How Video Cards Work.

How Video Cards Work.

[Chris Ball]

Hi all,

Some useful links on understanding Xorg/DRM architecture:

   http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/HowVideoCardsWork
   http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Radeon_25Architecture

It would be awesome if this list could be used for us to teach each
other about how to work on drivers.  Does nouveau have anything like
an equivalent of the basic "Radeon Architecture" page yet?

Thanks!

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>

How Video Cards Work.

[Chris Ball]

Hi all,

Some useful links on understanding Xorg/DRM architecture:

   http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/HowVideoCardsWork
   http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Radeon_25Architecture

It would be awesome if this list could be used for us to teach each
other about how to work on drivers.  Does nouveau have anything like
an equivalent of the basic "Radeon Architecture" page yet?

Thanks!

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>

Re: How Video Cards Work.

[Mark Carey]

Chris,

On 5/6/07, Chris Ball <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Some useful links on understanding Xorg/DRM architecture:
>
>    http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/HowVideoCardsWork
>    http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Radeon_25Architecture
>
> It would be awesome if this list could be used for us to teach each
> other about how to work on drivers.  Does nouveau have anything like
> an equivalent of the basic "Radeon Architecture" page yet?

We have a link up to the HowVideoCardsWork on the front page of the
wiki and there is some work mooted on understanding video hardware
from a beginners point of view (see IRC logs
http://lattice.u-strasbg.fr/irclogs/nouveau-2007-05-04).

It would be good to compliment this with information on "Nvidia
Architecture", sounds like a research project?

Regards,

Mark Carey

Re: How Video Cards Work.

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Sun, 6 May 2007 08:31:01 +1200
"Mark Carey" <mark.carey-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On 5/6/07, Chris Ball <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > It would be awesome if this list could be used for us to teach each
> > other about how to work on drivers.  Does nouveau have anything like
> > an equivalent of the basic "Radeon Architecture" page yet?
> 
> We have a link up to the HowVideoCardsWork on the front page of the
> wiki and there is some work mooted on understanding video hardware
> from a beginners point of view (see IRC logs
> http://lattice.u-strasbg.fr/irclogs/nouveau-2007-05-04).

Hiya,

I have started a page aimed to be an introduction to working with
(Nouveau) graphics from the driver side. I do not know what I am
missing and what is relevant, so I'd like to have comments or people
could improve the page themselves.

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/IntroductoryCourse

This is by no means supposed to a replacement for the long-waited
Nouveau driver crash course, but more of a prerequisite.

-- 
Pekka "PQ" Paalanen
http://www.iki.fi/pq/

Re: How Video Cards Work.

[Chris Ball]

On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 07:37:06PM +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> I have started a page aimed to be an introduction to working with
> (Nouveau) graphics from the driver side. I do not know what I am
> missing and what is relevant, so I'd like to have comments or people
> could improve the page themselves.
> 
> http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/IntroductoryCourse
> 
> This is by no means supposed to a replacement for the long-waited
> Nouveau driver crash course, but more of a prerequisite.

Great!  This is really excellent, much needed work.

A few months ago someone called Honza Havlicek was working on a wiki
page to try and document the nVidia architecture, which he called
"Developer Guidebook".  It's at:
   http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/HonzaHavlicek

I e-mailed Honza a few days ago to ask if he's still interested in
hacking on nouveau, but no reply yet.  My hope is that we could work
together on this document to bring it up to being a complete and
accurate mid-level description of how we render with 3D.

I also found this document recently:
   http://rivatv.sourceforge.net/stuff/riva128.txt

It's outdated, but the "Example: How to render a solid rectangle?"
section makes a lot of sense.  Between Honza's description of the MMIO 
registers and the functional descriptions at the URL above, I think we 
could get to a point where we're able to explain how rendering works 
to someone sufficiently interested.  :)

- Chris.
-- 
Chris Ball   <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>

Re: How Video Cards Work.

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Sat, 12 May 2007 18:23:22 +0100
Chris Ball <cjb-2X9k7bc8m7Mdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 07:37:06PM +0300, Pekka Paalanen wrote:
> > I have started a page aimed to be an introduction to working with
> > (Nouveau) graphics from the driver side. I do not know what I am
> > missing and what is relevant, so I'd like to have comments or people
> > could improve the page themselves.
> > 
> > http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/IntroductoryCourse
> 
> A few months ago someone called Honza Havlicek was working on a wiki
> page to try and document the nVidia architecture, which he called
> "Developer Guidebook".  It's at:
>    http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/HonzaHavlicek
> 
> I e-mailed Honza a few days ago to ask if he's still interested in
> hacking on nouveau, but no reply yet.

Yes, I thought about linking that, but since there are those notes "do
not read this", I did not.

> I also found this document recently:
>    http://rivatv.sourceforge.net/stuff/riva128.txt

I already linked to that.

> It's outdated, but the "Example: How to render a solid rectangle?"
> section makes a lot of sense.  Between Honza's description of the
> MMIO registers and the functional descriptions at the URL above, I
> think we could get to a point where we're able to explain how
> rendering works to someone sufficiently interested.  :)

I do not think I have yet time to start really reading and writing
documentation. To be honest, I have not read all the articles I
put a link to. This was just a quick idea from my side.

-- 
Pekka "PQ" Paalanen
http://www.iki.fi/pq/