Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 21:07:28 -0500 From: James Higgins <higginsj@iname.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: [Fwd: Re: I want a 3D accelerated X-se[r]ver!] - From Nvidia About the Riva TNT Message-ID: <36367C60.8CD6EA66@iname.com>
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Hello,
I saw a question about this and I sent the guy to info@nvidia.com.
Looks like they have been getting alot of response. I kind of
understand the viewpoint of nvidia. I still want OpenGL acceleration
though. : )
Thought I would pass it along for all interested....
James Higgins
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: I want a 3D accelerated X-se[r]ver!
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 17:06:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Jim Putnam <putnam@NVidia.COM>
To: John.McKenzie@delta-air.com,
Rickard.Eneqvist@swipnet.se,Stefan.Pedersen@ks.ericsson.se,
UNT012@ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de,aod@unisys.com.br, bg19056@binghamton.edu,
bg19739@binghamton.edu,brion@pobox.com, budnik@alpha.rada.kiev.ua,
cccomputers@iname.com,cfriesen@home.com, cicotti@cli.di.unipi.it,
dimitri@ibb.net,doctor.stein@usa.net, echampion@home.com,
fredrik@reite.com,gus@e-chemie.tu-darmstadt.de, hans.jones@midatorer.se,
hemenk@infi.net,higginsj@iname.com, ian@greetme.com,
irsman@iag.net,jarlaxle@falcon.cc.ukans.edu, jason@alltel.net,
joerg@suse.de,jon.davis@lmco.com, jtew@ihug.co.nz,
karsten.hahn@stud.uni-karlsruhe.de,kmoore@frognet.net,
kovacsp@egr.uri.edu, krauss@medizin.fu-berlin.de,kress@datacomm.ch,
locogris@arnet.com.ar, martin.gaebler@TalkNet.de,mavrick@sinesurf.co.nz,
mbenson@magideas.com, mechanix@digibel.org,mholling@coginst.uwf.edu,
moooster@uclink4.berkeley.edu,morrill@austin.ibm.com, naeem@cyweb.com,
nbecker@fred.net,ober37@mediaone.net, patrick@narkinsky.ml.org,
pc@shaw.wave.ca,ralf.horns@itzehoe.netsurf.de, reid@lanl.gov,
rjd3@bigfoot.com,rob@austin.rr.com, rw@dialup.ptt.ru,
sasa.mihajlovic@hpt.hr,simba@leontief.ru, sjoel@sjoel.xs4all.nl,
souser@gis.net,souser@windoms.sitek.net, tnaleid@uswest.net,
tozwierz@medianet.pl,wlj@cais.com, woland@cbr.astrakhan.su,
wolfrum@cs.uni-bonn.de,xray@friko.onet.pl
Thank you (all) for writing.
Since there seem to be quite a lot of you all concerned about the
same
topic, I thought I'd take the liberty of answering you en masse. If
I
didn't answer your question in this mail, please feel free to
contact
me individually. I'm sorry for the length of what is to follow, but
the
issues you've raised are complex.
First, for those of you happy with the purchase of your RIVA
accelerator,
thank you. We work hard to provide world-class graphics at an
affordable
price, and we realize you have options when you make such a
purchase. For
those of you who are unhappy because you do not have Linux support
when
you thought you did or should have, we're genuinely sorry. It was
never
our intention to mislead anyone as to the kinds and levels of
software
support available for our products.
As you may or may not know, NVIDIA is in the business of providing
graphics accelerator chip designs to chip fabrication firms and
large
OEMs, and indirectly, to system integrators. Many of our OEMs also
produce products for the retail market. We don't market graphics
boards
ourselves, nor do we have any fab capacity; those are done by our
customers.
As with any operational business, we listen very carefully to the
needs
of our customers. Unless we meet those needs, we go out of business.
To
date, the requirements of our customers have been unambiguous; their
primary emphasis is high 2D/3D performance on the Windows operating
systems
through the implementation and support of standard 2D and 3D
programming
interfaces (which means OpenGL and D3D).
We do the Windows drivers and library implementations ourselves
because
we know the chip architecture best. Many of our OEMs take our
drivers
and modify them because they have favorite control panels and
things, and
some of them add functionality to our chip (no two board
manufacturers
do video in quite the same way, for example), and support that
through
additions to our drivers.
We have not had a customer require Linux support, it seems that the
majority of their customers don't demand it. It would be nice if
this
would change. Informing your favorite board vendor of your
requirements
would help.
One of the things we decided some time ago was that we would not be
in
the business of trying to write anything other than the Windows code
ourselves. Linux is by no means unique in this respect, we also
don't
provide any direct support for OS/2, BeOS, Solaris, or any of the
other
fifty or so potentially interesting operating systems out there.
This
is partly because our customers haven't required it, and partly
because
we must devote all of our effort to refining and improving the
things
our customers do require. This will not change soon if at all; we
are
not going to begin doing drivers for random operating systems
ourselves.
All of our customers are under heavy non-disclosure agreements. They
also
get a considerable amount of support from us in the form of source
code,
and assistance for answering questions they have. As such, we have
not
developed documentation for our chipset which is adequate to be used
without some form of support. This is not by design, it is a
consequence
of six month design cycles, and tight deadlines in the consumer
marketplace. A chip specification for a design as complex as ours
without
support is useless, as we've found out in the past.
A second problem is that our chip specifications are the basis on
which
our company builds products, and as such is intellectual property.
Access
to those specifications without NDA protection or completed patent
filings on all topics of interest violates the requirement to keep
proprietary information private.
So, we're in kind of a bind. We can't just hand out the bare chip
specs
to a company like Xi Graphics even under NDA (though they keep
asking for
them, and they don't believe me when I tell them this) without
considerable
support, which we can't afford to give them.
We know you want accelerated graphics under Linux. The BeOS people
want
it just as bad, and the Solaris people do too. The list goes on and
on.
We have a program underway now to enable those people through
information
we'll make freely available on our website. This will require no NDA
protection, what people do with their code is up to them. I can't
tell
you when the program will be ready, because I'm really bad at
projections,
but we hope soon.
That's pretty much all there is to it. It won't be the answer many
of you
wanted, but I hope you'll understand our position, and further
understand
that we are aware of the problem, and are trying to find ways to fix
it.
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