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vonston
Journeyman III

Radeon direct hardware programming

Hi all,

I have a question. I have to code a simple rotating cube on lcd using Radeon (HD4xxx series). I bought a PCI - E system architecture book. I read an AMD manuals (instruction set, register descriptions). I have an experience with programming AVR microcontrollers. But I don't know how to use AMD assembly and load my code into the GPU. JTAG? I2C?

Please help, and sorry for my "English"

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3 Replies
realhet
Miniboss

Hi.

Well, this is an extremely complicated project. Maybe this helps you to get a bit further -> http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/R6xx_R7xx_3D.pdf

But I don't know how can you get the card to present the contents of the frame buffer on the screen.

And even if you managed to run the VS, PS kernels on the card, hand writing VLIW code is also not that easy.

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I saw manual at http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/R6xx_R7xx_3D.pdf, but it will be helpful after i learn to talk directly to the GPU. I have an idea: define some assembler instructions on avr and patch my code by I2C. But I don't know is it possible... Anyway, thanks . I'm waiting for other ideas.

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gsellers
Staff

Hi,

What you're looking at here is really, really hard. However, don't let that discourage you. My advice would be to go look at the code for the Open Source Radeon driver, including the kernel mode components and the Mesa back end. Look here xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati - ATI video driver. The team is always looking for contributions. Writing an entire driver from scratch would be a massive undertaking. If you just want to learn about GPU architecture, contributing to the Open Source drivers would be a great way to do that. Go add a feature, tune performance or otherwise improve things. Feel free to ask questions.

Cheers,

Graham

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