From owner-freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 6 09:22:55 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1C73A2A3 for ; Mon, 6 May 2013 09:22:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rfg@tristatelogic.com) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFDCC109 for ; Mon, 6 May 2013 09:22:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60D083AF4C for ; Mon, 6 May 2013 02:22:48 -0700 (PDT) From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" To: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Subject: Status of ATI video acceleration support? Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 02:22:48 -0700 Message-ID: <48795.1367832168@server1.tristatelogic.com> X-BeenThere: freebsd-x11@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: X11 on FreeBSD -- maintaining and support List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 09:22:55 -0000 Greetings again all, Could someone please tell me what the current status is of FreeBSD+X11 support for AMD/ATI/Radeon graphics cards generally, and for video acceleration on such cards specifically, and for support for video acceleration on Radeon HD 5450 based cards even more specifically? It would be Nice if this worked. (I have one of the HD 5450s already, and will soon be taking delivery on another. THESE CARDS ARE DIRT CHEAP THESES DAYS!) I'm neither a graphics guy nor a X guy, and I only barely understand even the terminology related to any of this stuff, but I have just now gone back and re-read some of my messages to this list (and the corresponding responses) from last November, to try to refresh my memory. If I am recalling correctly, the Big Deal with all this stuff is that the Xorg folks... mostly or entirely at the behest of the Linux folks... have re-jigged the kernel/userland interface so as to put more of the work and responsibility for various things (e.g. mode switching) into the kernel, and this has made it kind of a pain in the ass for all the (few) FreeBSD/X11 hackers who have subsequently been obliged to try to mimic that substantial change. Is that roughly an accurate description? When I was last asking about any of this, I gather that the changes had already been made (to the FreeBSD kernel) to support this change in the case of graphics cards based on Intel chips, but the work had not yet been done to support this change for any AMD/ATI/Radeon graphics chips. Is that also an approximately correct assertion? If so, what is the current state of this work... for ATI/AMD/Radeon? Is anybody even working on it at all at this point? I mean from the FreeBSD side? (I am vaguely curious too what the state of play is for Nvidia based cards as well.) Googling around just now for some hints as to the current status of these things, I found a couple of really tantalizing pages, specifically this one: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AMD_GPU and also this one: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_opensource_uvd&num=1 The former causes me to have some hope that AMD GPUs _generally_ might have some decent support in FreeBSD+X11 already. The latter causes me to have some hope that if all the work to support such cards (in FreeBSD+X11) has not yet been completed, then perhaps at least those working on it may have an easier time of it, at least starting as of April 3rd of this year, or thereabouts... ... or was that just another in a long tradition of Internet April Fools jokes? Regards, rfg