A question about powervr drivers

[rober...@mail.com]

Hi everyone, I am hoping to order a beagleboard in the coming week and
have been reading through this group looking for any potential
confusion i may have on the beagleboard to make sure when i get it I
am thoroughly prepared to start programming it. So far everything
looks great but I have one question, from what i can tell there are no
power vr drivers for linux yet (please correct me if I am wrong), i
assume this means using Ångstrøm or Ubuntu will default to software
rendering as oppose to hardware accelerated.

My real confusion comes in seeing the youtube video of the evil skull
demo, is it possible to program using the PowerVR sdk and use the
hardware rendering outside of linux, this is my real aim with the
beagleboard and I would really appreciate it if someone who has a
board/knows the answer could advise me, I am itching to get involved
but would like to time my purchase well so that I can make the most
out of it.

Thanks to everyone who reads this and i look forward to a reply,

Rob

[Jason Kridner]

On Aug 17, 6:47 am, robert_h...@mail.com wrote:
> Hi everyone, I am hoping to order a beagleboard in the coming week and
> have been reading through this group looking for any potential
> confusion i may have on the beagleboard to make sure when i get it I
> am thoroughly prepared to start programming it. So far everything
> looks great but I have one question, from what i can tell there are no
> power vr drivers for linux yet (please correct me if I am wrong), i
> assume this means using Ångstrøm or Ubuntu will default to software
> rendering as oppose to hardware accelerated.

Correct.

> My real confusion comes in seeing the youtube video of the evil skull
> demo, is it possible to program using the PowerVR sdk and use the
> hardware rendering outside of linux, this is my real aim with the
> beagleboard and I would really appreciate it if someone who has a
> board/knows the answer could advise me, I am itching to get involved
> but would like to time my purchase well so that I can make the most
> out of it.

Currently, there is a PowerVR SDK currently in private beta. It is
running under Linux and the evil skull demo was running under Linux.
Programming the PowerVR outside of Linux would be very difficult due
to a lack of available drivers and PowerVR hardware documentation.
The 3D SDK/drivers for Linux will be released before the end of the
year. You can get started coding for OpenGLES 1.1/2.0 using
Imagination's SDK that utilizes emulation on a PC:
http://www.imgtec.com/powervr/insider/sdk/KhronosOpenGLES2xSGX.asp.

[rober...@mail.com]

Thanks for your answer Jason, and to everyone else I apologise if I am
double posting here as I think I accidentaly replied directly to Jason
with my last (over egear) response, I have never used google groups
before and hit the wrong button.

I was wondering if Mesa GL is available for either of these two
distributions, and if anyone with a board would recomend this as a
viable alternative to programming under the PowerVR SDK at the moment,
as i assume although the SDK (which i installed yesterday and have
been enjoying playing about with) has been released in beta for
emulation of OpenGL ES 2.0 on the pc/linux cannot be used on the
beagleboard yet as the drivers have yet to be released. I realise
there will be a big hit in performance compared to native GL es 2
drivers however as I am moving on from a software 3d rendering engine
i made to run on an ARM920T core, that only emulated floating point
support, the floating point support (and indeed accuracy) will make a
big difference to my programs, and i can't wait to mess with the new
(to me) arm assembly extensions that weren't available on my ARM920T.

I have no doubts now that the beagleboard will live up to my
expectations but given the timeframe of the OpenGL ES drivers
predicted release date i would just like to know which route users of
the processor would recomend, be it programming under the emulation
layer on the PC for any realtime 3d applications, or if the mesa GL
implementation exists on the beagleboard using that and concentrating
on the cpu side of the engine until the drivers are available for the
PowerVR sdk.

I hope I didn't misunderstand anything from Jason's post, and if I did
please chalk it up to a lack of confidence when talking tech with
people with a lot more experience than me. I am very grateful for any
responses, in unrelated news it looks like there will be two
beagleboards winging our way when we place our order, my dad has been
bowled over by the possiblities of the board so we are going to order
him one as payback for 24 years hard labour (read parenting).

Thanks everyone,
Rob.

[ja...@tuffcode.com]

Hi Jason/all,

I'm loving my Beagleboard which I've been unable to put down since it
arrived a couple of days ago!

However, I was gutted to find out that there was no way to make use of
its OpenGL-ES capabilities anytime soon. I basically whipped out my
credit card as soon as I saw the skull demo, so I've only myself to
blame for not doing the proper research! I've been dying to get proper
3D plus HD video on an SoC device. There's upcoming chipsets with
these capabilities from ST Microelectronics and Broadcom aimed at the
STB market but I want to play now, dammit!

Does anyone know if Imagination are planning to do a public beta of
the Linux drivers at some point? Or is there a way to join the private
beta you mentioned?

Even if these aren't options, I'm sure this community would appreciate
being kept in the loop with the progress of this development effort.

All the best,

James

On Aug 17, 3:50 pm, Jason Kridner <jkrid...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Daniel MD]

Jason and others on IRC have pointed next year as a good date for a public availability of OpenGL ES drivers. There is no timetable afaik, send letters to drive makers ;)