graphics driver training

NTDEV
1

Hi,
I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics drivers
(apart from that in the ddk).

Thanks
Kutty

2

I have a feeling you won’t find any. There’s only five or so, companies
doing their own graphics chips, and I don’t think more than a very select
few, if any, of the companies using those chips do anything besides
changing the logo and figuring out which build of the driver is stable
enough to ship with the product. It’s a pretty specialized area, and it’s
just not commercially viable to set up a course in the subject.

–
Mats

xxxxx@lists.osr.com wrote on 01/13/2005 02:23:15 PM:

Hi,
I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics
drivers
(apart from that in the ddk).

Thanks
Kutty

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@3dlabs.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

ForwardSourceID:NT0000ACA6

3

Kutty,

Azius (http://www.azius.com/) used to have a course on basic display driver
programming. D3D/OGL and acceleration are not covered though. It should get
you started such as drawing 2D/desktop without HW accelerations.

However, graphic drivers for modern graphic chip are EXTREMELY complicated.
Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software
team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.

As Mats stated, this is a very special area, there isn’t any in-depth
training available. If you want to do it for fun, just play with the
permedia sample in DDK. If you want to make a living of that, I’d suggest
you send a resume to one of those graphic chip makers, spend several years
there, and you’ll get some clues what graphic driver is all about.

Good luck,
Calvin

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training

Hi,
I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics drivers
(apart from that in the ddk).

Thanks
Kutty

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

4

Yeah, I agree with that. I’m just on my second year, and fortunately, I’ve
got my more experienced collegues to ask when I don’t understand something.
Of course, I just happend upon this job without any particular inclination
on display drivers as a speciality, more that it matched my previous
experience with writing low-level code for all sorts of purposes under a
number of OS’s.

The permedia driver, by the way, is one of our drivers from ages back, that
Microsoft has taken up as a sample driver for display drivers. A tiny part
of that driver is still in our current driver, but a lot of it is
different, in particular the chip specific part.

–
Mats

-------- Notice --------
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xxxxx@lists.osr.com wrote on 01/13/2005 04:10:37 PM:

Kutty,

Azius (http://www.azius.com/) used to have a course on basic display
driver
programming. D3D/OGL and acceleration are not covered though. It should
get
you started such as drawing 2D/desktop without HW accelerations.

However, graphic drivers for modern graphic chip are EXTREMELY
complicated.
Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software
team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.

As Mats stated, this is a very special area, there isn’t any in-depth
training available. If you want to do it for fun, just play with the
permedia sample in DDK. If you want to make a living of that, I’d suggest
you send a resume to one of those graphic chip makers, spend several
years
there, and you’ll get some clues what graphic driver is all about.

Good luck,
Calvin

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training

Hi,
I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics
drivers
(apart from that in the ddk).

Thanks
Kutty

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@3dlabs.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

ForwardSourceID:NT0000ACCE

5

> Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software

team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.

If you would tell this to a manager of a software company overhere ( Europe ), you will be
fired :-)) . I could be wrong, but I don’t think that you will find a company here that
has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device drivers , not to
mention that they would work on only one type of drivers.

C.

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training

Hi,
I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics drivers
(apart from that in the ddk).

Thanks
Kutty

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@compaqnet.be
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

6

I think the UK is still in Europe, and whilst we don’t have a hundred
developers in one building here in the UK, the 3DLabs software developers
are probably near the 100 mark if not more. Not every single one of them
work on the display driver, but if you count the OGL component (which isn’t
a kernel driver, but it’s still part of what the user installs as “driver”,
and it certainly communicates with the display driver proper), almost all
of them do “driver development” as their main task.

3DLabs is probably the smallest of the graphics chip manufacturers, so my
guess is that nVidia and ATI both have slightly larger teams working with
their drivers, simply because they have a bigger number of customers and
partners that they work closely with and need special software efforts to
do special things.

