Paper presented at the Linux World Conference and Expo, August 11, 1999

Precision Insight presented the paper: 3D Vendors and the Path to Open Source at the Linux World Conference and Expo in San Jose, CA on August 11, 1999. This paper discusses business and technical issues faced by 3D hardware and software vendors as they develop for, or port their products to open source operating systems. Business issues include marketing, intellectual property, licensing, distribution, and support. Technical issues include development tools and engineering resources. The goal of this paper is to help 3D vendors understand the open source environment so they can be aware of the issues they will face in making a decision to enter the open source market. The focus of this paper is on the Linux Operating System.

3D Direct Rendering Infrastructure

Precision Insight is developing a Direct Rendering Infrastructure for use with XFree86 and MESA. This infrastructure will bring 3D features and performance to the PC which were previously only available on expensive workstations. Multiple design documents are now available. DRI Flowcharts in JPG format: Direct Rendering Infrastructure for XFree86 4.0 - data flow sketch (115k) , 19 August 99 Direct Rendering Infrastructure for XFree86 4.0 - Detailed control flow sketch (334k), 19 August 99 Direct Rendering Infrastructure for XFree86 4.0 - Detailed control flow diagram (Poster size - 760k), 19 August 99 High Level Design Document: A Multipipe Direct Rendering Architecture for 3D, 15 Sept 98, (postscript version) Low Level Design Documents: Direct Rendering Infrastructure, Low Level Design Document, 11 May 99, (postscript version) The Direct Rendering Manager, Kernel Support for the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, 11 May 99, (postscript version) Hardware Locking for the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, 11 May 99, (postscript version) A Security Analysis of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, 11 May 99, (postscript version) DRI Extension for supporting Direct Rendering Protocol Specification, 11 May 99 The entire SI will be freely released with complete source code to the open source community, under an XFree86 type license, so that others may use it as a model to fully support any high performance 3D application or 3D graphics hardware. PI will also offer its services to application or hardware vendors to assist in porting, extending, or supporting the entire pipeline.

Paper presented at the Linux World Conference and Expo, March 4, 1999

Precision Insight presented the paper: Managing Graphics Hardware Vendor Relationships in the Linux Developer Community at the Linux World Conference and Expo in San Jose, CA on March 4, 1999. This paper offers guidelines to anyone who is responsible for establishing or maintaining business relationships. Although the paper is written to describe a specific type of business relationship, it can be applicable to many similar situations.