Sun CG12 / GS aka Matrox SG3-1152B graphics accelerator for 3D solid applications

[escimo]

Seems to work, some kind of ... with demo transparency_ovl the X Server crashed after loading the two OpenLook windows.

The demo (transparency_ovl) is working in general, but always if I want to take a screenshot the X Server will fail and terminate. Nevertheless there isn't much acceleration with my x86 box: no dedicated dev pipeline (dynamically-loadable shared object module) for the built-in graphics chip (CL GD-5428, 1MB DRAM). Simply the systen does not fit for this purpose w/ this configuration:

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$ cd /opt/SUNWits/Graphics-sw/xgl/demo && ./install_check

xgl-02.png (5.72 KiB) Viewed 921 times

No DGA (Direct Graphics Access) support to bypass the X11 protocoll overhead.

The inq demo application call xgl_inquire() for some more detailed information

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$ inq
Inquire Information:
  XPEX
  Xlib port
    Accelerated Color Type(s): INDEXED
    Depth : 8
    Width : 1024
    Height: 768
    Double Buffering
      Using hardware swap
    Point Types:
        2D
        3D
        FLOAT
    Software Zbuffer in host
    Picking emulated in software
    Double buffering accelerated through hardware
    Index colors accelerated through hardware
    True colors emulated in software
    Depth cueing accelerated through hardware
    Lighting emulated in software
    Shading emulated in software
    Hidden line removal not supported
    Antialiasing emulated in software
    No stereo support
    Multi Buffering supported

One XIL image viewer demo

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$ pwd
/home/sx/graphics/xil/display
$ i386/display toys.header

xil-01.png (98.77 KiB) Viewed 921 times

Next step: install pkgs on SPARCstation under Solaris 2.4
Whoever wants to test the small demos, send me PM.

[escimo]

Then will do a trace on the SunDiag run to know if I already have the high resolution version and low res is maybe 1024*768 with Sun Part# 370-1329 (?)

After I found the header file cg12reg.h it's clear and interesting because I don't have any further information about the HR version.

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(...)
#define    CG12_WIDTH        1152
#define    CG12_HEIGHT        900
#define    CG12_WIDTH_HR     1280
#define    CG12_HEIGHT_HR    1024
(...)

[escimo]

You are missing the Sun ZX/Leo and the Parallax boards.

Someone seen or know the following boards?
* DuPont Pixel Systems GLengine-24XP and GLengine-48XP SBus boards (2nd generation) for PX/IRIS GL port for SPARC.

VME boards alternatives...
* Evans & Sutherland (E&S) Freedom Series 1000 and 3000 (stand-by graphics subsystem) using e.g. ES/PEX, XGL
* Vicom Visual Computing VX and MVX (1x/4x i860)

Soon try some of the XGL samples, running on my SS2 with GS graphics under Solaris 2.4.

BTW: PCD-4H using now a ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (Mach32) ISA board wit 2 MiB VRAM for higher resolution (1280*1024px @ 8bpp) in conjunction with 19" LCD for crispy clear fonts, ok better than before, because scaling could not be switched off with resolution less than the native one.

[escimo]

Soon try some of the XGL samples, running on my SS2 with GS graphics under Solaris 2.4.

Info with XGL install_check on the SPARSstation 2GS running Solaris 2.4 HW 3/95 Operating Environment

cg12-sol24-01.png (5.53 KiB) Viewed 772 times

C compiler and XGL header files next.

[escimo]

After installation of all tools and utilities, including header files I managed to compile all XGL and XIL demos.
The output of the XGL demo "inq" wasn't what I expected: still many lines with "emulated in software"

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$ inq
Inquire Information:
  Sun:GS
  Direct Graphics Access
    Accelerated Color Type(s): INDEXED
    Depth : 8
    Width : 1152
    Height: 900
    Single Buffering
      Using hardware swap
    Point Types:
        2D
        3D
        INT
        FLOAT
    Hardware Zbuffer
    Picking emulated in software
    Double buffering emulated in software
    Index colors accelerated through hardware
    True colors emulated in software
    Depth cueing emulated in software
    Lighting emulated in software
    Shading emulated in software
    Hidden line removal accelerated through hardware
    Antialiasing emulated in software
    No stereo support
    No Multi Buffering support
   
