Re: ATI linux drivers

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Randall Hopper wrote:

> I'm contemplating a video card upgrade, and hoping to use the ARB profiles
> in Cg to work with fragment and vertex shaders in Linux.
Hmmm - interesting.   It *ought* to work - but whether it actually *does* is
another matter.

> My next bet would have been a GeForce4, the fp30/vp30 Cg profiles, and NV30
> emulation in the NVidia drivers, but I gather this is a Windows-only
> feature of their drivers.
I've explored that option - it doesn't work under Linux.

> Any other options?
The main Cg compiler is Open-Sourced - right?  That means that (in
principle) someone could write a native Radion 'profile' for it.
It might not be all that difficult - how different could the nVidia
native 'machine code' be from the Radion's instruction-set.

One problem may be that the length of a fragment program on the Radion
is quite small (compared to the NV30 at least) - and it's possible that
the overhead of using a high level language would swamp it's abilities.

However, I'm suprised that someone hasn't tried it already, nVidia always
claimed it would be possible - that was the mainstay of their claim that
Cg should be the future of programmable graphics hardware.

Any takers?
---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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