VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative 134
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Can you get it at ... (Score:5, Funny)
Can you get the Zonbu at zombo [zombo.com]?
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Re:Can you get it at ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Then you'll know how wonderful and supreme is zombocom. Zombocom is everything.
Re:Can you get it at ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Already big in little markets (Score:4, Funny)
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200? Luxury! In my day, we had an operating system imposed limit of 32, and considered ourselves lucky if we had that much.
(Sorry. The post was asking for it.)
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My first computer had 5K of RAM, and I was glad to have it. Boy was I happy when I got a cassette drive for it.
Now, get off my lawn.
This is good timing. (Score:3, Interesting)
Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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Getting closer, but still no cigar:
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At the moment, it only lacks two things for me:
Compared to fglrx, I'm glad they delivered the specs (and AFAIK some consulting for the devs) and not their changing codebase. Fglr
Because I'm too lazy to check myself... (Score:2)
How's the 3D acceleration? What about desktop effects and compositing (compiz)?
If there's a video decoder on the card (h.264), can you use it?
It's not fglrx I'm interested in comparing this to, it's this vs nVidia's binary drivers, and vs Windows on the same card.
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From the article I read, the open ATI drivers don't yet have accelerated 3D. Something about 2D still being worked on.
And yes, I'm as eager to ditch nVidia as you -- for my part, I'd assumed my compositing issues were KDE-specific (as I actually just use KWin's compositing), and it a
Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:5, Informative)
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The only time I reboot is when I recompile the kernel. Which will require rebuilding/installing the nvidia-drivers package anyway.
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Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:5, Funny)
I'll probably get suicided for telling you this, but i cant stay quiet any more.
the driver would reveil that it only has two parameter: maxfps and minpowerreq. Those parameter, on the other hand, is set from a simple jumper on the GFX-Card - the GPU isself has been the same from the first GForce almost a decade ago to the newest 9900 Models they are going to "invent" next year. All GPU's have the same Core, reverse engineered from a UFO that crashed in Fairbanks, New Mexico. They would release the new Models now, but Sam Carter is in another galaxy and is only one who has a signature-key for the Asgarth compiler. So, sorry, no opensource drivers for you!
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A 10 FPS difference is not worth drivers that seem to need reinstalling every reboot (thanks NVIDIA).
Are you living on the bleeding edge of daily recompiled kernels or something? I checked the box in restricted-manager once, and I've never had to worry about it again. I suppose we'll see how it goes with the pending Hardy upgrade soon, but at least for close to six months now it's been a complete non-issue. I do wish the LCD TV I have on the second DVI port would work right though...
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See:
http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#head-6cb9442ef3215e7aa8e2e1a13c73a7819a9e9890
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DISABLED_MODULES="nvidia nvidia_legacy nvidia_new"
to
Re:Nvidia have already open sourced what they can (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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What are you smoking??
Since when DVI started supporting audio?
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I have an Intel P35 or whatever ASUS board with an HDMI out, I don't use it as the Intel drivers and well just the video chipset itself sucks. For now I use an NVIDIA 8600 with an HDMI out but duh no audio on Linux. CABAC multithread H.264 decoding is awesome but I'd prefer to see the video card doing it. ENVY helps with the NVIDIA drivers BTW, the Ubuntu drivers in the repos
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The video card apparently includes it's own sound chip, a Realtek model. It could be a perversion of the specs, but it works, and hasn't blown up my TV, so I'm happy.
-- Joe
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I didn't think the DVI spec made any provision for audio on the pinout.
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This is the card in question: http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=2&l2=8&l3=634&l4=0&model=2051&modelmenu=1 [asus.com]
It would appear that the card is able to detect when a DVI to HDMI cable is being used (the TV indicates that it is connected via HDMI), and sends audio out over the DVI port. (Some Radeon HD cards require the dongle, others, like this one apparently, do not). Since HDMI does not
Way wrong (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Were are speaking about HARDWARE H264 (Score:2)
All this reports of h264 on linux are H264 played back on the CPU (using mplayer's ffmpeg library).
A normal mid- to hi- range CPU on a normal or small form factor motherboard.
What the parent was hoping for was support in Linux for *HARDWARE* assisted decode, the H264 decompression being handled in some hardware chip, either a dedicated chip (as it was the case back in the beginnings of MPE
Multicore H.264 decoding here! (Score:2)
http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52/ [xbmc.org] XBMC needs more deelopers too guys, help them out - it's
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In at least some cases, API info is kept hidden so the vendor doesn't have to document that the chipset init procedure is to follow the init sequence and if you lose the hardware race, strobe it's reset pin and try again. After 10-100 tries it'll come up.
In other cases, it's because the increadible whiz-bang feature so prominantly bullet pointed (strongly implying that the feature is implemented in hardware) turns out to be a cheezy soft implementation in the driver.
