SciTech has announced an agreement with ATI, which will enable advanced multi-OS (Linux X11, Qt/Embedded, OS/2, Athene, Amiga, SMX, and more) support for ATI’s mobile, desktop and embedded visual processors in future versions of SciTech SNAP Graphics IES and ENT versions. The most significant impact of this agreement will be realized by users of alternate industrial-embedded OS’es, whom will now have access to tested and certified accelerated drivers for ATI hardware on their OS of choice. Read more in the press release.
Additionally, SciTech has also opened up access to the SciTech SNAP SDK under both a commercial license, and the GNU GPL License. This dual license structure allows broader, and less restrictive access to SciTech’s tools and technologies by OS and application developers.
This is really very good move, I can’t wait for the FreeBSD version. 😉 It looks like it will be very hard to get Nvidia as parnter?
My laptop is horribly unslick running gnome. Granted, it’s not very new (400Mhz PII, 192MB ram), i wonder if an official driver for the ATI Rage Lt Pro in it will speed things up a bit.
“i wonder if an official driver for the ATI Rage Lt Pro in it will speed things up a bit.”
well I only know of one way to find out:
http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/ent/snap_linux.html
It would be nice to see a BeOS/Zeta version…
I agree – I suggest sending the Zeta team a note and letting them know what you would like to see in future releases of Zeta;)
Well, if you lower your prices, I am sure they will bite. Otherwise, I don’t see them licensing anything from SciTech, cause they are a start-up with limited resources atm.
i know its been said time and time again, but if these guys put out a quality 3d side to their 2d drivers i would be first in line
actually i might go ahead and get the 2d running, i need some good driver lovin
I dont believe we’ve announced prices for unsupported OS’es? However, If you look at the cost of our Linux solution, I think you’ll agree it’s fairly inexpensive @ $19.95 considering that you get a year of support and compatibility with virtually any graphics card on the market.
“…i need some good driver lovin” well driver lovin’s what we got here at SciTech – enjoy!
Because I know that Aitvo will ask at some point… let me say that support for the ATI IGP chipsets is now much closer to reality:)
Linux – Xfree or X Free (not a typo) SciTech gives you the choice. SciTech SNAP Graphics can exist in environments that utilize the power of X or perhaps as importantly in environment that don’t. For example SciTech SNAP Graphics binaries that are shipped in our enterprise products are the exact same binaries currently provide to embedded customers, such as those utilizing Qt/Embedded the difference is in the shel driver only.
More on this – The OS specific code is contained in a separate shell driver leaving the HW specific code completely free of any and all OS dependencies. What this means is that if a developer say someone involved in BeOS/Zeta development wishes to provide native support for SNAP Graphics drivers in that OS, then they need only port the SciTech SNAP shell driver – the tools and instructions to so are well documented and available via the SciTech SNAP SDK.
“What this means is that if a developer say someone involved in BeOS/Zeta development wishes to provide native support for SNAP Graphics drivers in that OS, then they need only port the SciTech SNAP shell driver – the tools and instructions to so are well documented and available via the SciTech SNAP SDK.”
Except since BeOS/Zeta is a commercial closed source product, Zeta has to pay for a commercial license fee to SciTech. Money is the biggest barrier.
oh wait (joke lol)
Is there Fedora support?
3D / OpenGL?
XVideo?
Is the IGP version available in a beta yet?
🙂
Fedora should work fine – it’s still using XFree86 4.3, I believe. OpenGL should work fine in software mode. We don’t have the IGP hardware yet, but we do have an agreement to get it from ATI in the near future.
hey, long time. 🙂 Thx for the reply.
Now what does all this mean ?
Is this about drivers ? Does this mean, that SciTech is writing ATI (Radeon 9×00, IGP, etc.) drivers for all the named OS ?
“Is there Fedora support?”
I see no reason why SciTech SNAP Graphics for Linux would not work with Fedora, as its realy not Linux distro specific. The only real dependencie is that the distro must utilize XFree86 4.0.2 – 4.3. At some point I’m sure we will add Fedora to our QA process but with about a dozen allready in the line up the QA team tends to get cranky at the mention of adding another;)
“3D / OpenGL?”
yes, however at the *present* time this is in software only.
