valdi@rhi.hi.is (Thorvaldur Sigurdsson) (07/13/89)
Reykjavik, ICELAND I have a HP9000/360 running X11R3. 1) Can X take advantages of graphical accelarators and how ? 2) Does anybody have a X benchmark comparison of different machines, especially different HP 9000 machines ? 3) Results of xperform on machines with and without graphical accelarators. 4) Does a graphical accel. help the videocard or the CPU or both or is it more depented on the manifacturer ? ( I know this is a hardware question, but it has to do with the performance of X) ________________________________________________________________________ Thorvaldur Egill Sigurdsson | Internet: valdi@kerfi.hi.is Engineering Research Institute | ...mcvax!hafro!krafla!kerfi.hi.is!valdi University of ICELAND | Phone: 354-1-694699 Hjardarhagi 2-6 107 Reykjavik, ICELAND ------------------------------------------------------------------------
klee@gilroy.pa.dec.com (Ken Lee) (07/14/89)
There are many ways to accelarate X with hardware. The simplest (and probably most common) method is to rewrite portions of the device dependent (ddx) part of the X server to take advantage of hardware graphics primitives. Most of the sample servers strive for portability, so do most of the graphics in software. Most servers supplied by hardware vendors probably do this to some extent. An alternative is to dedicate a CPU (on multi-CPU machines) or memory (if it can be dedicated) to the X server. This avoids much of the overhead of multi-processing operating systems. I've seen announcements for VME-bus and AT-bus boards that include a CPU and memory and claim that they can run an X server. I don't know how well they work, though. Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@decwrl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee
spencer@eecs.umich.edu (Spencer W. Thomas) (07/16/89)
In article <1574@bacchus.dec.com> klee@gilroy.pa.dec.com (Ken Lee) writes: > I have a HP9000/360 running X11R3. > 1) Can X take advantages of graphical accelarators and how ? In my experience, the HP X11 servers already take advantage of installed (2D) accellerators (can't use 3D accellerators because X is inherently 2D). You should not have to do anything special. -- =Spencer (spencer@eecs.umich.edu)
burzio@mmlai.UUCP (Tony Burzio) (07/16/89)
In article <SPENCER.89Jul15172912@spline.eecs.umich.edu>, spencer@eecs.umich.edu (Spencer W. Thomas) writes: > In my experience, the HP X11 servers already take advantage of > installed (2D) accellerators (can't use 3D accellerators because X is > inherently 2D). Actually, my HP 370 with a TurboSRX graphics device allows X to grab up to eight 3D hardware windows and talk to it via their 3D starbase graphics routines. Of course, you are limited to making the program work on the TurboSRX, but this is very good while 3D X gets hammered out. ********************************************************************* Tony Burzio * A TurboSRX is SERIOUS overkill for X :-) Martin Marietta Labs * mmlai!burzio@uunet.uu.net * Kind of like a Porshe... *********************************************************************
munir@hpfcmgw.HP.COM (Munir Mallal) (07/19/89)
In article <SPENCER.89Jul15172912@spline.eecs.umich.edu>, spencer@eecs.umich.edu (Spencer W. Thomas) writes: > In my experience, the HP X11 servers already take advantage of > installed (2D) accellerators (can't use 3D accellerators because X is > inherently 2D). This is true but the original poster said that he was using R3. This would be the generic release from MIT which has no optimisation. When HP ports the MIT releases they add device specific code to take advantage of the hardware. Munir Mallal Disclaimer: I work for HP but have little to do with X except as a user.