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Terry Hancock wrote:
quoted text
> James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>> >>> With a graphics card that uses DMA, you offload the I/O
>> >>> overhead from the CPU to the GPU, so the CPU can do other
>> >>> things. This has the effect of lowering the load for the X
>> >>> server, so it gets a higher process priority.
>> >>
>> >> With a graphics card that runs the X server, you would offload
>> >> even more overhead. :-D
>> >
>> >
>> > True, but is it worth it?
>>
>>  Don't know for sure. This would be a unique product. Although I
>>  note that this wouldn't be a totally new idea. TI was pushing this
>>  idea although I don't think that a commercial product ever made it to
>>  market. DEC used to sell workstations which had a separate processor
>>  to run the X server. IIRC, this was not nearly as powerful processor
>>  as the main CPU.
>>
>>  IAC, it seemed like a way to proved the "Amiga like" performance.
>>  Since the only thing that could slow down the mouse and keyboard
>>  input would be PCI bus contention and the X server would never be
>>  swapped out since it would have its own dedicated memory space.
>
> That would actually be pretty cool. It would keep X from competing
> with ordinary application tasks for resources, which is often a source
> of hang-ups or slow performance on typical single-CPU Linux desktop
> machines.
>
> It might be more practical to just go to dual processors or something,
> though I've never attempted that.  An X server in hardware though,
> as a simple drop-in system has real potential, I would think.  Would
> you
> then support the pointing device through the same card (seems like
> you would).
>

Seems to me you'd want to make the card almost a small computer (For
flexibility). Say an embedded PPC or something with built-in fp, and a
coupled GPU. Making the X server completely HW (i.e. the X in the
FPGA) would be pretty expensive by the time you got an FPGA big enough
& fast enough to run it wouldn't it? Especially since you'd have to
allow for several years of bloat in the code as you update to get the
latest X features...

Hey! You've re-invented the X-Terminal! NCD would be proud...


H

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