The State of Accelerated Graphics on NetBSD/sparc, updated


January 07, 2015 posted by Michael Lorenz

This is an update to this post.
Some new drivers were added ( cgtwelve, mgx ), others got improvements ( SX acceleration, support for 8bit tcx ).
  • Sun CG3 - has kernel support and works in X with the wsfb driver, the hardware doesn't support a hardware cursor or any kind of acceleration so we won't bother with a dedicated X driver. The hardware supports 8 bit colour only.
  • Sun CG6 family, including GX, TGX, XGX and their plus variants - supported with acceleration in both the kernel and X with the suncg6 driver. Hardware cursor is supported, the hardware supports 8 bit colour only.
  • Sun ZX/Leo - has accelerated kernel support but no X yet. The sunleo driver from Xorg should work without changes but doesn't support any kind of acceleration yet. The console runs in 8 bit, X will support 24 bit.
  • Sun BW2 - has kernel support, should work with the wsfb driver in X.The board doesn't support a hardware cursor or any kind of acceleration. Hardware is monochrome only.
  • Weitek P9100 - found in Tadpole SPARCbook 3 series laptops, supported with acceleration in both the kernel and X with the pnozz driver. Hardware cursor is supported. The console runs in 8 bit, X can run in 8, 16 or 24 bit colour.
  • Sun S24/TCX - supported with acceleration in both the kernel and X with the suntcx driver. A hardware cursor is supported ( only on S24, the 8bit TCX's DAC doesn't support it ).The console runs in 8 bit, X in 8 or 24 bit.
  • Sun CG14 - supported with acceleration ( using the new sx driver ) and hardware cursor in both the kernel and X. The console runs in 8 bit, X in 24 bit. The X driver supports some xrender acceleration as well.
  • Fujitsu AG-10e - supported with acceleration in both the kernel and X, a hardware cursor is supported. The console runs in 8 bit, X in 24 bit.
  • IGS 1682 found in JavaStation 10 / Krups - supported, but the chip lacks any acceleration features. It does support a hardware cursor though which the wsfb driver can use. Currently X is limited to 8 bit colour alhough the hardware supports up to 24bit.
  • Sun CG12 / Matrox SG3 - supported without acceleration in both the kernel and X. The console runs in monochrome or 8 bit, X in 24 bit.
  • Southland Media Systems (now Quantum 3D) MGX - supported with acceleration as console, X is currently limited to wsfb in 8 bit. No hardware cursor support in the driver yet .

All boards with dedicated drivers will work as primary or secondary heads in X, boards which use wsfb will only work in X when they are the system console. For example, you can run an SS20 with a cg14 as console, an AG-10e and two CG6 with four heads.

There is also a generic kernel driver ( genfb at sbus ) which may or may not work with graphics hardware not listed here, depending on the board's firmware. If it provides standard properties for width, height, colour depth, stride and framebuffer address it should work but not all boards do this. For example, the ZX doesn't give a framebuffer address and there is no reason to assume it's the only one. Also, there is no standard way to program palette registers via firmware, so even if genfb works colours are likely off. X should work with the wsfb driver, it will likely look a bit odd though.

Boards like the CG8 have older, pre-wscons kernel support and weren't converted due to lack of hardware. They seem to be pretty rare though, in all the years I've been using NetBSD/sparc I have not seen a single user ask about them.

Finally, 3rd party boards not mentioned here are unsupported for lack of hardware in the right hands.
Graphics hardware supported by NetBSD/sparc64 which isn't listed here should work the same way when running a 32bit userland but this is mostly untested.

[2 comments]

 



Comments:

Have you considered working on RasterFlex HR/32 support? Supposedly these are very fastest 2d cards. I heard someone say it beat the snot out of an Ultra 2 + ATI rage II or Pro. You can find them on the German Ebay reasonably still (I had someone from nekochan forward it to me I think he bought 3 or 4 for himself :) ). It's a shame I haven't found any ag10e cards in the past couple years. I've been working on getting my SparcBook 3gx working with a scsi2sd as well as, updating my LX with 128Mb ram and a vsimm + an 8Mb vsimm for my 2x85Mhz SS20 althought I'll probably run the Rasterflex if a driver ever shows up for it since I coudl use all 512Mb ram then...

Posted by cb88 on January 18, 2015 at 12:59 AM UTC #

Hmm, they used to make NuBus cards as well, didn't they? Either way, I have neither hardware nor docs. An mgx might be your best bet so far, it seems to be at least on par with a Rage II as console, and sooner or later I'll add accelerated X support.

Posted by Michael on February 14, 2015 at 04:01 PM UTC #

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