Now, the source code for our display driver is about 30 MB and about 700
files, not including the OpenGL user-mode component, which I guess is about
half that again. If you think you can manage to write/maintain this type of
driver with a small team, please apply with the management for 3DLabs
(just make sure I’m stil one of the new team ;-). [But it possibly makes
more sense to apply with ATI or nVidia, as they probably will pay better].

–
Mats

-------- Notice --------
The information in this message is confidential and may be legally
privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this
message by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the intended
recipient, any disclosure, copying or distribution of the message, or any
action taken by you in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.
If you have received this message in error, please delete it and contact
the sender immediately. Thank you.

xxxxx@lists.osr.com wrote on 01/13/2005 05:00:32 PM:

> Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge
software
> team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.
>

If you would tell this to a manager of a software company overhere (
Europe ), you will be
fired :-)) . I could be wrong, but I don’t think that you will find
a company here that
has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device
drivers , not to
mention that they would work on only one type of drivers.

C.

>
> -
> Calvin Guan Software Engineer
> ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
> Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training
>
> Hi,
> I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics
drivers
> (apart from that in the ddk).
>
> Thanks
> Kutty
>
>
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
> http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: Christiaan.
xxxxx@compaqnet.be
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
>

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

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ForwardSourceID:NT0000ACFA

7

Thus, if I make a rough calculation , the code counts about
( 30 MB DIV 100 bytes-per-line ) 300.000 lines ( BLOC ), and is spread with
at “3000 lines per developer” ratio. This “feels” like a very comfortable
situation :-). Maybe I should think about making a jump from the continent
to the Island :slight_smile:

Christiaan

I think the UK is still in Europe, and whilst we don’t have a hundred
developers in one building here in the UK, the 3DLabs software developers
are probably near the 100 mark if not more. Not every single one of them
work on the display driver, but if you count the OGL component (which isn’t
a kernel driver, but it’s still part of what the user installs as “driver”,
and it certainly communicates with the display driver proper), almost all
of them do “driver development” as their main task.

3DLabs is probably the smallest of the graphics chip manufacturers, so my
guess is that nVidia and ATI both have slightly larger teams working with
their drivers, simply because they have a bigger number of customers and
partners that they work closely with and need special software efforts to
do special things.

Now, the source code for our display driver is about 30 MB and about 700
files, not including the OpenGL user-mode component, which I guess is about
half that again. If you think you can manage to write/maintain this type of
driver with a small team, please apply with the management for 3DLabs
(just make sure I’m stil one of the new team ;-). [But it possibly makes
more sense to apply with ATI or nVidia, as they probably will pay better].

–
Mats

-------- Notice --------
The information in this message is confidential and may be legally
privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this
message by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the intended
recipient, any disclosure, copying or distribution of the message, or any
action taken by you in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.
If you have received this message in error, please delete it and contact
the sender immediately. Thank you.

xxxxx@lists.osr.com wrote on 01/13/2005 05:00:32 PM:

>
>
> > Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge
software
> > team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.
> >
>
> If you would tell this to a manager of a software company overhere (
> Europe ), you will be
> fired :-)) . I could be wrong, but I don’t think that you will find
> a company here that
> has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device
> drivers , not to
> mention that they would work on only one type of drivers.
>
> C.
>
> >
> > -
> > Calvin Guan Software Engineer
> > ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
> > Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
> > To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> > Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training
> >
> > Hi,
> > I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics
drivers
> > (apart from that in the ddk).
> >
> > Thanks
> > Kutty
> >
> >
> >
> > —
> > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
> > http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> >
> > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
> > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> >
> > —
> > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
> osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> >
> > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: Christiaan.
> xxxxx@compaqnet.be
> > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> >
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
> osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@3dlabs.com
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

> ForwardSourceID:NT0000ACFA

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@compaqnet.be
To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

8

> Thus, if I make a rough calculation , the code counts about

( 30 MB DIV 100 bytes-per-line ) 300.000 lines ( BLOC ), and
is spread with

Our driver is “slightly” bigger. NT graphic driver SRC is over 350M and
keeps growing. (lnx,Mac,9x/Me and user mode components are not counted). If
I were the manager in Europe, I would have started up a consulting company
and take over the SW team here. I’m sure I would make a lot of money:-))))

> > If you would tell this to a manager of a software company
overhere (
> > Europe ), you will be fired :-))

I don’t really care. I have never had to worry about finding a driver
writing job here in North America.

