VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative

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."

Already big in little markets

[dotancohen]

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)

Year of the Linux.... portable?

[lwsimon]

We're seeing more and more VIA CPUs in Linux-based "low-end" laptops. I think this really bode well for Linux. If we establish a presence in these internet-as-an-appliance devices, we can use it as a staging point to move into the desktop market.

I like VIA's strategy

[$random_var]

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

[SlashdotOgre]

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:Year of the Linux.... portable?

[malevolentjelly]

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.

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[pc486]

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

ATI hasn't just promised, they did:

http://ati.amd.com/developer/open_gpu_documentation.html [amd.com]
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=842&num=1 [phoronix.com]

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[dotancohen]

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

Since September, ATI is really far along, to the point where the free drivers are already improving with the published specs. ATI isn't only promising, they are delivering.

Re:nVidia next?

[Kjella]

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...

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[SanityInAnarchy]

Getting closer, but still no cigar:

However, this new driver does support the Radeon HD 2000 (R600) family... Don't expect any miracles from this driver just yet. At this point, the RadeonHD driver is really targeted for developers and those wanting to use the experimental driver whether it is due to problems using the fglrx driver on the system or just wishing to test out the driver to see if it works for you. As long as AMD sticks to their word on delivering the rest of their documentation, there will not be too much (if any) reverse engineering that needs to take place for the R500 and R600 series. However, the driver is still likely a few months out from a stable point for 2D users (perhaps in time for X.Org 7.4) and then the 3D work after that.

I don't have time to help develop a driver, which means I'm willing to hold off another year or two on actually buying a new video card, but nVidia is still going to work better until this open driver is finished.

I mean, yes, it's awesome that we have specs, but apparently, they didn't deliver source code.

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[just-a-stone]

I am using RadeonHD for ~4-5 Months now and it works like a charm für my X1400. XRandR 1.2 is supported, its auto-detection for dualhead resolutions works better then fglrx/catalyst for me, most things seem to as they are going the "right for Xorg" way.

At the moment, it only lacks two things for me:

• * accelerated AND zoomed video/DVD output
• * power management

Compared to fglrx, I'm glad they delivered the specs (and AFAIK some consulting for the devs) and not their changing codebase. Fglrx had a moving year...
And the efforts at RadeonHD are pretty promising so far.

Re:Year of the Linux.... portable?

[Constantine XVI]

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:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[TheDugong]

"A 10 FPS difference is not worth drivers that seem to need reinstalling every reboot (thanks NVIDIA)." Let me guess, you use Ubuntu and have the restricted drivers installed? I haven't looked at this for 1 or 2 years, but the restricted drivers (including the nvidia drivers) are copied to a ram disk mounted somewhere in the kernel module directory tree (can't remember where) at boot time (no idea why). So, if you have the restricted drivers installed and then install the nvidia drivers from nvidia's website (from a NVIDIAxxxxxx.run file) the files will be installed to a ram disk, which of course disappears, along with the files you have installed there, on reboot. IOW, this is not nvidia's fault.

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[corvair2k1]

It's likely that your reinstall on every boot is necessary because your distribution includes several open source replacement drivers which interfere with the one you installed. This can be fixed via adding

DISABLED_MODULES="nvidia nvidia_legacy nvidia_new"

to /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common , or something like it.

Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can

[TheDugong]

nvidia module is probably not loaded at boot time. I guess the nvidia installer loads it when the driver is installed.

See:

http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#head-6cb9442ef3215e7aa8e2e1a13c73a7819a9e9890

Way wrong

[io-waiter]

Browse the mythtv lists and you will find many h.264 on linux users, I actually watched h.264 yesterday on my linux box.
The problem is the lack of multithreading on h.264 more than the lack of GPU offloading, the GPU offload barely works in windows I would like to add.

h.264 on Linux is core2 today, here are som examples on playback hardware
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/HD_Playback_Reports [mythtv.org]

So please stop this myth about h.264 not being possible on linux.