NVIDIA Open-Sources 3D Driver For Tegra SoCs

An anonymous reader writes "Linux developers are now working on open-source 3D support for NVIDIA's Tegra in cooperation with NVIDIA and months after the company published open-source 2D driver code. There are early patches for the Linux kernel along with a Gallium3D driver. The Tegra Gallium3D driver isn't too far along yet but is enough to run Wayland with Weston."

Re:OUYA to benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Backer units are already shipping. It's a little late to be crapping on it as vaporware.

Re:OUYA to benefit?

[Belial6]

You can't pick one up at Fry's, but Target seems confident enough that it isn't vapourware. http://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=ouya&category=0 [target.com]|All|matchallpartial|all+categories&lnk=snav_sbox_ouya

Re:OUYA to benefit?

[Gadget_Guy]

Yeah, you let me know when I can walk down to Fry's and pick one up.
Until then, vapourware.

By that logic, it will always be vapourware because there isn't a Fry's within walking distance of me. On the other hand, you could look at the reports of the unit shipping to their backers, then see that they have a release date of April for pre-orders & June for the general public. Perhaps then you might realise that the world doesn't revolve around you. A product can be considered released without you personally being able to find one in a particular store.

We are not talking about Sony or Microsoft, with huge manufacturing and distribution capacity. The difference with this console is that you heard about it at the stage where they would normally be talking to venture capitalists. There wasn't some premature announcement designed to stop people from buying competitor's products. There was never a suggestion that this was a product that was ready to ship, it was always spoken about being in the design stage. It does not deserve to have derogatory labels just because you are impatient.

Not open source, but open documentation

[dutchwhizzman]

What NVidia did was document a very small and specific part of the chipset. They previously opened documentation of 2D accelleration, now the 3D part. The part that accelerates media playback is still closed. Given the fact that this is a SoC that will most likely be used for media playback just as much as for gaming and it's not their own driver code they have released, I'd not consider this open sourcing. They are merely releasing part of the specifications so third parties can develop drivers. Yes, they are actively helping one company, but there is no actual working code available as open source yet. Not from the 3rd party company, nor from NVidia themselves.