Radius Rocket QuickDraw Acceleration and Bus Mastering

[Phipli]

Just wondering - where is the QuickDraw Acceleration processed on the Rocket? On the GAL version, there is only the 040 for doing serious lifting?


Is there a something we can copy to make just a quickdraw accelerator? Or does the implementation require the whole card?

Be interested if anyone has any insights.

 

[zigzagjoe]

While I haven't gotten into it myself, I've also been curious... intuition says it's using the 040 as there's nothing else that can be doing it. I don't have any radius video cards to test with, though. It'd be interesting to see both what the performance gain is and if it requires RAM on the card to function. If it needs RAM on the card you'd be pretty much stuffed as far as making any kind of a simpler card goes.

I'm curious what the 040-side software looks like - custom acceleration code, or some framework to run QD proper...? They did make the radius risc accelerator card, I'd expect significant overlap with whatever technique that used.

 

[eharmon]

I’ve never really gotten this to work, or not noticed a difference. Does it only function when specifically paired with an unaccelerated Radius card?

 

[Phipli]

I’ve never really gotten this to work, or not noticed a difference. Does it only function when specifically paired with an unaccelerated Radius card?

Yes it only works with a specific set of cards.

I've also never used it because I don't have an unaccelerated Radius card that supports block transfers

Rockets do also work better with PrecisionColors - but the PrecisionColors internal acceleration is better so you use that. You still gain in that the Rocket and PrecisionColor talk to each other more efficiently.

Edit - you know, I tell a lie. I forgot to give my dad is VideoVision back. That might be an unaccelerated Radius card that supports block transfers.

 

[Phipli]

While I haven't gotten into it myself, I've also been curious... intuition says it's using the 040 as there's nothing else that can be doing it. I don't have any radius video cards to test with, though. It'd be interesting to see both what the performance gain is and if it requires RAM on the card to function. If it needs RAM on the card you'd be pretty much stuffed as far as making any kind of a simpler card goes.

I'm curious what the 040-side software looks like - custom acceleration code, or some framework to run QD proper...? They did make the radius risc accelerator card, I'd expect significant overlap with whatever technique that used.

It's interesting - I read that some of the SuperMac gains were purely software patches. It would be nice to just make an extension with the software patches to have a software only performance bump.