Hi, Yes only the XVR-300 and XVR-2500 are supported going forward for Solaris on SPARC. With the end of the SPARC workstation market, video cards on SPARC have declined. There use to be a huge list of cards that were supported with Xsun. But since Xsun has been replaced in Solaris 11 with Xorg and the drivers are closed sourced (came from companies outside of Sun), it's a difficult place to be stuck in. Ideally, Oracle should have NVidia or ATI cards that work on both platforms. Then again Oracle should have a SPARC-T3 or SPARC-T4 workstation for developers and small shops. Sun use to be pretty big with universities and labs for providing high-end graphics and rendering systems like the V890z(?). I still see lots of Sun workstations in hospitals running MRIs, CAT scanning gear, etc. It's a market Oracle should revive.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: unixcons...@yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: Nikola M. <minik...@gmail.com> To: opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org Cc: unixcons...@yahoo.com Sent: Mon, March 21, 2011 11:39:09 AM Subject: Re: [osol-discuss] Graphic cards for SPARC On 03/21/11 02:59 PM, Octave Orgeron wrote: > Hi, > > The two graphics card options you should look at are the XVR-300 and XVR-2500 > for SPARC. All other graphics cards are EOL and don't have support in the Xorg > consolidation in OpenSolaris and Solaris 11. It would be nice if there were >some > Nvidia cards that worked on SPARC, since they work so well on x86 for Solaris, > but that's not the case. For cards to work on SPARC, they have to have Fcode > support for the OBP to operate properly. > > There are other X11 server products you could use that have a wider support of > cards, just keep in mind that only cards designed for SPARC will operate at the > OBP. I think Xi Graphics is still around, so you can check them out: > > http://www.xig.com/Pages/OSsupport.html#Solaris%20OS%20anchor Thank you on your answer. I see now that on Oracle Desktop site, there are few graphics cards: Graphics Cards * Sun XVR-300 Graphics Accelerator * Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator * NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 Graphics Accelerator * NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 Graphics Accelerator * NVIDIA Quadro FX 570 Graphics Accelerator * NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290 Graphics Accelerator (128MB) So Oracle is selling graphic cards that can not work under SPARC/Solaris but only under x86, and the only two that can work on SPARC are XVR* ones? I suppose drivers are not there since low amount of cards is needed on SPARC market and cards needs to have special ROM inside. Is it only software/firmware side on the graphics card for OBP support or hardware needs to be different, too for Graphics card to work under SPARC? Seems to me like interesting point of sale for small to very small company for production of SPARC OBP supporting cards. Bad side is that Nvidia drivers are always closed source and Oracle does not want to pay for devolment for SPARC. And one can not do anything about Nvidia closed drivers, but porting.. Nouveau drivers from Linux (That have binary blob inside, probably x86-only) or to go to the adventure of open drivers for AMD cards that does not have even closed drivers for Solaris in the first place. _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
