sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Joël Bourquard <joel.bourquard@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Michael, this looks very nice !

Only drawback is that it wouldn't work with Nvidia's drivers yet, so CUDA
acceleration would be out of the question, unless I'm mistaken...


On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Michael Zugelder <
michaelzugelder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Dave Airlie is currently making some progress in the intel<->nvidia
> switching
> area (http://airlied.livejournal.com/74176.html). I haven't tested his
> drm-nvidia-switch branch yet, but it looks very interesting. If the
> "correct"
> runtime switching works, there shouldn't be much issues in getting the
> brightness control to work, regardless of which graphics card is currently
> used
> to output video.
>
> Michael
>
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Adam Hill <sidepipeuk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> This is interesting, so that would mean that the "physical connection"
> of
> >> the Intel card to the backlight is in fact *not* physical at all, but
> >> instead it's a software situation that results from the BIOS's way of
> >> initializing things ?
> >
> >        Ahh, no, I don't believe so. The reason that I say this is that we
> use
> > either a modified BIOS to enable static switching, or the old kernel boot
> > trick, in order to get the Vaio to initialise the NVidia card and disable
> the
> > Intel card completely in order to get the NVidia drivers to work. If the
> link
> > to brightness was configurable, then it would seem strange that Sony
> added
> > these options in the BIOS, but then didn't link the brightness to the
> NVidia
> > card at the same time!
> >
> >> It would be really, really great to be able to fix the mapping, so that
> the
> >> NVIDIA card can then control everything.  I'm pretty damn sure this is
> just
> >> a matter of getting more exposure (ie: more knowledgable kernel and/or
> >> "Nouveau" developers) about this issue, what do you think ?
> >
> >        Well, what it needs is someone who really knows how VGA cards work
> in
> > terms of initial set-up by the BIOS. We could then "undo" what was done
> for
> > the Intel card and re-do what the BIOS does in static mode for the
> NVIdia.
> >
> >        Moving on from that, if X has a way of saving a session ( well,
> window
> > posisions and screen content in a way that is independent of VRAM, ) then
> we
> > could even have dynamic switching working, i.e.
> >
> > Save session state and exit X.
> > Unmap Intel card
> > Remap NVidia
> > Run X with restored session.
> >
> >        Unfortunately I don't have this knowledge or the time to acquire
> it :(.
> >
> > Adam.
> >
> >
> >> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Adam Hill <sidepipeuk@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> >> > > Same here, I would be very happy if we could control brightness
> while
> >> > > running on the NVIDIA card.  I don't know exactly what it takes,
> maybe
> >> >
> >> > the
> >> >
> >> > > Intel card needs to be accessible from the PCI bus (since, as I
> heard,
> >> >
> >> > the
> >> >
> >> > > physical brightless control is connected to the Intel card).  As I
> see
> >> >
> >> > it,
> >> >
> >> > > initializing the Intel card without allocating any of its buffers
> (ie:
> >> > > initialize it just enough so we can ask it to set the brightness)
> might
> >> >
> >> > be
> >> >
> >> > > the way to do it.
> >> > >
> >> >         I fear that it may be much more complicated than that because
> as
> >> >
> >> > far as I
> >> > know the BIOS initialises the Intel card at boot time regardless of
> the
> >> > position of the hybrid graphics switch. That means that by the time
> the
> >> > Linux
> >> > kernel starts the Intel card already has its BIOS and VRAM mapped in
> to
> >> > where
> >> > the NVidia drivers expect their stuff to be.
> >> >
> >> >        The simplest solution overall would be if Sony modified the
> BIOS
> >> >        to
> >> >
> >> > initialise the correct card at first boot, but that isn't going to
> happen
> >> > because Windows doesn't care. So, the two sensible options would seem
> to
> >> > be:
> >> >
> >> > 1) Unmap the Intel card's resources and map in the NVidia card before
> the
> >> > NVidia module is loaded.
> >> >
> >> > 2) Somehow map both cards in. I'm not sure if this is possible because
> I
> >> > don't
> >> > really know much about how video BIOS is accessed - if it is expected
> to
> >> > be in
> >> > a particular place in the memory map then this would be impossible.
> >> >
> >> > Adam.
> >> >
> >> > > Maybe we could set up a bounty that would go to the one who
> publishes a
> >> > > kernel patch and/or generic shell script and instructions to do it ?
> >> >
> >> >  That
> >> >
> >> > > could be nice...
> >> > >
> >> > > On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Jordi Augé <jordi@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > > > Hi,
> >> > > >
> >> > > > I'm a new Vaio Z user, and I've successfully installed Linux as
> Main
> >> > > > OS on a VPCZ11X9/e, after some struggling I've gotten everything
> >> > > > working, including hsdpa and graphics switching. My only gripe so
> >> > > > far is the inability to control screen brightness when using
> nvidia
> >> > > > graphics.
> >> > > >
> >> > > > Any updates on this issue? what changes will be necessary to
> >> > > > implement it?
> >> > > >
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> >> >
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> >> >
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