Via has just released open source Linux code for their
motherboard graphics chipsets. This includes the S3,
Savage, and Chrome lines. This means full QNX support is now
possible. Until now, you couldn’t easily get the specs needed
to write a driver. All the interface specs are there,
including those for the 3D engine. A sizable fraction of the
installed x86 machines out there have these chips.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/resources/pressroom/2005_archive/pr050412_driversource.jsp
The code is downloadable right now. I’ve looked at it.
It seems to be based on an old XFree86 driver.
XGI has followed suit, with their own open source drivers:
http://www.xgitech.com/about/about_press1.asp?CTID={C3FD7D03-6BE1-4BB9-9F34-1221E723B87F}
Finally, a clean way out of the current horribly slow VGA emulation.
Not only can 2D acceleration be supported, some of these chipsets
have 3D hardware on the motherboard. OpenGL can be brought
up to a reasonable speed.
Now if we can get QNX to upgrade their drivers, or, if
they’re not willing to do that, open up their sources for their display
drivers so someone else can, QNX will work much better on
standard x86 desktops.
John Nagle
Team Overbot