From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by neteng.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/960327.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id KAA20033; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:56:21 -0700 Return-Path: Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/960327.SGI.AUTOCF) id KAA13992 for linux-list; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:56:09 -0700 Received: from morgaine.engr.sgi.com (morgaine.engr.sgi.com [130.62.16.64]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/960327.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id KAA13972 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:56:07 -0700 Received: (from offer@localhost) by morgaine.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/960327.SGI.AUTOCF) id KAA09414; Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:53:12 -0700 From: offer@sgi.com (richard offer) Message-Id: <9706171053.ZM9344@sgi.com> Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:53:12 -0700 In-Reply-To: Miguel de Icaza "Re: Good news: no more begging for HW" (Jun 17, 12:10pm) References: <199706171710.MAA15321@athena.nuclecu.unam.mx> X-Signature: Automatically generated by Richards Own Mail Signer (roms) X-Home-Page: http://reality.sgi.com/offer X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.3 08feb96 MediaMail) To: Miguel de Icaza Subject: Re: Good news: no more begging for HW Cc: linux@morgaine.engr.sgi.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk * $ from miguel@nuclecu.unam.mx at "17-Jun:12:10pm" | sed "1,$s/^/* /" * * * * > If someone takes the server, I'll try and get the clients libraries done * > (assuming that I can get remote access to a box). * * I was interested in working on the X server for the SGI. I already * did that for the Linux/SPARC, and I had a couple of questions to make, * so this seems like a good time to ask them (please note that I haven't * actually traced my SGI X server to see what it does). The questions are good, but I'm not the person who can answer them, me I'm a Motif hacker, anything at a level lower than Xt is akin to assembler for me. So with that in mind take the rest with a pinch of salt. * * 1. On the SPARC, the X server mmap()s the frame buffer into its * address space and uses a couple of ioctls to talk with the kernel * (to ask the kernel to change the palette and the hardware cursor, * on later versions, with got rid of that, and we just poked at the * frame buffer control registers from the X server). * * How does this work on the SGI? Is the video card just a thing that * can be mapped into the X server address space? * * If this is the case, getting the X11R6 server to work will just take * a couple of days of coding. * * * 2. What kind of acceleration features are available on the SGI * machines? The X11R6 server has hooks for different set of * features, so for example, bitblit can be easily hacked into the X * server. * * But I imagine the SGI has more acceleration features that I can * dream of. The problem is that (I think) we have so many graphics cards that its done differently in every one (some cards are simple frame buffers (8/24bit), then there are some with multiple GE, oh and we also have extra visuals for overlay and pop-ups. The O2 has no graphics memory, everything is done in main memory. * * * 3. How does OpenGL work on the SGIs? Is the OpenGL engine embedded in * the X server, or it is something that is present on the video card? * * I looked yesterday at a program called glxinfo, which led me to * believe that applications may have some of the GL code linked in * trough the libraries and the other part resides on the X server. Both :-) We don't do things the way easy here. The is a GLX extension in the X server which allows GL to run in an X window. There is also I think a DSO that holds the hardware specific GL calls. * * So, in this case, what are the specs for what needs to be on the X * server to be able to run OpenGL applications. * * * 4. Would it be possible for a free software company to redistribute * the SGI's X server? In that case, we could concentrate on getting * the IRIX emulation as good as possible and just use the SGI X * server and let Red Hat/Debian/GNU ship the cd with that binary. This would be my preferred solution, but I've had many an argument on this subject that I felt very dubious about bringing it up again. To me the quickest (and the best) way of getting an X server would be if we could simply port the existing Irix X server to Linux/SGI. My suggestion would be, now that we have backing for hardware to get official backing for software. I don't think we should neccesarrily release the source code for the ddx part of the X server to the public, but we should at least be able to get backing to release .o files so the user could re-link the X server if they needed to (Sun have done this before). * * * Cheers, * Miguel. * * richard ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard M. Offer Widget FAQ --> http://reality.sgi.com/widgetFAQ MTS-Core Design (Motif) ___________________________________________http://reality.sgi.com/offer