort of environment, owning a computer that will do almost everything is an easy decision for $200, even if it means acquainting yourself with a different operating system. Ubuntu is easy to install, but even easier if it just comes pre-installed on your device with all drivers working. With understanding comes trust, acceptance and consideration for use in other spheres of life. If anything, the killer app is a small, very low power, solid state computer (hence silent while requiring zero maintenance) - for firewalls, NAS, HTPC, portables, general PC use and home gaming. There is no real margin in any of this (except games), and no ability to fund the survival mechanisms of an operating system and office suite monopolist. Only niche players will find the margins.

      With high profit margins comes the resources to lobby, to advertise, to muscle hardware vendors. Maintaining their monopoly has not been cheap, but while there was profit to be had it was a sound business proposition. Without the money coming in, the collapse will be reminiscent of the Soviet Union - without the resources to maintain the empire, the decay will accelerate rapidly and people will be surprised at how rapidly and pervasively it actually happens.

    • Re:nVidia next? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mike Zilva (785109) on Tuesday April 08, @06:11PM (#23006080)
      I've got an intel G35 (integrated graphics) based board from Asus (P5E-VM HDMI) and im'm prety happy with 3D at 1600x1200 on ubuntu 8.04beta. I usualy don't like integrated devices, but I choose this board just bacause intel released open source drivers/specs and they deserve this choice.

    • Re:nVidia next? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kjella (173770) on Tuesday April 08, @06:23PM (#23006216) Homepage

      then ATI announced they were going strong on releasing their hardware specs and stuff like that opening the door for completely OSS drivers for ATI hardware. (I haven't seen anything yet, but I haven't been watching since I switched to nVidia.)
      Released:
      2D specs for R300-R500, R600
      3D specs for R300-R500
      Not released:
      3D specs for R600
      TCore (graphics card simulation)
      Might be released:
      Low-end code from the fglrx driver

      In short, they still haven't released the specs on their latest generation and R700 is expected sometime this year. Yes, it's a promising development but if you want the latest and greatest, it's closed source whether you go with ATI or nVidia...

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