[ydl-gen] Video Monitors--2
jmzorko at mac.com
jmzorko at mac.com
Tue Jan 9 15:45:26 MST 2007
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
Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
http://www.fallingyou.com
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