On Mon, 09 Jun 2003 08:06:42 -0700
Ian Romanick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Wouter Bijlsma wrote:
> > I already posted this to the DRI devel mailing list, but perhaps someone here
> > knows more about it.
>
> In general, reverse engineering drivers tends to irritate hardware
> companies. Since we want to maintain good working relationships with
> these companies, so that they will give us documentation and sample
> boards, we're better off not irritating them. That's not to mention the
> fact that it's very difficult to get anything useful out of it.
>
> The problem WRT 3D on the whole range of IGP chipsets is that the
> relevant DRI developers don't have access to the hardware. Moreover,
> most of them don't have the bandwidth to work on debugging the problems.
Ok, I understand RE might irritate HW companies and that this is not a good thing. I
already sent a really polite e-mail about support for the IGP chipsets to ATI, and I
hope a lot of people will do the same. The problem is that (as I see it) more and more
companies are closing up their specs anyway (nVidia, but they never even provided
specs of their chips, ATI, SiS as of lately). I just don't get why almost the whole
line of ATI chipsets is supported by an open source driver, except for the IGP (which
can be found in lots of new laptops and even in motherboards from about a year ago).
It's a pity the DRI folks don't have access to the hardware. I do. But I'm not a
driver developer (though I'm quite skilled in C, assembler and graphics code). Would
it be a bad thing for me to try and find out if the existing 7000 driver can be
adapted to work on the IGP chipsets? Would it actually be possible to get something
useful out of this, or is this to complex or involved for me? Would the results be of
any use to the DRI developers? I'm not talking about reverse engineering the whole
driver, only finding out if the IGP chipset is very different from the 7000.
Wouter Bijlsma,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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