Thread: Is the Maemo5 development/release process unprecedented?
View Single Post
Frank Banul is offline Frank Banul
2008-12-01 , 18:04
Posts: 398 | Thanked: 301 times | Joined on Sep 2007 @ Texas
#58
Originally Posted by lardman View Post
The same bandwidth limitation as exists for arbitrary video output will hold (3D hardware writes directly to the framebuffer afaik, framebuffer memory is allocated in SDRAM from where it is copied to the Epson LCD controller chip to perform updates). This in no way (afaict) precludes using the 3D chipset.
If the framebuffer is in SDRAM, the 3d accelerator can access that. Then it's clear to me that the 3d accelerator is usable from a technical standpoint. The rest is a matter of software (not saying it's simple or possible from a licensing perspective).

It seems that the only possible technical limitation would be the update rate possible when copying from SDRAM to external frame buffer. Non technical issues aside, the Fremantle bling would not update at 30fps on the n8x0s. But this shouldn't slow down the overall interface or experience. The CPU does not have to do the 3d rendering. There would be frames dropped is all because the 3d accelerator could update the SDRAM frame buffer faster than it could be copied to the external frame buffer. On video this may suck, but does it matter on menus and other UI widgets? Hard to say without seeing the interface but I would guess not.

Frank