Re: Intel i810 - XFree86

["Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE" <athompso@commerced.com>]

"Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE" wrote:
> I'm grabbing the source right now to see what the notes are...

Oh, man.  Don't expect i810 support to show up under OBSD real soon. 
I'm sure it will happen, but a linux-only kernel module will have to get
ported to *BSD first.

Unless, that is, GART support already exists under *BSD ?  I can't find
any mention of it in the OpenBSD source tree.  For that matter, it
appears as though all AGP devices are accessed as PCI devices?  (Which
*is* legitimate, I know!)

It's relatively complicated because there exists some dcache memory on
the i810 chip itself (0Mb on a standard i810, 4Mb on the i810-dc100)
that can only be accessed through the GART.  There exists no other way
(apparently) to get into that memory, as it's actually integrated into
the 810 chipset.

Apparently, however, (typical Intel...) that dcache memory has
significantly less bandwidth to the blitter than regular system RAM.  Go
figure.

The guys who wrote the GART kernel module for Linux are both Precision
Insight guys - Jeff Hartmann (jhartmann) and Keith Whitwell (keithw)
both @precisioninsight.com.

For anyone wanting to have a look, the files in question are at
	xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/vga256/drivers/i810/os-support/linux
under the XFree86 3.3.6 source tree.

--
Adam Thompson, MCNE, MCSE, CWT, A+
Vice-President / Chief Technology Officer, Commerce Design Inc.
<athompso@commerced.com>
tel: (204) 942-1648, fax: (204) 989-8080, cell: (204) 782-6198