Brett Lymn wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 07:36:43AM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>   
>> Nvidia and ATI are losing this business soon, I think (ATI has had a big
>> chunk of it in the past), and it will be picked up by companies that are
>> more friendly, such as Matrox.
>>
>>     
>
> Now that should make them take notice - more so than some random
> telling them that unless they opensource their driver they won't buy
> the product.  Losing something they had should make more impact than
> something they never had.
>   

I doubt it. In our case it means a few thousand fewer units sold. This
would be a big deal for 3Dlabs or Matrox, but for Nvidia or ATI, its in
the noise. They'll probably never even notice. Heck, I wouldn't be
surprised if some ATI guys are "glad" they don't have to support our
non-x86 platforms anymore. (Not that they ever provided much support in
the first place.)

For 2D stuff, ATI mobility products have few competitors. Silicon Motion
parts look like a good alternative, but I had already written a bunch of
code for Radeon. We'll still keep using Radeons on our embedded
thin-clients, but for the high end we're moving away from ATI as soon as
I can find an alternative.

>   
>> The problem is that Nvidia and ATI make their money on PCs, selling to
>> mostly gamers. That audience runs Windows, largely. Until that changes,
>> Nvidia and ATI will keep on playing their silly games.
>>
>>     
>
> Yes.  It is changing a bit but there is a long way to go.
>   

Its not changing _enough_. The market is still nearly totally dominated
by PCs, and most of those those run some form of windows. The rest run
Linux. The very few of us that run something else (NetBSD or Solaris) on
our PCs are considered part of the fringe.

And those of us who use something other than a PC or Mac are even more
marginalized.

>   
>> I'll be encouraging our company to move away from ATI, so we can work
>> with a supplier who actually wants to provide documentation to create 3D
>> graphics products. I don't care if the documentation is under NDA, so it
>> won't necessarily do the FOSS community any good, but it will mean that
>> companies like XiG can keep on getting documentation.
>>
>>     
>
> Same here - if XiG had a driver for an ATI 9800XT a couple of years
> ago I would have plunked down the cash right then and there for that
> driver.  Unfortunately I found no such driver, only a note saying that
> XiG could not obtain details for the card from ATI even under NDA.
>   

That hasn't changed, to my knowledge.

>  
>   
>> This also means you'll probably be able to play OpenGL games on Linux
>> with these boards, if you can afford the hardware and software to make
>> them work. :-)
>>
>>     
>
> I already can play OpenGL (and DirectX) games on Linux - some native
> binaries and others using cedega (commercially supported Wine).  I do
> pay a premium to avoid windows but really it is no worse than having
> to pay for windows every few years.
>
>   
>> On the bright side, Intel and Silicon Motion seem to be a bit more open.
>> Maybe someone needs to work harder to make a Linux/Unix friendly laptop.
>> Sort of like a geek's version of the OLPC.
>>
>>     
>
> I don't know about Silicon Motion but, in general, the Intel 3d
> accelerators are not the best performing devices at the moment.
>   

No. The only performers on the market are ATI and Nvidia. Matrox is a
remote 3rd, and everyone else is in the noise.


-- 
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer
Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division,
General Dynamics C4 Systems
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Phone: 951 325-2134  Fax: 951 325-2191