Pandora, Framebuffer, X Servers And Hardware Acceleration

[sindbad]

Qtopia doesn't work to X11 because i shaving some of the dispatch overhead present in X11 and moving it a bit closer to shave a bit more off the system footprint. Unfortunately, this makes for other things being difficult, etc.

I was corrected once and looked it up later. Qtopia can render to X11; specifically on Openmoko, with a modified kdrive called Xgmalo. It heavily uses kdrive's EXA accelerating architecture, same thing we should do.

And I perfectly agree.

 

[Arialia]

it will be great with OpenVG but emulation of OpenVG need a good computer with a good graphics card, examples of imgtec run very slowly on mine ....

So i think than many of us couldn't test programming OpenVG without an Pandora or Dev Board

 

[ldesnogu]

So i think than many of us couldn't test programming OpenVG without an Pandora or Dev Board

I think even people with HW don't have these drivers yet... We should start begging TI!

 

[Svartalf]

I think even people with HW don't have these drivers yet... We should start begging TI!

Heh... You probably don't need that to start futzing with OpenVG. Like ES, there's RI's or wrappers for most everything:

http://www.khronos.org/files/openvg_1_0_ri

I don't know how much work one needs to provide to make it usable, but if it's anything like the RI for ES 1.0 for Linux, it's just compile and go.

[edit]

It looks ready to rock and roll for Windows- but there seems to be no make for Linux and that translates into some jiggery pokery needing to be done. I'll look into it here in a bit.

 

[Soulkiller]

Hmmm alright thats what I thought with the FB issue. Does anyone know if everything will run under linux? I know theres talk of having a bootloader standard along with a simple OS for games and a more advanced one that would probably run X11. The advanced one will definatly use the linux kernel but what about the simpler one? would that run bare with no under-layers? and if it did would that create incompatabilitys between apps written for this "simple os" and the more advanced, linux based one?

Basically what I'm worried about is that with these two diffrent OS's, its going to create a bunch of incompatible software with endless debates going on about which one should you develop for.

 

[Chip]

Basically what I'm worried about is that with these two diffrent OS's, its going to create a bunch of incompatible software with endless debates going on about which one should you develop for.

There is only going to be one (official) OS. There will no doubt be multiple GUI options, and I expect people will port over other linux-based OSes for various reasons, but you don't have to worry about incompatibility right out of the box.

 

[Tobriand]

Does anyone know if everything will run under linux? ... The advanced one will definatly use the linux kernel but what about the simpler one? would that run bare with no under-layers? and if it did would that create incompatabilitys between apps written for this "simple os" and the more advanced, linux based one?

There is no way whatsoever they'll ditch Linux in either of the default modes. It makes porting a LOT easier.

However, even without that, if the advanced one uses X and the simple one doesn't, then I'd imagine there would be incompatibilities, if only because of the framebuffer issues already mentioned. And possibly the multitasking ones too (Squidge mentioned possible issues arising when multitasking with programs that aren't expecting it, which would be much more likely - for whatever reason - outside of X).

(Note that whilst I have read about such issues on the forums, I'm not personally well versed in how it all works; I could, conceivably, be wrong).

 

[Svartalf]

There is no way whatsoever they'll ditch Linux in either of the default modes. It makes porting a LOT easier.

Not to mention that Linux provides system services that you kind of need- and if you don't have them, you have to implement them all over again. What most people don't realize is that there's a swedge of each and every Advance, PSP, and DS title that's dedicated to providing an OS on the unit past the bootloader. Having a consistent Linux image on there end-runs around that part and makes life a bunch easier. It's not as bad as you'd think, really.

QUOTE

However, even without that, if the advanced one uses X and the simple one doesn't, then I'd imagine there would be incompatibilities, if only because of the framebuffer issues already mentioned. And possibly the multitasking ones too (Squidge mentioned possible issues arising when multitasking with programs that aren't expecting it, which would be much more likely - for whatever reason - outside of X).



Which is why you need some sort of gatekeeper layer- the moment you add multitasking, multiapp, you have issues with switching between the two. An argument of "get rid of that" is a bit bogus. The reality is, if X isn't loaded, you don't have a gatekeeper. Arguments of X eating loads of RAM missed the tidbit that Nokia uses X11 on Maemo and they've got the same memory profile, etc, that the Pandora has. X11 doesn't eat loads of memory. It only does this if you're doing multiple desktops, etc. on it. Serious. Now, having said this, if you want a "bail-out" mode that causes X to go away and takes any app switching away (so that the game's the only thing running at the time...) you can accomplish this better with something like DirectFB which provides a minimal gatekeeper and places a network comms shim on top of it to provide the X11 support via the XDirectFB application.

However, this is all a moot point all the way around- it all depends on what the driver layup is to get 3D support out of the SGX- we will have to use things as TI provides them to us and ONLY that way. If you have to have X11 present, then you will get that and have to live with it. (Keep in mind EGL is NOT precluding X11- it's just NOT GLX, it's used instead of it...)