Asus PL30JT @ gadgets.softpedia.com

List of NVIDIA Optimus laptops @ blogs.nvidia.com

nTersect Blog - NVIDIA

ASUS is showing 12 systems with Optimus Technology in their booth:

• U30Jc (13.3”)
  
  
  
• UL50Vf (15.6”)
  
• UL80Jt (14”)
  
• U33Jc (13.3”)
• U43Jc (14”)
• UL30Jt (13.3”)
• K52Jc (15.6”)
  
• N82Jv (14”)
• N61Jv (16”)
• N71Jv (17”)
• NX90 (18.4”)
• 1201PN (12.1” with Next Generation NVIDIA Ion)

MSI is showing 2 Optimus notebooks.The new MSI F Series is designed to be professional, slim and powerful,
and the FX400 and the FX600 both feature an NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPUs
with NVIDIA Optimus technology:

• FX400 (14”)
• FX600 (15.6”).  

Clevo is displaying 2 Optimus notebooks in their private meeting room suite:

• B4100 (14”)
• B5100 (15”).

And in NVIDIA’s Cebit demo rooms we’re showing several of the above
ASUS notebooks, plus 2 additional Optimus notebooks - the Medion Akoya
P6622 (15.6”) with GeForce 310M and the recently announced Acer Aspire
One 532g (10”) with next generation NVIDIA ION.
Optimus is on a roll.

NVIDIA Optimus on video @ www.engadget.com

NVIDIA's Optimus technology shows its graphics switching adroitness on video -- Engadget

Explaining automatic graphics switching and the benefits thereof can be
a somewhat dry affair. You have to tell people about usability
improvements and battery life savings and whatnot... it's much more fun
if you just take a nice big engineering board, strap the discrete GPU
on its own card and insert an LED light for the viewer to follow.
NVIDIA has done just that with its Optimus technology -- coming to a laptop or Ion 2-equipped netbook
near you -- and topped it off by actually pulling out the GPU card when
it wasn't active, then reinserting it and carrying on with its use as
if nothing had happened. This was done to illustrate the fact that
Optimus shuts down the GPU electrically, which is that little bit more
energy efficient than dropping it into an idle state. Shimmy past the
break to see the video.

NVIDIA

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vga_switcheroo code makes it into linux-next

The vga_switcheroo code has made it into linux-next, so we are one step closer to full upstream integration of switchable graphics features in Linux:

include/linux/vga_switcheroo.h                  |   57 +
 146 files changed, 18177 insertions(+), 6374 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/drm_buffer.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nv50_grctx.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/evergreen.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/evergreen_reg.h
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon_atpx_handler.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/reg_srcs/r600
 create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/vga/vga_switcheroo.c
 create mode 100644 include/drm/drm_buffer.h
 create mode 100644 include/linux/vga_switcheroo.h

GPU Switching Goes For The Gold: Mainline Inclusion @ www.phoronix.com

Nice to see "Hybrid Graphics" Linux being mentioned in www.phoronix.com!

Now the aim of the Team http://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux goes beyond switchable graphics, and includes heterogeneous platform computing ideas like OpenCL and parallel computing ideas like CUDA. But switchable graphics is the first natural step in filling the Linux feature space in this area.

[Phoronix] GPU Switching Goes For The Gold: Mainline Inclusion

At the start of the month we talked about GPU switching coming to Linux in a crude form
that allowed notebooks with dual GPUs (one being a low-power,
low-performance integrated chip and the other being the more
performance-oriented GPU that's power hungry) to be switched from
without the need for a reboot in Linux. This initial work was just a
collection of hacks by David Airlie and it required VT switching after
killing the X Server, etc. It also didn't power down the unused GPU.
However, as the days passed, this code did more and delayed GPU switching came too.



The Linux GPU switching (a.k.a. "Hybrid Graphics") still isn't as
clean of a solution as what can be found with the Windows 7 support
where GPUs can be switched between in real-time, but that's because of
limitations with the current X.Org Server. However, with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel having just been released, David is hoping to finish off this work that he calls "vga_switcheroo" and to push it into the mainline Linux kernel.



