Re:Goody (Score 1)

Just a sidenote: The 3D (and 2D?) acceleration core used in the GMA500 (ImgTech SGX core) is build into a good number of recent ARM based SoCs aswell (for example Beagleboard with the TI OMAP SoC). As far as I followed the whole thing, ImgTech itself doesn't provide any drivers (contrary to NVidia, for example), but seems to put that task on the shoulders of these who make the chips or sell the computer hardware. That doesn't mean there aren't any drivers for Linux (i.e. there should be some video footage of demos on YouTube showing off the SGX core in combination with Linux), but digging these up ... good luck.

The driver for the GMA500 for Atom based boards, running under the "psb" label (coming from "Poulsbo", which is the low power chipset for the Atom CPUs, also check US15W), is truly a "clusterfuck", because the patch contains not only the driver itself, but the whole drm driver directory (and things got changed a good deal in the kernel since then to top it off). It relies on some binary blob(s) to handle the SGX part of the things, whereas the handling of the displays etc. is done similar to existing Intel stuff (which means given some interest and time it should be at least possible to salvage this for proper display device handling, mode setting and otherwise non-accelerated output, no idea about 2D, haven't looked at this all in more detail).

What worries me most is what happens in terms of graphics in the embedded world. It's a big battlefield, and propietary solutions are not the exception. While it's easy to run Linux on a multitude of devices, this 2D and especially 3D acceleration stuff is going to bite Linux sooner or later in the rear end, at least with the way the hardware manufacturers/IP-holders handle the things. But that's exactly what drives the development. Devices like the iPhone wouldn't be possible without 3D hardware acceleration. Add to this things like Flash or the different approaches to bring 3D to the browser, or just simple things like "fancy" UIs (clutter anyone?) ... a company like Microsoft is more likely to get what they want, because they can actually throw cash at the problem.