Intel 2700 programming - tips, links and pointers

[Mr X]

I have had a few people ask me about intel 2700 programming, so I though I would start a thread with the relevant info.

LIBRARIES:
The official intel libraries are supposed to be available on premier.intel.com somewhere. Registration is free, so get an account and search for "2700G Graphics Drivers"

They also seem to be available as part of the Cube port. See links.

PowerVR has sdks available at http://www.pvrdev.com/

drgoldie has posted his source code for dynamically binding the libraries at
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/forums/view ... hp?t=19869
I don't know what his licensing is, but I assume it is fairly liberal.

DOCS:
Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ogl-es/ and download their docs file.

Go to http://www.khronos.org and download the 1.0 manual http://www.khronos.org/opengles/documen ... manual.pdf

Also search premier.intel.com

SAMPLES:
Few and far between at the moment:
One at http://www.pocketmatrix.com/forums/view ... hp?t=19626

Several at the Vincent site, but may need converting as the 2700 does not support any of the floating point routines.

Intel have ported the Cube engine to the ppc. See http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... p_id=91993


PERFORMANCE TIPS:
Straight from the horses mouth.
- Sending all your geometry as indexed triangle lists is your best bet for performance.
- Try to minimize the number of render calls or render state changes (e.g. send all models sharing the same material together)
- Do not use multi-pass; prefer multi-texturing instead (the MBX-Lite in the Axim supports two layers multitexturing)
- PVRTC textures will improve performance (cache efficiency, memory footprint)
- Minimize the number of the fog colour changes per frame.
- Textures: do not do mid-scene texture updates, i.e. updating and re-using the contents of a texture surface that's already been used in the scene.
- Make sure to disable alpha test/alpha blend when they're not required.

glDrawElements is the best way to draw geometry.
Applying the first 2 tips above increased the starting fps for yeti from 18 to 31. I did this by caching triangles per texture and then drawing all tris for a single texture (or at least the first 30) with a single glDrawElements.

DO NOT MIX 3D AND 2D CALLS
This causes bad things to happen (ie lockups) and slows things down.

LINKS
Vincent - Software open gl and docs - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ogl-es/
khronos specs and docs - http://www.khronos.org/
PowerVR - SDK and demos http://www.pvrdev.com/

[hm]

Just for clarity, the documentation you will want to download is the older version for the 1.0 version of the API, which can be found here: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownote ... _id=260438

In the most current version I already incorporated all the 1.1 manual pages.

And one more concerning fixed point only: The Vincent sources contain a file "ContextFloat.cpp", which essentially contains the mapping code of the floating point calls into the corresponding fixed point entries. Needs some change/replace from Context::<blah> to gl<blah>, but otherwise might be a good starting point.

- HM

[sponge]

I stickied this thread, tons of useful info. I don't think anyone will object to that.

[Mr X]

http://www.powervr.com/Downloads/Demos/index.asp

[hm]

Also search premier.intel.com

Just came across the download link in the general section of Intel's web site:
http://developer.intel.com/design/pca/companion/sdk/2700g_sdk.htm
Might have been there for a while, of course...

- HM

[clintsinger]

I am trying to figure out the relationship with the Direct 3D mobile and the 2700g. If one reads the the following http://www.pvr-extremist.com/default.asp#ID623 you will read that Direct 3d Mobile does work with the 2700g. Unfortunately it is seems to be impossible to find any information about this relationship.

I would like to know if I start using Direct 3D mobile on my Dell Axim x51v, do I get accelerated 3D? What features of the 3D does it support etc. Of course it doesn't help that I don't know much about D3D but I am looking for a starting point.

Any helps would be great!

[Digby]

Yes, the Axim X51v and Axim X50v (w/WM5 upgrade) support Direct3D Mobile. In fact, every WM5 device is required to ship with a D3DM driver onboard. In the case of the above Axim devices, the driver was provided by Intel/PVR for the onboard 2700G, so you'll get all the goodness associated with 3D hardware acceleration.

I've got a dump of the D3DMCAPS reported by the driver around here somewhere. Is there some particular feature that you're curious about?