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What is the complete story on EMGD

cgrif4
Beginner
2,370 Views

I have tried to be patient, but I am so spitting mad. If I could return my netbook I would, but I was stupid enough to trust that Intel would fix this issue. I am currently referring to http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODQxOA http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODQxOA" rel="nofollow">Phoronix: Intel Can't Ship Their Own Driver With Their MeeGo OS. So what is the official story? Is there a driver that can work with current kernels and xorg? When? Who? etc.

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11 Replies
ANya
Beginner
1,191 Views

I would also like to know the answers to these questions

Never thought that the netbook with Intel hardware can cause so many problems...

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ISHU_V_Intel
Employee
1,191 Views

What netbook do you have?

If it uses US15W then you should be using IEGD driver that's currently available at EDC.

If you're using another chipset w/ GenX integrated graphics then Intel open linux driver is already available.

The Phoronix article is referring to bundling the driver w/ MeeGo. Once EMGD is released, it'll be available to anyone at the EDC (this site). Before its release, its available to selected customers only - if you need it before formal release (later this year), please contact your intel rep.

MeeGo is open source software and EMGD is not so the licensing terms and availability are different for each.

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cgrif4
Beginner
1,191 Views

We have talked before. I have an Acer A0751h. I could never get the IEGD drivers to work correctly. By working correctly I mean allowing the viewing of HD videos. Other threads on this site note how the drivers are unstable when used from multiple threads, do not allow suspend/resume, and do not allow switching virtual terminals. Regardless and more importantly, these drivers are outdated with respect to kernel and xserver version. I currently use Ubuntu 9.10 with original "Poulsbo" driver, but would like to keep my distro current. I have been patiently waiting since Kirk mentioned that there will be an update with Meego 1.0. While watching what is happening with Meego, I found out that IEGD will be split off into EMGD for gma500 and gma600, but is still gonna be released with Meego 1.0. Now we find out that is not the case. Now you are saying that it will still be released thru EDC _LATER_THIS_YEAR! I asked for the Who, What, When, Where because there is no formal answer to these questions. Just forum posts here or articles there. As a user I am being jerked around and told one thing one month then something different another.

I understand that are parts of driver that must remain closed source. I am completely fine with building kernel and xorg modules for whatever flavor/version I am using to work with closed source parts. But the closed source parts have to be made available to work along side open source parts for contemporary systems. I am stuck with this netbook because I installed my favorite operating system on it and purged it of Windows. Thus I can not even sell it to someone else without spending more money to re-install windows on it.

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Kirk_B_Intel
Employee
1,191 Views

Something else to keep in mind is that the Embedded Media Graphics Driver is designed for embedded chipsets and use cases. It has not been targeted for "netbook" applications with Linux so the schedule for availability and target customers is geared more towards the new up-coming embedded chipset that shares the low power graphics core used in US15W. True, it will give US15W netbook devices a (hopefully) better graphics capability than what you are getting now, but that is just a side benefit of the product. I'm sorry that does not align with your immediate needs but we are trying to get there as quickly as we can. We need to beg a bit more patience, OR you need to convince an Intel Field Rep that you would make a good beta candidate for the limited release of EMGD we have now. That, however, is really for bigger OEMs who are using the US15W chipset and EMGD for embedded products.

Thank you for your understanding. Kirk

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ANya
Beginner
1,191 Views

>>new up-coming embedded chipset

So, that's mean i can throw my netbook in the trash and go to buy a new one?)

>>hopefully hopefully hopefully

....

>>Thank you for your understanding

I understand. Almost 1.5 year passed since latest release of drivers for gma 500.

//Oh.. i'm tired of this.

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Kirk_B_Intel
Employee
1,191 Views

Again, because this is an EMBEDDED Community, the people helping out here (like myself) are from the Embedded and Communications Group doing embedded drivers. Netbooks are a completely different thing and we do not have any influence on software releases, or product releases by that division. Somethimes the silicon is "adopted" by our division for embedded applications (like we did with US15w) but we then target support and releases around the embedded markets (where we DO have influence). The new chips coming out that we are targeting for a release with EMGD (again an EMBEDDED driver), is an embedded chipset/processor so I doubt it will show up in any netbooks. I am not completely familiar with the netbook support process, but that has to be handled in a completely different way. My guess is that support is supposed to go through the OEM (Acer in your case) just like with our other notebook and netbook products. Please forgive my ignorance on the workings of those division's support processes but it difficult enough to keep track of the products that we are tasked with handling!

EMGD is in a limited beta at this point and is driving to release by the end of July. It will support US15W and should definitely show performance and CPU utilization improvements with the new s/w architecture it provides. I am not completely sure if the S3 and console issues will be completely resolved. As for Meego, it was supposed to release with MeeGo IVI version however, the two schedules became out of sync (because of issues with the previously mentioned new embedded chipset) and we had to disconnect the release from the last MeeGo release- I assume it will release with it again AFTER we get the Gold EMGD 1.0 out. That is the complete story as of today.

Hope this helps, Kirk

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cgrif4
Beginner
1,191 Views

First off, Thank you Kirk and Ishu. You two are the only ones on this forum who ever respond. My comments are not to be taken personal, but are directed at your management. However, since you two are the only ones I speak with, you have to deal with my rantings.