The vga_switcheroo kernel code is now up to its 13th revision with
some of the later changes being ATRM support for the Radeon BIOS, a fix
for resuming the Intel GPU, and avoid putting an already inactive GPU
through suspend-and-resume. David Airlie talked about the revival of
this work on his blog. This Red Hat engineer has also started pushing patches on the DRI development list as well as the Linux kernel mailing list.



Assuming some of the remaining issues are cleared up in this code,
GPU switching in the form of vga_switcheroo should be here with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel release.

Fedora 13 with Nouveau Gallium3D and switchable graphics

The Linux graphics landscape looks better and better by the day. Nouveau recently picked up steam with its inclusion in the mainline kernel, and now Gallium3D is also moving forward. Although NVIDIA is doing a *decent* job at providing closed-source binary drivers for Linux, features like switchable graphics or reliable suspend/hibernate features have been lagging behind the binary blob that NVIDIA provides, compared to other proprietary OSes. Instead, Nouveau is now providing switchable graphics support for Intel/NVIDIA laptop configurations, and with the recent update in Gallium3D (see below), a fairly decent 3D acceleration support.

If you have tested Gallium3D, OpenCL/CUDA or switchable graphics in Fedora 13, please consider reporting your experiences by joining the hybrid-graphics-linux Launchpad team here:

https://launchpad.net/~hybrid-graphics-linux

Click on the "Join the team" link on the right, and participate with your experiences using the mailing list:

hybrid-graphics-linux@lists.launchpad.net

Happy Testing!

[Phoronix] NVIDIA Has Gallium3D Support In Fedora 13

With Fedora 13,
Red Hat is again shipping with the latest free software NVIDIA bits,
which now includes 3D support. Thanks to an update to the mesa-dri-drivers-experimental
package, there is 3D / OpenGL support enabled for NVIDIA hardware. This
3D support is coming from Nouveau's Gallium3D driver for most of the
NVIDIA graphics hardware while there is also a classic Mesa driver for old NV hardware
that recently came about. Yes, there is finally a deployed
Nouveau-NVIDIA Gallium3D driver that will be easily deployable out in
the wild with Fedora 13.



Fedora 13 is scheduled to be released towards the middle of May
while the first alpha release is coming in early March. Red Hat's Adam
Williamson mentioned this 3D support on Nouveau via his blog
where he mentions that the Spring RTS framework, Compiz, Neverball,
Foobillard, and Quake 3 are all working for him with a GeForce 9400GT
graphics card and the Gallium3D driver.

Adam also sent in a screenshot to us of the Nouveau NV95 Gallium3D
driver also running with Nexuiz. Needless to say, this week we will be
delivering Nouveau Gallium3D benchmarks atop Fedora Rawhide.

Give Ubuntu Lucid Alpha a good Nouveau test

[Phoronix] Ubuntu 10.04's Nouveau Stack Gets Ready

The Ubuntu-X testers have been feverishly testing their 2.6.33-pulled Nouveau DRM on the Linux 2.6.32 kernel along with their KMS-supported xf86-video-nouveau DDX driver. Canonical's Bryce Harrington describes this Nouveau stack as being "nearly ready" for Lucid and is requesting a final test among those interested in the open-source NVIDIA graphics hardware support. This is only for 2D/video and kernel mode-setting support, but the Gallium3D driver for providing OpenGL acceleration isn't going to be deployed, so users are left with the software rasterizer.

If you are interested in testing out Ubuntu 10.04's Nouveau stack you can do so by following this call for testing thread and checking out the Nouveau evaluation Wiki page.

Ubuntu developers are interested in knowing whether the system boots, if VT switching functions, whether the default resolution that is mode-set is correct, the resolution listing is correct, whether RandR-driven screen inverting and rotation works, can movies play with Nouveau in Totem, if Adobe Flash correctly works, if software 3D will not crash the X Server, and lastly is if suspend-and-resume/hibernation works accordingly.