“XVideo?”
No
“Is the IGP version available in a beta yet?”
My assumption is this: The IGP chipsets are likely to work as they are based on addin boards and mobile versions that we do support. Before we call a chip certified we must physically plug the HW into our test harness and certify the device based on its unique PCI device ID. What this means to you is more waiting, at least in the short-term. However, this also means that when we do ship the IGP drivers you can rest assured that our engineers have looked at the driver and run a complete series of test on it. Some history here might also help… This process stems from our large OEM customers requiring a complete QA cycle on any chipset driver we ship to them. While its not always a popular method with end-users it does lead to an incredibly low incident rate in the field and that’s the prime objective here.
Is this about drivers ?
Yes.
Does this mean, that SciTech is writing ATI (Radeon 9×00, IGP, etc.) drivers for all the named OS ?
Close. This means that SciTech is writing SciTech SNAP Graphics’ drivers that support ATI HW on multiple OS’es. Again a single SciTech SNAP device driver supports all mentioned OS’es and can easily support more.
“XVideo?”
No
Is there any ETA on this one?
This is one (albiet near the top) in a long list of enhancements we are either working on or investigating. Right now the RandD team is very focused on some of the other items you mentioned in your initial post as well as a PPC port of the SNAP technology.
Can’t wait till it’s available for purchase. 🙂
Never hurts to be prepared;)
https://store.scitechsoft.com/cgi-bin/miva.cgi?Merchant2/4.00/mercha…
looking forward to supporting your needs – cheers!
“Fedora should work fine – it’s still using XFree86 4.3, I believe. OpenGL should work fine in software mode. We don’t have the IGP hardware yet, but we do have an agreement to get it from ATI in the near future. “
Yawn…….Wake me up when you finally get full hardware 3d support for ATI cards….me goes back to sleep.
Even though I no longer user their drivers (ATI *finally* released some recent and quite decent drivers, closed source or not…) I bought myself a driver a while back and would again. Its nice, seemed slightly faster in 2D (though thats only subjectively), installed very easily (trying installing Accelerated-X sometime!), and all in all was a pleasant experience. I like. Now if they give me XVideo and 3D support, I’d buy it again. The price point is perfect for what they deliver. Again, compare to XiG (www.xig.com) and their products. At the time I bought my video card (a Radeon 8500 128 meg RAM version) their 3D version of the driver cost more then my freaking brand-new still in the box card itself! I emailed them and asked about, and they have since offered different flavors of their drivers. I wonder if my email had anything to do with that. 😉 Their prices are lower, but having to add a kernel module *sucks.* Still, it was fast.
Sounds like Snaptech is very close to helping Linux be desktop ready. Have you considered working more closely with the SDL guys for things like video and 3D gaming? [or perhaps transgaming WineX?] If SDL on Linux was polished to be very extra good with Snaptech drivers, then many Boxed installs could just use those drivers rather than troubling with the Open ones. I Know that’s a bit bad for pure OSS fans, but at least it would provide a solid cross-distro platform [SDL already hooks into many languages] for game/web developers to write just one version for Linux and know many people could use it.
Next up…Sound cards!? Snaptech seems to be developing some trust with the hardware makers. This is a good thing. Good sound drivers with all the bells-and-whistles, no pun intended, would be great. Drivers written [and tested!] by the same folk who did the video drivers would be extra special! How ’bout it!
Athene has a working SDL implementation which you can use with accelerated SNAP drivers already (assuming you get the commercial version – otherwise you’re stuck with X11). It’s downloadable from http://www.rocklytefiles.com and there are 20+ games available already. It’s also possible to run games at full screen mode, straight from the console. This is particularly good for running MAME on Linux.
It’s mighty fast
> Except since BeOS/Zeta is a commercial closed
> source product, Zeta has to pay for a commercial
> license fee to SciTech. Money is the biggest barrier.
You mean a business actually has to *pay* for something?! Those evil SciTech people!