So here we are again at the cyclical evil that leaves me with no viable option. The UMD team has not updated a netbook driver in forever. Through forums or articles, we are directed to the IEGD/EMGD drivers as a possible driver for our netbooks. When that does not work, we are told well these drivers are not meant to be used in netbooks they are for embedded devices. That they work at all is just coincidence. So we are told just be patient and a release will be out soon. But the real issue is that the IEGD/EMGD drivers are never gonna fufill my needs because they were not meant for netbooks.

Is there anyone in Intel that can read this forum (other than Kirk and Ishu) capable of setting in motion development of a solution for non-embeded platforms that utilize the Intel US15W SCH. It doesn't have to be all open source. It just has to have regular maintenace schedule that keeps pace with major kernel and xserver version increments. If not, then just let the world know, "If you have a non-embeded device, (ie. a netbook), you will not be properly supported" and let us move on.

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BTeag1
Beginner
1,191 Views

cgriffith -

ishu and Kirk are right, the embedded discussion boards are really not the right place to be complaining about this. For working drivers on US15W-based netbooks, see https://launchpad.net/~gma500/ https://launchpad.net/~gma500/" rel="nofollow">https://launchpad.net/~gma500/ - these folks are working on getting a driver released in a recent Mandriva distro working on current Ubuntu distributions. Speaking from experience, their Karmic driver is feature-complete, and their Lucid driver does everything but plain Xv acceleration (VA-API-based accel works fine, though.)

Also, this blog post is an illuminating read on why the netbook/Poulsbo situation is such a mess: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/166625-blaming-intel-for-how-the-world-is http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/166625-blaming-intel-for-how-the-world-is" rel="nofollow">http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/166625-blaming-intel-for-how-the-world-is

Hope this is helpful.

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cgrif4
Beginner
1,191 Views

@Luceth

Your reply is both not helpful, is uneducated, and steers the discussion off topic. If you were to pay any attention to what is happening in Ubuntu and Mandriva you would know that they are struggling to hack the open source parts to work with the closed source parts of a driver that was compiled against outdated openGL libraries. That is not a solution! And attempts by you and others on the Intel community forums to say, "Talk to Ubuntu community", is a blatent attempt to switch focus. We need a new binary blob from Intel! It is that simple. I am running Karmic, but this version is already behind Ubuntu's release. Hence my mention of needed an updated driver for contemporary kernel and xorg versions.

And as for the link to "Blaming Intel For How The World Is", this does not answer my questions. Intel can certainly point the finger at Acer (in my case), and Acer can certainly say, "We never claimed this to work with Linux", but I as the consumer still have all the power cause I can choose who to buy from next time. Is that really where this discussion needs to go?

To sum up my last post since you don't seem to want to read and comprehend it...

If Intel does not want to support this chip in a netbook, then just say so outright to the world. Otherwise, give us a clear picture of how, when, who, is going to support this chip in Linux. So we can all stop interpreting articles and forum posts and hoping and praying that something will just happen.

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FMcNu1
Valued Contributor I
1,191 Views

Hello, community moderator here.

I understand the frustration around not finding a solution to a problem, but let's please keep our communications among community members at a respectful level.

Thank you

Felix

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RDill2
Beginner
1,191 Views

Working on a fairly large embedded project myself with a system with a US15W chipset, I really don't see the majority of the issues I have as being "embedded" specific. In fact, we have a few netbooks with a US15W chipset that we utilize for testing. Different projects run and test with different Linux distributions and hand rolled di,stros with various kernel versions and Xorg versions...which sounds very similar to the array of netbook users who try to do the same thing. In fact, when I scour the internet for information, its not an Intel site with helpful release notes, information about various drivers, or etc, that pops up, it is sites where netbook users try to get stuff working and blog about it. As far as I know, there are 3, maybe 4 drivers, at least one written at least partially by tungsten graphics. There is the xfree86-video-psb driver from Moblin. This driver has source components for both the kernel and 2d portion of the xorg driver. Since our primary concerns are 2d acceleration and proper suspend/resume support, that seems to be a plus since we'd have all the source. However, it hasn't been updated in some 19 months. Then there is the IEGD driver, which is much newer than the xfree86-video-psb driver, but it doesn't offer source for the 2d xorg portions. A bit of a pain to work with as it seems to do its own thing xorg configuration wise and seems to want to unpack only on a windows system that creates an installer that in supposed to be run only on the target system. Also, it doesn't seem to be straightforward to find out what is different between, say, 10.2 and 10.3, or find out what features are "officially" supported or supposed to work. The EMGD driver is new, but I have no clear how it differs from IEGD or if I should try to sign up for the beta for it, other than "new, shiny". The last one in the list is the IVI driver, which I even know less about, except for a vague mention. Is it just xfree86-video-psb that was written by Tungsten Graphics? Or is the IEGD driver also from Tungsten? Is there a reason that the 2d portions of the xfree86-video-psb driver is open, but the other drivers are not? All the things that the netbook users ask for, have problems with, pull their hair out over, many embedded developers probably do too, at least for me. My main concerns right now are working, and fast, suspend and resume times. The limit of what a good UMS driver can support would be a good start. What is the best driver for suspend/resume?

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