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Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux?

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On Sat, 3/22/2025 5:37 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.lh> wrote:
>>> vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>>>   (noise deleted from vallor's attribution line)
>>>>
>>>>> vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>>>>>   (noise removed from vallor's attribution line)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Just about everything, is functionally broken right now. For example,
>>>>>>>> even if you had the money, you can't drive to BestBuy and buy a GPU.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In the history of BestBuy, I've NEVER been able to buy there just a
>>>>>>> GPU.
>>>>>>> I had to buy a video card with its GPU.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The colloquial term Paul used was correct -- and your splitting of
>>>>>> hairs has nothing to do with his discussion.
>>>>>
>>>>> Just what is YOUR colloquial definition of "GPU" that differs from the
>>>>> technical definition of GPU?  Perhaps a video card, or a CPU with
>>>>> integral video?  I *can* buy both of those at BestBuy.
>>>>
>>>> I thought it was obvious what Paul was talking about -- and I doubt
>>>> you missed his meaning, since you are an intelligent person.
>>>
>>> You don't know, and why you avoid answering.
>>
>>   In the old days, it wasn't a chip and not even a 'card', but a big
>> box, costing tens of thousands of dollars. So there you go!
> 
> I only go back to around 1974 when I was in my teens to use the
> University's mainframe, and sumbitted input using punch cards or tape
> created at a teletype terminal.  Then came dumb terminals with keyboards
> and monitors made of tubes (CRTs) and discrete circuits, and the servers
> did all the computing.  No PCs, Macs, or cell phones.
> 
> ICs (Integrated Circuits) showed up in 1959 from, I believe, Fairchild.
> Arcade boxes have used specialized ICs since 1970s.  Before that, I
> don't recall GPUs existed, but not sure back then that anything inside
> the monitor was called a GPU.  In the prior monitors, they had
> television interface adaptors, and rendered the display as soon as the
> digital signal got converted.  There was no GPU.
> 
> From what I can tell, the term "GPU" (graphics processing unit) did not
> exist until 1994 when Sony used it to describe their Toshiba-designed 
> graphics IC and support logic.  Nvidia popularized the term in 1999
> saying their GeForce 256 was the "world's first GPU".  AMD tried to
> market their VPU (Visual Processing Unit) term.
> 
> https://medium.com/altumea/a-brief-history-of-gpu-47d98d6a0f8a
> 
> There were video chips (ICs) and discrete logic back in 1970 which were
> the basis for later development into GPUs, but those were not GPUs back
> then.  
> 
> https://www.britannica.com/technology/graphics-processing-unit
> 
> Maybe before the IC era which almost predates my birth (I wasn't doing
> any computing of any kind when I was 3 years old), there were video
> controllers as discrete logic, but back then you used dumb terminals
> which were basically TV sets with converters from digital input.  I
> don't what was used at the server end to encode the video signals into
> the digital signals sent to the dumb terminals, but back then the term
> "GPU" did not yet exist.
> 
>>   My GPU is bigger than yours!
> 
> But I can legibly spell my entire name in the snow with 3-foot letters!
> 

They were originally frame buffers, with LUT and DAC for output.
They would originally have been built with jelly bean logic (counters
and registers).

My first display device was a CRT5027, which already appeared to be
old hat when I bought one. I've been unable to find the year of
introduction. It predates PDF, so the only copies are ones done
by scanning a paper datasheet (undated). The nine registers, are the same
register definitions as the modern "Mode Line" in graphics. which when
you think about it, that's the most shocking feature of the chip -- it
defines what is still used today on computers. The Mode Line definition.

This isn't color and does not have a LUT or a character generator or a DAC.
This does monochrome without any help. My breadboard circuit did 640x480x1
and fed a 12MHz monitor (equals 640x480) and being a black and white TV
set, was perfect for the job.

http://spatula-city.org/~im14u2c/intv/tech/crt5027.pdf

When I got to work, the video card (not sure what the card
was called in the catalog), part of the card was "wasted"
on a BITBLT implementation. The intention might have been
to support Bresenhams algorithm. That would draw straight
lines, and would be a 2D form of acceleration. I guess
the staff coded up some driver code for it, and it was
taking too long to load the hardware with operands, to get
any benefit from it. And that wasn't the last time that
would happen.

Later in the groups life, we did a real GPU. Three boards.
Boards wired together with a massive number of ribbon cables.
The ribbon cables had to be folded just right, for the
thing to be assembled. It could change color images at
60FPS ("epilepsy risk" before we knew about epilepsy risk
when it was used in an auditorium). That never got further
than the prototype, but the team had fun working on that.
Might have run at 25MHz, didn't do gouraud shading (we only
had one driver writer and she had an "infinite" feature
list to implement). That would have had a LUT and a DAC,
but I didn't really know anything about the design in detail,
other than the most basic features. Like DX12, that used
"display lists" for execution. A whole structure would be
sent to the card, to execute and fill the frame buffer with
some color object(s).

Because this was the beginning of an industry, and the
first circuits were pretty primitive, we had to be happy
with fairly low levels of integration. You're talking 5K gates
for the CRT5027, when modern GPUs have billions and billions of gates.

Once the chips became complex enough to support a DAC on
board, that changed everything. Suddenly Brooktree was kicked
to the curb, and devices were doing some of the external functions,
internally.

In later life, the functions were still getting smeared around,
because the DAC can't be built just anywhere. It's a mixed
digital-analog function. For the iGPU, for a period of a year or two,
there was still VGA, and the lookup for the colors on that might
have been in the PCH.

Modern designs have all-digital outputs, no more DACs, no more VGA.
If you want VGA, it's an adapter from the computer store (of
which I own several, to continue using my VGA-based LCD monitors).
When the HDMI didn't work on my newest monitor, no problem, the
(ancient) VGA input did work, and an HDMI to VGA adapter could
drive that input. Problem solved.

   Paul

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Thread

Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-19 20:56 +0000
  Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> - 2025-03-19 17:35 -0400
    Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-03-20 04:18 -0400
  Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Bill <nonegiven@att.net> - 2025-03-20 13:10 -0400
    Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-03-20 15:08 -0400
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Bill <nonegiven@att.net> - 2025-03-20 15:52 -0400
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-03-20 22:41 +0100
    Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-03-20 22:39 +0100
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Dual Boot Windows <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2025-03-20 23:15 +0000
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Mark Lloyd <not.email@all.invalid> - 2025-03-21 17:35 +0000
  Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-20 13:53 -0500
    Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-03-20 15:56 -0400
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-20 17:03 -0500
        Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-03-21 00:26 +0000
          Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-20 20:42 -0500
            Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Mr Xi Ji Ping <ping@china.cn> - 2025-03-21 02:00 +0000
            Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-03-21 02:34 +0000
              Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-21 17:20 -0500
                Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-03-22 18:37 +0000
                Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-22 16:37 -0500
                Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-03-22 18:37 -0400
                Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-03-23 02:19 +0000
                Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-03-23 01:31 -0400
    Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-03-21 00:20 +0000
      Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-03-20 21:32 -0500
        Re: Will It Recommend You Install Linux? vallor <vallor@cultnix.org> - 2025-03-21 03:26 +0000

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