$ truss inq 2>&1 | grep ^open | grep pipeline
open("/opt/SUNWits/Graphics-sw/xgl/lib/pipelines/xglSUNWswp.so.4", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/opt/SUNWits/Graphics-sw/xgl/lib/pipelines/xglSUNWmem.so.4", O_RDONLY) = 5
open("/opt/SUNWits/Graphics-sw/xgl/lib/pipelines/xglSUNWcg12.so.4", O_RDONLY) = 5

My favorite demo "transparency_ovl" (transparency overlay) breaks in the moment the OpenLook window opens. With my x86 box there is no problem at all.

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$ transparency_ovl

XGL Version = XGL 3.1
Color mode = TrueColor
X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:  138 (SUN_OVL)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  4 ()
  Serial number of failed request:  190
  Current serial number in output stream:  196

Maybe some other application blocking or occupying the overlay map? - I have no idea.

Some of the demos are much faster, e.g. in rotation/transformation, compared to the x86 box w/o special XGL device pipeline but higher (internal 66MHz) clockrates. Also the sundiag test cases for the CG12 are much faster in displaying the results compared to the SPARCstation 1+ (Sun-4/65).

Window screenshot of XIL example with CT image (?)

xil-02.png (129.39 KiB) Viewed 716 times

Screenshot of XIL demo movie_player_example (JPEG playback)

xil-03.png (8.87 KiB) Viewed 716 times

Hope to find better demos for the CG12, some day

[spiroyster]

Found some old Matrox manuals on bitsavers.. including QG-640.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/matrox/

Clicking on the 'Parent Directory' link is quite fun too.

[escimo]

Thx, have the docs already but are quite interesting. The QG-640 is from an internal view - excluding Q-bus - equal to PG-640, I suppose. And yes, the parent directory has many more stuff.

[escimo]

Contacted Mr Deering.
From his point of view or what he remembered the GS aka cgtwelve aka CG12 was NEVER EVER a product developed by Sun but rather by Matrox. Sun contributed only two ASICs (EIC External SBus Interface Ctrl and another on the upper framebuffer PCB as well as drivers and implementation for graphics API's like Pixrect, XGL and PHIGS+.

I strongely believe the GS was from an architectural point the direct predecessor for the later improved and highly integrated MGA (Matrox Graphics Architecture). This and the version for EISA bus, the MG-3D, in theory also usable in an Indigo 2 workstation with dedicated Matrox X11 servers, later succeding into products like the Matrox Impression and Ultima up to Millennium series. In fact the price/perf ratio was not so bad for price sensitive workstation users. You can find some Matrox chipset specification (e.g. ATLAS) with matching characteristics in WWW. Just take a look.

Because i didn't find more in-depth documentation dedicated to the GS I use some "source trees" from WWW to get a closer look in the acceleration methods. And no, it's not the NetBSD source tree because there is no acceleration for the GS available there ... until now. maybe never

So far, as you're here in Europe, Goodnight and sweet dreams.

[vishnu]

Contacted Mr Deering...

He's got a list of the graphics projects he's worked on, pretty impressive:

http://michaelfrankdeering.com/blog/projects/graphics_hardware/

[escimo]

Contacted Mr Deering...

He's got a list of the graphics projects he's worked on, pretty impressive

Indeed, really impressive!

(...) This and the version for EISA bus, the MG-3D, in theory also usable in an Indigo 2 workstation with dedicated Matrox X11 servers,(...)

typo: board set with name designation MG-3D Ultra was for EISA, without "Ultra" for 16-bit ISA.

Finally got a used version of the book "State of the Art in Computer Graphics" to get more in general information about architecture.
The smal block stating the GS has a classic graphics pipeline ("inverted funnel' structure)
Figure somewhat complemented with ASIC abbreviations from my sample board set.

