[Savage40] Looking for documentation

[Tim Roberts]

Pascal Sclafer wrote:

>I would like to improve the savage DRI/DRM driver but I haven't found
>any technical documentation about the savage hardware.
>  
>

Nope.  VIA/S3 unwisely consider the Savage chip specs to be
proprietary.  They are only released under an NDA.

Plus, all they have are chip specs -- listings of registers and fields. 
There's no usage or how-to information.

>Has anybody some documentation?? 
>If no: why has the actual driver be written? using reverse-engineering?
>using the sources released by S3?
>  
>

When I did the original 2D driver, I was under contract to S3,
supporting their Windows NT drivers.  I had the chip specs and the NT
driver and BIOS source code as part of that contract.  Even so, several
of the specs I got had the 3D sections removed, because they were so
paranoid about industrial espionage.  I suspect the NDA has expired now,
but I don't really want to pay a lawyer to find out.  I believe Alex
also signed an NDA to do the 3D magic that he did.

What were you hoping to do with the DRI driver?  The Savage4 3D engine
was originally designed in 1998.  It is yesterday's technology -- just
shaded triangles.  You're never going to make it competitive with the
newer chips.

-- 
Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.