The new gma500 driver

[prj]

The new driver is working (but with a few issues). If you would like to give it a try do the following:

[Update] 2011-07-12: No need to patch anymore

1. Get Greg's staging tree
# git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-2.6.git

2. Checkout staging-next
# cd staging-2.6
# git checkout staging-next

3. Configure, make and install your kernel. How you do this depends on your distribution. It's prefered to compile the gma500 driver as a module.

4. Reboot into new kernel and load module with
# modprobe psb_gfx

Currently the driver cannot get the monitor EDID so you might be limited to a few standard resolutions. On my HDMI TV I get no working resolutions at all.

Best of luck

[prj]

The Fit-PC2 patch just landed in 3.0-rc3 and will be included in the final 3.0 release. Did some testing on another machine with gma500 (LVDS hookup) and the performance is quite ok. Youtube clips are now watchable in 340p (not in fullscreen though).

Parsing EDID is still not working, seems the SDVO output code need some more TLC.

[Dominik]

hm, where's the difference to fbdev?

[prj]

hm, where's the difference to fbdev?

2D acceleration, and when the SDVO code gets fixed you'll have proper video modes.

Not ready for production use, but feel free to test it.

[Dominik]

What means '2D-Acceleration'. I'm using fbdev about a whole year. Scrolling is smoother. I aleready tested emgd-driver at debian squeeze and psb-driver at ubuntu. With both drivers scrolling were horrible.

How about that kernel driver (psb_gfx module). Is scrolling (in xterminal-windows) and drawing windows under X11 smooth enough? What means 2d Acceleration? Is it possible to play normal videos with mplayer in fullscreen (with x11 or xv-video output)?

[prj]

What means '2D-Acceleration'. I'm using fbdev about a whole year. Scrolling is smoother.

The idea with 2D acceleration is to offload common operations like blitting (see wikipedia) from the CPU to the GPU. This lets the CPU focus on other stuff than shuffling and converting data to the framebuffer.

So yes, scrolling should be faster, but I haven't tested it myself.

[yakumoklesk]

Hi. I upgraded the distribution of my fit-pc2, from ubuntu 8 to 10.04. I was looking for support for flash-player 10.3, that claimed to support acceleration on GMA500. Unluckily, Ubuntu 10.04 does not support GMA500 out of the box, and the driver I found:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport ... rdsPoulsbo

does not work either. At the moment, drivers are installed but I get a blank screen, and cannot execute terminals. The only thing I can do is shut down, start with recovery mode and remove the drivers.

Yet I have to test more things, because I don't give up so easily. That is why I am here. I would really like at least video acceleration. 2D acceleration also could be great. I've heard that mandriva and fedora gets even 3D acceleration.

I would appreciate any help, and if I can do anything to help, don't doubt asking me. It would be nice haven 2D, 3D, and video acceleration in my fit-pc2.

Thank you very much in advance.

[prj]

This is not really the right thread for this (it's for the psb_gfx driver) but I understand your confusion since the topic doesn't really say much.

Unluckily, Ubuntu 10.04 does not support GMA500 out of the box, and the driver I found:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport ... rdsPoulsbo

does not work either.

That link actually points to 4 different drivers. I haven't tested anything else than the psb_gfx driver recently, but from the looks of it you need either the PSB or EMGD driver.

Flash hardware acceleration for the GMA500 sounds a bit too good to be true in my ears. Are you sure that it's not a Windows only feature?

[monnier]

Parsing EDID is still not working, seems the SDVO output code need some more TLC.

Is there any news on this? With the 3.0 kernel, the new module seems to work but only gives me 1280x1024 on my 1600x1200 monitor.
Is there some way I can tell the module manually which resolution to use?

[prj]

Here's a status update...

I've managed to get the SDVO DDC bus working and successfully parsing the EDID by replacing the current implementation with the one from the i915 driver. It still needs to be hooked up to the rest of the code (i915 handles encoders and connectors differently) properly but I'm working on it.

I recently got IRQ support up and running so now we can sync to vblank. IRQ support will also allow us to catch SDVO hotplug events. Patches available here

Is there some way I can tell the module manually which resolution to use?

There is no module parameter for that. Perhaps there is a way to inject modelines (xrandr?) but I haven't played with that.