[ydl-gen] Slow ibook X11 (2D)

[Kai Staats]

> In my opinion, this will
> never change with PPC hardware, which is a tiny niche of a small
> niche. It would be nice if a PPC vendor like Fixstars could fix this,
> but they would need serious cooperation from the GPU manufacturers
> and that is likely not forthcoming (the PS3 linux disaster is a case
> at point).

Yes, because PPC hardware is a relatively small player in the commodity, 
consumer world, there is less pressure and less reason for companies such as 
Apple to support Linux. But the inside story is that Apple was conflicted, 
for at one time (2000/2001) they had a Linux Technology Manager, full-time, 
with a small team at his disposal. But eventually, this position was 
terminated (as far as I know).

Apple's shareholders want religious focus, not me-too consideration of all 
things possible. Linux simply was not on the radar outside of the work by the 
former Terra Soft, which was granted a unique license to install Linux and 
maintain warranty, but never received a single bit of data.

Concerning Sony, similar unfolding. While the former CEO of Sony had a vision 
for the PS3 to be more than a game box, selling PS3s without games actually 
loses money for Sony (or so the rumor goes). So if you open the RSX so that 
Linux lovers may run their favorite games (Windows emus as well) on the PS3, 
Sony loses money on each PS3 they sell to Linux users who don't buy games.

You have to keep in mind that >90% of PPC is embedded. We use it every day for 
telecom, auto, routers, etcv. And most of it is running some flavor of 
Linux/Unix. What we as consumers enjoy is a unique PPC + Linux combination 
for the desktop which is by no means the largest following on the planet.

Consumers + x86 + Linux makes money for x86 OEMs due to the incredible variety 
of low-cost parts and systems.

PPC + Linux is an increasingly powerful combination in supercomputing and 
embedded applications, but to date, there have not been a great many consumer 
products built on Power.

But all things cycle, right? So maybe some of the new CPUs from Freescale or 
AMCC will find their way into consumer products again ... or maybe the next 
gen Playstation will have more RAM --who knows?

Until then, Fixstars does its best to support the commodity systems to keep 
the ecosystem healthy. It is more difficult to sell high-end systems if we do 
not have the mid-range as well, something to experiment with or run on the 
side of the cluster for devel or testing. The PS3 works very well for this, 
and plays a significant role in several outstanding clusters.

Could we get 2D, even 3D support for the older Macs? Sure, but could we 
justify the expense? No, not unless we charge a helluvalot more for the 
licenses.

Sincerely,
kai