In still other cases, it's because th
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Year of the Linux.... portable? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Year of the Linux.... portable? (Score:4, Informative)
It is the year of the rat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_(zodiac) [wikipedia.org]
Learn your lunar calendars, Slashdot.
Re:Year of the Linux.... portable? (Score:5, Funny)
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Year of the rant (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Year of the rant (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Year of the Linux.... portable? (Score:4, Informative)
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)
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.
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My daily needs have been well and truly provided for since the P4. In fact, I don't own a faster computer than a P4. This has been the case for something like 4 years now. I'm at the point where a typical consumer in the classic Moore's Law yea
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Care to name them ? Because I've been looking for something just like this, to act as a lightweight server for my home network. The problem is, the only possible location is in my bedroom :(
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640k should be enough... meh. At some point, businesses approach diminishing returns with technology for the mass market. e.g. typical passenger jet versus Concorde. Another example, the AK-47 should be good enough for everyone, and was built in, you guessed it, 1947.
My daily needs have been well and truly provided for since the P4. In fact, I don't own a faster computer than a P4. This has been the case for something like 4 years now. I'm at t
nVidia next? (Score:3, Insightful)
ATI pissed me off too often where I had ATI in my Dell laptop for quite a while. I watched friends with nVidia in their machines do all sorts of nice things under Linux that I couldn't do with ATI. It was annoying, so eventually I bought an nVidia card for my laptop to replace the ATI and I too was doing nice things under Linux that I couldn't do with ATI... 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.)
And now here I sit with nVidia hardware in my laptop... waiting for driver updates, features and bugs to be added... same-ole-same-ole. I'd love for the speculation that nVidia will essentially fold under the pressure, but at the moment, I don't see that they are showing any signs of pressure.
Re:nVidia next? (Score:4, Interesting)
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So I guess this is a "Me Too!".
Nvidia has gotten the last of my money. If they can't release the specs for their I will no longer give them my money. Vote with my wallet.
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Re:nVidia next? (Score:4, Informative)
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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I hope nVidia continues to be a bastard. ATI and AMD seem to always have better technology than nVidia and Intel, but they get tramped on.
They get tramped on because they don't have better hardware - not since nVidia bought Voodoo, anyway. Their Phenom chips can't even best the low-end Intel chips, and that was pre-Nehalem.
They're playing with the whole "spider" platform for a reason - hoping that a bunch of parallelized, crappy hardware is the same as one good, expensive piece of hardware. (General
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The same goes for Intel and AMD. Intel has maybe 4 or 5 different research depts whereas AMD only has one. I'm calling BS on your better technology argument as both ATI and AMD have shown to wait until their competitors release something new and then they just copy the technology.
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Sadly AMD's CPU simply aren't fast enough and they aren't on 45nm yet like Intel. The E8400 I've got hits 4Ghz but under lengthy load isn't quite stable - 3.8Ghz is stable for 20+ hour transcoding runs. Want to bet AMD's quad clocked as high as it can go couldn't beat it? The new Intel quad cores are clocking 3.4Ghz to 3.6Ghz and smoke the AMD CP
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ATI hasn't released any 3d specs and no specs have been released on their newest card. It's more BS waiting from the company that excels at duping their customer.
While you're waiting for that open source 2d driver to become stable I'll get back to my 3d games, weeee!
LOL (Score:1, Funny)
Yes, just as soon as they get the Vista Drivers sorted out
kudos (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'll believe it when I see it working.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'll believe it when I see it working.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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As the the linux driver initiative, it's comforting to see them willing to cooperate with the open
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The amusing thing is, I bought a "Linux PC" with Ubuntu preinstalled not long ago, which came with one of these cards. Couldn't get the damned thing to run in more than 800x600, and had to go out and buy an nvidia card in the end...!
I like VIA's strategy (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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Re:Extend It To Crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Extend It To Crypto - already done (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
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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 agree with the general sentiments on the VIA-Linux relationship. However, my old system with a 1 GHz Nehemiah [sic] and CLE266 played DVDs just fine without MPEG2 acceleration, using MPlayer.
Cool (Score:4, Interesting)
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VIA... open... 3d.... driver..... (Score:2)
VIA Envy24 Audio Chipsets (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source Drivers? (Score:1, Funny)
will work with the community eh? (Score:3, Insightful)
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If they just publish the specs and stand back, I'm fine with that.
If they also release some of their current code under a free license it's a nice bonus.
ANOTHER bonus!
Mod Parent +5 Insightful (Score:2)
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linux.via.com.tw -- no such host (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
What license? (Score:2)
It would be interesting if all vendors did the same.
Anyhow, good news, everyone!
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Linux Driver Project headed by Greg K-H exists... (Score:2)
This seems especially stupidly timed the LDP's recent status report [linuxdriverproject.org].
Very late for this (Score:2)
Leverage existing projects (Score:2)
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