[ydl-gen] Video Monitors--2

[jmzorko at mac.com]

Ted,


>> The hypervisor only allows access to a framebuffer, and even then  
>> it's
>> not direct access.  The linux side writes to a frame buffer in main
>> memory, then uses the hypervisor to trigger a DMA transfer that  
>> copies
>> this to the real frame buffer on the GPU.
>
> OK, but has there been a definite "no, forget direct video and 2D
> acceleration" statement from Sony/nVidia/YDL?  It seems like this is
> the current state of affairs, but not necessarily the end of the
> story.


I think there is a big difference between "accelerated" and "direct"  
video.  The accelerated video is much more likely I think (after all,  
GameOS games have very good video performance, and they also run  
under the hypervisor), though the direct video (if you mean direct  
access to the hardware) I seriously doubt will happen on the PS3.   
The whole purpose of a hypervisor _is_ to abstract away the hardware  
and put it behind a gatekeeper (to make it much harder for certain  
malware applications to adversely impact the system, among other  
reasons).


>
>> It should be possible for applications to use the SPE's to accelerate
>> rendering to this internal frame buffer, but that will likely have to
>> be done one app at a time.  This could probably be done for both  
>> 2D and
>> 3D.  An SPE port of the OpenGL software renderer could do good things
>> for 3D apps for instance.
>
> As clever as this is, it's kind of silly to go that route considering
> the graphics device is right there on the motherboard.  If I could
> pick one program to get that acceleration, though, it would be  
> mplayer :)


It's not silly if you want what a hypervisor gives you, and it is a  
very secure way to design a system.  I do agree that the current PS3  
video performance under Linux isn't so great, though, and I am  
hopeful that some of the solutions discussed here can be implemented  
successfully.  I want Linux on my PS3 to be much more like OSX on my  
PPC and Intel Macs -- that being, really smooth and nice :-)


Regards,

John

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