[manticore] Re: How it goes down

[Jeff Mrochuk]

Yeah that looks pretty good to me, but I think we should move PCI up so
we can actually test on a PC once we get Z and raster working.  I'll
probably start working on SDRAM with in a week or so if you want to work
on the rasterizer.  Once we increase the memory bandwidth the z-buffer
should be easy to implement.

Jeff

On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 03:03:52PM -0600, benjcarson at digitaljunkies.ca wrote:
> Sounds good.  What do you think about the following goals then (sorta in 
> order of importance): 
> 
> - fix rasterizer to render all triangle orientations and add z-buffer
> - generalize sdram controller, vgaout, vgafifo_ctrl, rasterizer etc. for 
> different resolutions and colour depths (probably requires maximizing 
> memory throughput)
> - add normal support to the rasterizer
> - implement vertex lighting/texture mapping
> - add basic 2D support (lines, basic polygons, hardware cursor, etc.)
> - develop a PCI interface, drivers, etc.
> - figure out how to design a board... 
> 
> If a couple of us are working on it then we can modularize some of this to 
> divide up the work.  In particular, I think we could split the rasterizer 
> up into some sub-modules so that each module can be optimized 
> independently. We can also easily parallelize part or all of it to double 
> our pixel throughput then too.  I think the first few steps should be 
> finished first before splitting everything up, because the underlying 
> framework may change when we fix the memory controller and fifo. 
> 
> What do you think? 
> 
> Benj 
> 
> 
> Jeff Mrochuk writes: 
> 
> >So I've been talking to some video guys.  Basically it works on 3
> >levels. 
> >
> >API (OpenGL, Direct3d), Drivers, and Hardware 
> >
> >Your API talks to your drivers, which tell the API what needs to be done
> >in software, and what can be done in hardware. 
> >
> >In traditional cards (pre Geforce or so) Texuring and Triangle Raster
> >are all that was done in hardware.  Color, lighting, and transfrom was
> >all done by the API. Recent cards have added hardware transform and
> >lighting, but no current game engines even use them yet. 
> >
> >We need to up our memory bandwidth and add texture support, and we've
> >got a voodoo. 
> >
> >Jeff 
> >
> >
> 

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