Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

While I agree with the fact that I too though the device would be way more open (In fact, I got once bitten by icd & friends being closed), you should remember that in this case...

there was no closed driver. there was _no_ driver at all.

Nothing is being opened up, but developed. This is why we can still hope it will be open source from the beginning.

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

There is a 5Mbit fast memory dedicated to graphics, I guess that in a well documented fully OSS driver scenario somebody (I wish I had the knowledge, the ability and the talent to help...) could use the 800x480 resolution in 12bit (means 4096 colours if i did right the math) for the "plain" interface and for tasks that don't require hi-color count, while a faster 400x240@16bit could be used for games (given the Epson pixel doubling and the serial controller buffer are enough) or (in case with the PowerVR drivers comes something to make the IVA funcional) accelerate video reproduction leaving the CPU core less stressed...

Oh boy, oh boy, can't wait :D

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

You're arguing the semantics of speech when the point is the amount of time it's taken to open (or release, in your words) the drivers for hardware we've already had in our possession all this time.

I see that it's also cold-comfort for the developers of the Playstation 3 that got angry after they learned that Sony intentionally withheld API's and documentation for their platform for the reason that it would make the system appear to get better with time.

Good point on thinking it was an open platform when you bought it. It's difficult enough to deal with finding replacement styluses or parts. At least we finally can look forward to another trickle of opened drivers.

Like I said--I appreciate it. Greatly. I just have a hard time jumping for joy after waiting for what can be measured in years. Maybe a frosted cupcake with a couple of candles will do. heh

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

If that's doable--I'd say that would be fantastic and more than enough for a good user experience. The resolution is already so high for portable gaming that I don't think anyone would care or notice... and the UI really needs more resolution than color to be useful and still look brilliant.

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

the great thing about OSS is that anyone can improve on it, and if they have ideas beyond those envisaged by the original authors, then they can go where they want. KDE as an example probably takes QT to a whole new level far beyond the capabilities of the Trolltech people.

the bad about about OSS is that anyone can try and improve on it, and if they have ideas conflicting with the original authors, then they can go where they want and fragment the community. Take for example the number of different linux desktops - lxde, maemo, fluxbox, xfce...

The forking/fragmentation isn't a big problem provided that there's still a critical mass behind each project to make it work, and if there's only one key person behind each fork and they get bored then it will die.

I know you're trying to wind everyone up and annoy them, but for the sake of the record: The fragmentation of the zaurus community of which you refer took place many years ago, and actually led to three quite active communities (sharp/cacko, pdaXrom, OpenZaurus) which helped each other, for example the OpenZ/Angstrom group helped create a really good Arm kernel which has been a great step up for Debian, Unbuntu and Android. Sharp/Cacko has withered as Sharp* had no interested. pdaXrom has withered because it relied too much on too few people to advance. OpenZ/Angstrom members alienated their users and then each other.

* The Zaurus was never sold to be a general purpose machine, it was an electronic dictionary with simple media player, and its use of linux was almost an accident, thus the community knew they'd have to do almost everything, e.g. SDHC support and accelerated video. This is perhaps why the Sharp/Cacko distro has died.

Things aren't perfect in the world of Nokia tablets but they're a damn site better than many other places.

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

The 5MBit (which would be the framebuffer if we had a smaller LCD) won't make any odds except if used as intermediate memory (and I'm not sure the PowerVR needs this) as the data must still head out to the LCD controller (and this is the bit of the pipeline which is slow).

The framerate will certainly be limited, but it will still be useful and usable imho.

IVA has, unfortunately, nothing to do with the PowerVR, perhaps we can campaign for the firmware and tasks to use this next ;) :)

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

No, the BAD thing about OSS is all the closed-source we keep ending up with. :) The forking isn't even a real problem. The popular stuff will keep going off on their own and evolving (I don't think anybody really misses xfree86 anymore, for example).

Cripes.

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

I imagined IVA wasn't something PowerVR related, but dreaming doesn't cost a thing :D
About the 5Mbit that's exactly the idea I had about it: a quite fast intermediate memory :)
Of course once we have the driver we will probably have a better understanding of how the 3d accelerator works (hopefully) and the community's big brains will know for sure if that memory can be of any kind of benefit our NITs or not...

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

I don't recall any claims of "fully open-source" -- about the strongest statements I really heard were "runs Linux." Are you sure you heard this from Nokia, and not from some fanboy going hyperbolic? Anyway, that's all pretty irrelevant to this driver.

Guess what? You didn't find 3D acceleration advertised. Precisely analogous.

If Nokia ever made a "fully open-source" claim (which I'm highly skeptical of), that's invalidated by all the closed source software shipped on the device. But there was no closed PowerVR driver on the device! So this open-source/closed-source complaint, valid or not, is completely off-topic -- seems it belongs in some thread about something that actually was closed-source.

What information? That Nokia didn't have drivers for an internal graphics accelerator it wasn't using, wasn't advertising, and a normal enduser wouldn't even know was there?

I'm as down on shady deceptive marketing as the next guy, but I don't think any company has an obligation to issue a press release every time some bit of wild speculation about their product appears, and I hardly see that they did anything to promote the notion that the PowerVR would be usable.

Re: The N800 has a 3D accelerator, right?
 

bleh. Let it rest.

they want to release the damn drivers, so be it. the next iteration of whatever Nokia comes out will invariably be as badly supported as the prior three steps in order to get to a mainstream product that will be, by the time of its release be nothing more than a shiny "me-too" product.

the community - which I've stated over and over - shines whereas Nokia (the company) just doesn't. Not in regard to their ability to support, keep updates flowing, or anything else.

this... actually helps that situation because Mer, and the community, will lengthen the amount of time I will use my N810. to me, that's a win.

want to go deeper into semantics, go for it. I've already posted what I felt and above all what I think will happen. too bad I'm not as adept as the most of you in regards to the dev side. so as a consumer, I'm exercising a right.

and yeah...

Open standard, open source community, put it together wrong like I did... and there you have it. I never said anything about deceptive.

And it's fully on topic - they're going to release drivers for something, hide behind "business" all while dropping support for something else that's only been supported by a born-dead upgrade to Diablo.

call it nitpicking, but it's fully on-topic in a thread about a 3D accelerator that could have been used, and the life of this product extended from within and the community able to expand upon early on and not when the product is dying.

meh.