Status of Linux xorg driver support for CedarView Atoms?

As you might know Intel recently released their third generation Atoms (nicknamed CedarView) and unlike previous Atoms these ones are supposed to be HD 1080p capable without the need of a external GPU like the Nvidia ION.

So what I'm wondering is: what is the status of xorg driver support for the GPU with Linux?

Does xorg work at all with them?

Does video hardware decoding (vaapi) work with them?

I have searched the web but can't find anything conclusive, in fact it's really hard to find any useful info (beyond the hardware specs) about these new Atoms and Linux.

So does anyone know anything further?

I actually have a DN2800MT board on order which I hope to get next week (I didn't buy it for HTPC use but rather as a headless server board) so I will be testing this soon, but if anyone has already had experience with these new Atoms and Linux then I would really like to hear it, so I know what to expect.

I guess you missed my remark that I ordered the DN2800MT as a headless server board, so with regards to this specific planned use I don't care about GPU support at all as no X will be running on it.

I started this thread not specifically for this board I ordered but more in general to collect information with regards to these new Atoms.

I just found the following post on SPCR which shows that the hardware has real potential:


http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums...p?f=28&t=63959

8-9 Watts for the whole system during 1080p playback!! Wow! This is comparable to what a standalone Bluray player consumes, but their CPUs (or rather SoCs) are far more limited than an Atom.

I wish Intel was as capable at writing drivers as they are at making hardware...

Edit: there is now an article with detailed power consumption measurements on my web site here:
http://www.linuxtech.net/reviews/int...ower_draw.html
(it's still missing some measurements that I will add as soon as a bug in the Linux kernel related to the CedarView Atom GPU has been fixed)

Edit: It seems there is a Meego version with a close source graphics driver for the new Atoms:

http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/updates/...32-cedartrail/

Related release notes:
https://meego.com/downloads/releases...release-update

I'm downloading it now so I can test it when I get the board (before I start using it for it's intended server use)

I have been looking into that Meego repo further and I have found the packages that contain the binary PowerVR (Atom GPU) xorg drivers:
http://repo.meego.com/MeeGo/updates/...ia32/packages/

There are no docs inside the packages but from the filenames and the brief package descriptions I seem to understand that 3D OpenGL support and possibly even hardware video decoding is implemented in the drivers.

Here are the descriptions included in the packages:

psb-video-cdv-0.12-1.1.i586.rpm
User space driver for video decode on cdv

pvr-bin-cdv-1.7.788837_05-1.1.i586.rpm
Binary graphics driver and libraries from PowerVR

pvr-bin-cdv-devel-1.7.788837_05-1.1.i586.rpm
Development package for pvr driver

A flash plugin with hardware acceleration is available here:
http://registrationcenter-download.i...Linux_beta.rpm

As far as I understood it it's Intel doing the Linux drivers (probably based on shared code from Imagination for Windows).

Ok, I got the DN2800MT board, I'm actually posting this from the CedarTrail Meego Linux 1.2 ISO booted on this board from a USB stick.

The heat sink on the cpu doesn't get hot at all (I'm not using any fans), only warm, so this board definitely can run completely passively cooled (= silent!), without any thermal issues.

I can confirm that power consumption at idle is only 7.5 Watts.

X works fine out of the box with this Meego ISO (I wasn't expecting anything else since this Meego ISO is made for CedarTrail Atoms), but unfortunately Meego comes without any useful (h.264/vc1/mpeg) video codecs so I wasn't able to test video playback yet. Youtube works fine at 720p with software decoding, 1080p with software decoding stutters, but I still have to try the flash plugin with CedarTrail hw decoding support that I linked to in one of my previous posts.

Brief update: I have been trying out various distros (Centos 6.2, Mageia 2 beta 1, Fedora 17 alpha1) on the DN2800MT CedarView Atom mobo, basically Meego is currently the only one with decent X support, the other ones all fall back to VESA mode which is rather slow, especially for Video playback, so right now I wouldn't recommend Cedar View Atom based boards for desktop or HTPC use unless they either have an Nvidia GPU on board or you add a Nvidia card.

That said, the imminent Linux 3.3 kernel will have Cedar View frame buffer support, so the situation should improve in the coming months.