Poulsbo driver coming soon from Intel? (was: Intel GMA 500 problems on Eee)

Colin Brace cb at lim.nl
Wed Nov 4 08:38:21 UTC 2009



Chris Mocock wrote:
> 
> Can't help you, sorry, but you might find the wikipedia article
> interesting:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_500
> 
> To quote "Rather than being developed in-house, this core is a PowerVR
> SGX 535 core licensed from Imagination Technologies. Since PowerVR is
> not cooperative with the open source movement, this has resulted in
> the dependence on outdated closed source Linux drivers."
> 

Chris, the situation appears to be changing. See this article just published
at Phoronix:

Is An Open-Source Poulsbo Driver Coming?
Posted by Michael Larabel on November 01, 2009

Intel's Poulsbo Linux driver is a bloody mess. The Poulsbo chipset is known
commercially as the GMA 500 that's found in many netbooks as of late, but it
isn't actually an Intel design but the graphics processor design was
licensed from PowerVR. With that, there is no open-source driver but just an
ill-maintained binary blob that is notorious among Poulsbo customers. The
Poulsbo DRM, which is open-source but without any open-source client
(driver), was previously rejected from entering the mainline kernel as well.
The situation for Intel's GMA 500 on Linux is not good, but could this soon
be changing?

We were tipped off this weekend that on YouTube are two videos (shown below)
courtesy of the German NetbookNews.de that shows off Quake III Arena running
in full HD on a Poulsbo netbook and a full 1080p HD film running off another
Moblin-powered netbook. To sum up the video descriptions for those less
experienced in German, Martin Mohring of the Linux Foundation was showing
off Quake III Arena at 1080p on an Intel Atom Z-series netbook with a GMA500
graphics solution using "special drivers" that will come with Intel's
Moorestown platform. This game was running at about 35~40 FPS with this
Moblin system. The HD video sample was done on another Poulsbo netbook with
a Z-Series Atom under Moblin, again using these "special drivers" for
Moorestown. These videos were recorded at MobileDevCamp09.

Unless there was just too much (wonderful) Augustiner being drunk at this
development camp in Munich, this would leave us to understand that there is
some sort of new driver for the Intel Poulsbo coming out for Linux with
Moorestown. For those not up on codenames, Moorestown is the successor to
Intel's Menlow platform, which will launch late this year or early next
year. New Linux drivers that run fast are one thing, but if the Linux
Foundation is showing off this "special driver", we have to wonder if this
Poulsbo driver will be open-source. If not, what is the Linux Foundation
doing showing off binary blobs on Moblin? Only time will tell. 

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2MA

See also the follow-up from a day later:

Intel's Special Driver For Poulsbo Uses Gallium3D
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzY2Mg

-----
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam
  http://lim.nl
-- 
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