Re: arch/i386/boot rewrite, and all the hard-coded video cards

H. Peter Anvin
2007-05-01T21:53:11Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> And yes, I'm literally talking about the *text* modes. Not all of us want
> to have fbcon built in - I prefer my text-mode lean and mean and fast as
> hell, and if I want a frame buffer, I'll take X11, thank you very much.
>

I use framebuffer console pretty much for one purpose -- it sucks less
memory bandwidth when you're stuck with a UMA configuration. Text modes
require random access to the font buffer, which means it hogs the DRAM
pretty badly, unless the chipset designer decided to burn an 8K SRAM,
which is still a pretty pricey hunk of chip real estate.

-hpa