> > I could be wrong, but I don’t
> > think that you will find a company here that
> > has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device
> > drivers

That’s why I said “Unlike many of NT drivers”.
You can count all major graphic chip makers with fingers in one hand. Did
you seen any Graphic chip startups in the past a few years? No. It’s just
too hard to get in the game.

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

9

> > Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software

> team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.
>

If you would tell this to a manager of a software company overhere (
Europe ), you will be
fired :-)) . I could be wrong, but I don’t think that you will find a
company here that
has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device drivers ,
not to
mention that they would work on only one type of drivers.

That’s one of the causes that we have only 4 vendors of GPU chips in the whole
world :slight_smile:

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

10

Code lines as measurement are junk for C-style languages. Kilobytes are
more reliable.

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

----- Original Message -----
From: “Christiaan Ghijselinck”
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: [ntdev] graphics driver training

>
> Thus, if I make a rough calculation , the code counts about
> ( 30 MB DIV 100 bytes-per-line ) 300.000 lines ( BLOC ), and is spread with
> at “3000 lines per developer” ratio. This “feels” like a very comfortable
> situation :-). Maybe I should think about making a jump from the continent
> to the Island :slight_smile:
>
> Christiaan
>
>
> >
> >
> > I think the UK is still in Europe, and whilst we don’t have a hundred
> > developers in one building here in the UK, the 3DLabs software developers
> > are probably near the 100 mark if not more. Not every single one of them
> > work on the display driver, but if you count the OGL component (which isn’t
> > a kernel driver, but it’s still part of what the user installs as “driver”,
> > and it certainly communicates with the display driver proper), almost all
> > of them do “driver development” as their main task.
> >
> > 3DLabs is probably the smallest of the graphics chip manufacturers, so my
> > guess is that nVidia and ATI both have slightly larger teams working with
> > their drivers, simply because they have a bigger number of customers and
> > partners that they work closely with and need special software efforts to
> > do special things.
> >
> > Now, the source code for our display driver is about 30 MB and about 700
> > files, not including the OpenGL user-mode component, which I guess is about
> > half that again. If you think you can manage to write/maintain this type of
> > driver with a small team, please apply with the management for 3DLabs
> > (just make sure I’m stil one of the new team ;-). [But it possibly makes
> > more sense to apply with ATI or nVidia, as they probably will pay better].
> >
> > –
> > Mats
> >
> > -------- Notice --------
> > The information in this message is confidential and may be legally
> > privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this
> > message by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the intended
> > recipient, any disclosure, copying or distribution of the message, or any
> > action taken by you in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful.
> > If you have received this message in error, please delete it and contact
> > the sender immediately. Thank you.
> >
> >
> > xxxxx@lists.osr.com wrote on 01/13/2005 05:00:32 PM:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > > Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge
> > software
> > > > team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.
> > > >
> > >
> > > If you would tell this to a manager of a software company overhere (
> > > Europe ), you will be
> > > fired :-)) . I could be wrong, but I don’t think that you will find
> > > a company here that
> > > has 100 developers in house solely for the development of device
> > > drivers , not to
> > > mention that they would work on only one type of drivers.
> > >
> > > C.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > -
> > > > Calvin Guan Software Engineer
> > > > ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com
> > > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
> > > > Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
> > > > To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> > > > Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > > I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics
> > drivers
> > > > (apart from that in the ddk).
> > > >
> > > > Thanks
> > > > Kutty
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > —
> > > > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
> > > > http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> > > >
> > > > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
> > > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> > > >
> > > > —
> > > > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
> > > osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> > > >
> > > > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: Christiaan.
> > > xxxxx@compaqnet.be
> > > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> > > >
> > >
> > > —
> > > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at http://www.
> > > osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> > >
> > > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@3dlabs.com
> > > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> >
> > > ForwardSourceID:NT0000ACFA
> >
> >
> > —
> > Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
> >
> > You are currently subscribed to ntdev as:
xxxxx@compaqnet.be
> > To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
> >
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@storagecraft.com
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com

11

> Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software

team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.