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 CPU    SBus                   Matrox SG3-1152 /BASE                          Matrox SG3-1152 /MODULE
|----| |---| |-------------------------------------------------------------|   |-------------------|

[Host] <---> [EIC SBus Ctrl] <---------------> [APU Pix Addr Gen ASIC]            +--------------+
                                 ^        ^              |                        |              |
                                 |        |              |                        | 8-way        |
                                 v        |--> [DPU Drawing/Tiling ASIC #1] <---> |              |
                      [TI 320C30 DSP ]    |              |                        |interleaved   |
                      [Geometry Stage]    |--> [DPU Drawing/Tiling ASIC #2] <---> |              |
                                          |              v                        | Frame Buffer |
                                          '--> [DPU Drawing/Tiling ASIC #3] <---> |              |
                                                                                  +--------------+

Legend:
EIC := External Interface Controller
APU := Address Processing Unit
DPU := Data Processing Unit
DSP := Digital Signal Processor (TI 320C30 Family w/ Floating-Point capabilities)

EDIT: "DPU: Draw Processing Unit" --> "DPU: Data Processing Unit"

[GL1zdA]

Contacted Mr Deering...

He's got a list of the graphics projects he's worked on, pretty impressive:

http://michaelfrankdeering.com/blog/projects/graphics_hardware/

Nice, he basically was involved in the development of Sun's all custom (non 3dlabs based) 3D accelerators.

[escimo]

History is interessting to me.
After looking into dozens of documents and magazines I'm quite sure the Matrox SG3-1152 (Sun GS) and MG-3D Series share the same graphics features, architecture, chips. The SG3-1152 was unveiled by Sun in end of 1990 together with the SS2 (^1) as OEM product, the MG-3D Series boards for AT and EISA bus become public in Q1/1991 (^2), later with less prise to fit into the PC workstation market, which gained more and more acceptance.
Sources:
(^1) SunFLASH Vol 23 #6, November 1990
(^2) nfoWorld 29 Apr 1991, p.28

Other nice text block...

3.2.3.5.4 Silicon Graphics 3-D Graphics Engines. Two new 3-D graphics accelerators from SG
and Matrox Electronics use hardware and software muscle to make personal computers perform
almost like high-end graphics workstations. For now, this means users like GBR can spend less to
display animations and speed display-lost processing and zoom/pan redraw functions. In the future
when Windows 3.0 and other drivers become available, these boards could be integral to the work
of graphics artists, designers etc. To achieve their performance, Matrox's MG-3D series and SG's
IrisVision boards take over graphics-intensive algorithms from the main system. Both adapters have
I massive amounts of on-board video RAM for display-list storage. The hardware on these adapters
are more commonly found on UNIX-based Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC) and Iris
workstations. The Matrox boards use the Texas Instruments DSP-30 chip. The DSP-30 accelerates
the drawing of primitive functions to around 20,000 Gouraud-shaded polygons per second. This is
a measurement based on adding color and light shading attributes to a wireframe model. IrisVision's 3
geometry uses triple 8-bit D/A converters, a TMS-340C30 processor, and a Weitek floating-point
coprocessor to speed graphics operations. SG rates the adapter at 14,000 Gouraud-shaded polygons
per second. Both boards support standard AT-bus platforms, but each vendor has staked out different
territory when it comes to bus architectures. IrisVision comes in ISA and Micro Channel versions.
For ISA-based machines the IrisVision/8 ($3495) displays 256 colors and the IrisVision/24 ($4995)
displays 16.7 million colors (24-bit). The Micro Channel version costs $3995 and supports 256-color
output. Matrox's MG-3D series includes ISA and EISA boards: The ISA-based MG-3D which
offers 12-bit dithered color images, costs $3495. The EISA-based MG-3D Ultra sells for $5995. All
the products require 386 or 486 systems. IrisVision requires a math coprocessor. The systems
support AutoCAD 386 release 1.1 including the Micro Channel adapters.

Source: "Digital Hardware Architecture Implementation- Annual Report", CI-2071-93-0008, p.41

[jpstewart]

History is interessting to me.

Me too. Especially when somebody else is doing all the research for me. Thanks for sharing that!