nouveau (software)

nouveau (software)
A screenshot of REnouveau in action (REnouveau is the blue window in the top left corner)

In computing, nouveau is a software project aiming to develop free software drivers for Nvidia graphics cards, by reverse engineering Nvidia's current proprietary drivers for Linux. This project by X.Org Foundation and freedesktop.org was initially based on the obfuscated 2D-only free and open-source "nv" driver. The name of the project refers to the fact that "nouveau" means "new" in French.[1] The name was suggested by the original author's IRC client's French autoreplace feature which suggested the word "nouveau" when he typed "nv".[2]

Like most other 3D graphics drivers for X.Org, nouveau is implemented as a module and is licensed under the MIT license. It originally used the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) of Mesa 3D for rendering 3D computer graphics, which allows to accelerate 3D drawing using the graphics processing unit (GPU) directly from the 3D application; but in February 2008 the work on DRI support ceased and moved on to the new Gallium3D.[3][4]

Contents

Adoption

The nouveau driver has been used as the default open-source driver for Nvidia cards in the Fedora 11[5] and openSUSE 11.3[6] distributions of Linux. It is included in the repository of Ubuntu 9.04[7] and made default in Ubuntu 10.04.[8] It is also included in Debian.[9] The drivers included in these operating systems, however, do not allow hardware acceleration of 3D operations.

On 10 December 2009 nouveau was accepted in the 2.6.33 version of Linux kernel as a staging driver.[10]

Fedora 13 (May 2010) allows installing the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package, which activates experimental hardware acceleration for 3d graphics, which was not activated without this package.

3D acceleration is included in the Ubuntu 10.10 archives in the libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental package. It is being considered for default installation in Ubuntu 11.04 for improved Unity support.[11]

Compiz recommends nouveau over the Nvidia proprietary driver.[12]

Tools

The project uses several custom-made programs for its reverse engineering, such as MmioTrace (Memory Mapped I/O Trace)[13] and REnouveau.

REnouveau

REnouveau (Reverse Engineering for nouveau)[14] is a program licensed under the GNU GPL (using SDL) that collects data for most of nouveau's reverse engineering work. Users with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers can help the development of nouveau by providing information about the hardware of their NVIDIA cards through REnouveau. REnouveau works by copying the current graphics card MMIO register space, drawing some graphics and taking another copy of the MMIO, and outputting the difference to a text file. It runs about six dozen different tests which the user of the computer then makes a tar.bz2 archive of and submits by e-mail, after which it is automatically transferred to the project's FTP servers for the developers to analyze.

See also

Portal-puzzle.svg Free software portal

References

  1. ^ "nouveau Wiki". 2009-07-07. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/. Retrieved 2009-09-23. 
  2. ^ "The state of Nouveau, part I". LWN.net. 2008-02-15. http://lwn.net/Articles/269558/. Retrieved 2009-11-24. 
  3. ^ "The state of Nouveau, part 2". LWN.net. 2008-02-26. http://lwn.net/Articles/270830/. Retrieved 2008-03-07. 
  4. ^ "Nouveau Companion 36 - The irregular Nouveau-Development companion". 2008-03-07. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Nouveau_Companion_36. Retrieved 2008-03-07. 
  5. ^ Michael Larabel (2009-03-29). "Testing Out The Nouveau Driver On Fedora 11". Phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE3OA. 
  6. ^ "Product highlights for openSUSE 11.3 version". openSUSE. http://en.opensuse.org/Product_highlights#Base_System. Retrieved 2010-12-29. 
  7. ^ Michael Larabel (2010-12-09). "Ubuntu 9.04 To Get Nouveau Driver". Phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjkxNg. 
  8. ^ "Bug #454821 : Bugs : “xserver-xorg-video-nv” package : Ubuntu". https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nv/+bug/454821/comments/2. Retrieved 2010-02-24. 
  9. ^ Debian (2011-02-11). "Nouveau nVidia drivers now available in Debian experimental". http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=nouveau&searchon=names&suite=stable&section=all. 
  10. ^ "Nouveau To Go Into Linux 2.6.33 Kernel!". Phoronix. 2009-12-11. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc5NQ. 
  11. ^ "Ubuntu 11.04 May Still Get Nouveau Gallium3D". Phoronix. 2010-12-02. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODg1Ng. 
  12. ^ Sam Spilsbury, head maintainer of Compiz (2010-05-21). "Beware the benchmarks.". http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/beware-the-benchmarks/. "Our recommendation: Use nouveau." 
  13. ^ "MmioTrace (Memory Mapped I/O Trace)". nouveau Wiki. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MmioTrace. 
  14. ^ "REnouveau (Reverse Engineering for nouveau)". nouveau Wiki. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/REnouveau. 

External links

v · d · eProjects hosted by freedesktop.org
Components
Avahi · Compiz · Create Project · D-Bus · DRI · GTK-Qt (moved)  · HAL (deprecated) · nouveau · PackageKit · Portland Project · systemd · Wayland · X.Org Server
 the freedesktop.org logo
Libraries
cairo · Fontconfig · GStreamer · Mesa 3D · HarfBuzz · Pango · Poppler · Swfdec · XCB · Xft
Frameworks
See also
Libre Graphics Meeting

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Nouveau — For the free software graphics driver, see nouveau (software). A nouveau, or vin (de) primeur, is a French wine which may, under the Appellation d origine contrôlée (AOC) regulations, be sold in the same year in which it was harvested. The most… …   Wikipedia

  • Nouveau (controlador) — Nouveau es un proyecto FOSS (Free and open source software o software libre y de código abierto en español) que tiene el objetivo de crear un controlador de hardware libre para las tarjetas gráficas Nvidia, mediante el uso de ingeniería inversa… …   Wikipedia Español

  • Software libre — Logiciel libre Un logiciel libre est un logiciel dont la licence dite libre donne à chacun (et sans contrepartie) le droit d utiliser, d étudier, de modifier, de dupliquer, et de diffuser (donner et vendre) le dit logiciel. Richard Stallman a… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Nouveau (graphics) — of renouveau in action (renouveau is the blue window in the top left corner)] nouveau is an X.Org Foundation and Freedesktop.org project which was initially based on the obfuscated 2D only free and open source nv driver, aiming to develop free… …   Wikipedia

  • Software — Logiciel OpenOffice.org Writer, un logiciel applicatif En informatique, un logiciel est un ensemble d informations relatives à des traitements effectués automatiquement par un appareil informatique. Y sont inclus les instructions de traitement,… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Raven Software — Dates clés 1990 (création) Personnages clés Steve Raffel Brian Raffel Siège social Madison dans le Wisconsi …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Avanquest Software — Logo de Avanquest Software Création Mai 1984 Fondateurs VANRYB Bruno POLITIS Roger …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Free Software — Logiciel libre Un logiciel libre est un logiciel dont la licence dite libre donne à chacun (et sans contrepartie) le droit d utiliser, d étudier, de modifier, de dupliquer, et de diffuser (donner et vendre) le dit logiciel. Richard Stallman a… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Free software — Logiciel libre Un logiciel libre est un logiciel dont la licence dite libre donne à chacun (et sans contrepartie) le droit d utiliser, d étudier, de modifier, de dupliquer, et de diffuser (donner et vendre) le dit logiciel. Richard Stallman a… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • NeXT Software — NeXT Pour les articles homonymes, voir Next. Le logo NeXT dessiné par Paul Rand NeXT Computer, Inc (devenue NeXT Software, Inc) était une entreprise d’informatique fondée par …   Wikipédia en Français

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”