Now I understand why video drivers are sooo cr*ppy.

However, graphic drivers for modern graphic chip are EXTREMELY
complicated.

Why are they? I guess the hardware related part is rather small, and the
rest are just rendering algorithms?

–

“Calvin Guan” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> Kutty,
>
> Azius (http://www.azius.com/) used to have a course on basic display
> driver
> programming. D3D/OGL and acceleration are not covered though. It should
> get
> you started such as drawing 2D/desktop without HW accelerations.
>
> However, graphic drivers for modern graphic chip are EXTREMELY
> complicated.
> Unlike most of other NT drivers, graphic drivers require a huge software
> team (hundreds of developers) to develop and maintain.
>
> As Mats stated, this is a very special area, there isn’t any in-depth
> training available. If you want to do it for fun, just play with the
> permedia sample in DDK. If you want to make a living of that, I’d suggest
> you send a resume to one of those graphic chip makers, spend several years
> there, and you’ll get some clues what graphic driver is all about.
>
> Good luck,
> Calvin
>
> -
> Calvin Guan Software Engineer
> ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kutty Banerjee [mailto:xxxxx@wpi.edu]
> Sent: January 13, 2005 9:23 AM
> To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
> Subject: [ntdev] graphics driver training
>
> Hi,
> I am searching for courses, training, material on writing graphics drivers
> (apart from that in the ddk).
>
> Thanks
> Kutty
>
>
>
> —
> Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
> http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256
>
> You are currently subscribed to ntdev as: xxxxx@ati.com
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to xxxxx@lists.osr.com
>

12

> Our driver is “slightly” bigger. NT graphic driver SRC is over 350M and

BTW - why both the SYS miniport and the engine DLL are this huge? From my
unexperienced point of view, one of them (the SYS) plays only auxiliary role,
am I wrong?

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

13

> > However, graphic drivers for modern graphic chip are EXTREMELY

> complicated.

Why are they? I guess the hardware related part is rather
small, and the
rest are just rendering algorithms?

Rendering tasks are done mostly by the silicon, that’s what Graphic
Accelerator means.

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

14

There are several reasons make the driver so big.

  1. The chips are so complicated, tons of features are implemented. There’re
    a butt load of registers/bits to program. I’ve written (not modifying)
    drivers from scratch for many types of silicon, none of them even close to
    one ten of the complexity of a graphic chip. I’m able to write an NDIS
    driver for a Gbe within 2 weeks and 1 more week to pass WHQL, but I’m not
    able to estimate how many decades I would need for a video driver in such
    scale.

  2. Unified driver model - one driver fits all Radeon ASICs on w2k and up
    OSes. This is good when a customer wants to download a driver from our
    website. The fact is different OEM/builders use different names for their
    board. With the unified driver,she/he doesn’t have to worry about the model
    and maker of the board.

  3. On mobile (notebook) systems, there’re many issues to deal with. I’m not
    sure how much I am allowed to talk… I would suggest hooking up a debugger
    on the target with a radeon adapter and do a
    kd>x ati2mtag!* to get a clue what our miniport does.

  4. Too many OEMs/customers require too many features.

After all, I am just working on a very small portion of the driver, I need
time to further understand why it has to be so big…

Hope this answer your question, at least partially-:slight_smile:

Calvin Guan Software Engineer
ATI Technologies Inc. www.ati.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Maxim S. Shatskih [mailto:xxxxx@storagecraft.com]
Sent: January 13, 2005 5:48 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] graphics driver training

> Our driver is “slightly” bigger. NT graphic driver SRC is over 350M
> and

BTW - why both the SYS miniport and the engine DLL are this
huge? From my unexperienced point of view, one of them (the
SYS) plays only auxiliary role, am I wrong?

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

Questions? First check the Kernel Driver FAQ at
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=256

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