Xen devel - Jul 2011 - VGA passthrough and nvidia optimus

Hi

Is VGA passthrough with an nvidia optimus laptop remotely feasible? For
those who don''t know, nvidia optimus is two hardware cards, connected
to the
same display. One sandy bridge setup (I use the intel driver for this), and
one nvidia card. I have a laptop with this setup, and usually I''m using
only
the intel card. I then use acpi_call to power down the nvidia card.

To use this optimus setup on linux I use bumblebee (
https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee) which sets up a separate X server to
run the nvidia card. Then use virtualgl to show the image on the current
(intel sandy bridge) run X server.

Will it be possible for me to get VGA passthrough running? I can have it
running with a separate output (hdmi/vga, hopefully one of them is connected
directly to the nvidia card, and doesn''t use any hacks with the intel
card
to work) if it will be needed (and I figure it will, as two cards are here
trying to use the same display).

Has anyone looked into this?

Best regards
Anders
--
Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.
- http://code.google.com/p/aagaande/


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On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 03:08:56PM +0200, Anders Aagaard
wrote:
>    Hi
>    Is VGA passthrough with an nvidia optimus laptop remotely feasible? For
>    those who don''t know, nvidia optimus is two hardware cards,
connected to
>    the same display. One sandy bridge setup (I use the intel driver for
>    this), and one nvidia card. I have a laptop with this setup, and usually
>    I''m using only the intel card. I then use acpi_call to power
down the
>    nvidia card.
>    To use this optimus setup on linux I use bumblebee
>    ([1]https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee) which sets up a separate X
server
>    to run the nvidia card. Then use virtualgl to show the image on the
>    current (intel sandy bridge) run X server.
>    Will it be possible for me to get VGA passthrough running? I can have it
>    running with a separate output (hdmi/vga, hopefully one of them is
>    connected directly to the nvidia card, and doesn''t use any
hacks with the
>    intel card to work) if it will be needed (and I figure it will, as two
>    cards are here trying to use the same display).
>    Has anyone looked into this?
Hello,

Which nvidia card is that? 

Nvidia officially supports VGA passthrough only with the pro-cards (Quadro),
so the consumer-cards require some more hacks.. (=custom patching).

-- Pasi


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Hi

The card is a Geforce GT 555M. And since it''s an optimus card, I
imagine
it''ll require a whole lot of custom hacks ;)

Best regards
Anders
Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.
- http://code.google.com/p/aagaande/


On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@iki.fi> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 03:08:56PM +0200, Anders Aagaard wrote:
> >    Hi
> >    Is VGA passthrough with an nvidia optimus laptop remotely feasible?
> For
> >    those who don''t know, nvidia optimus is two hardware
cards, connected
> to
> >    the same display. One sandy bridge setup (I use the intel driver
for
> >    this), and one nvidia card. I have a laptop with this setup, and
> usually
> >    I''m using only the intel card. I then use acpi_call to
power down the
> >    nvidia card.
> >    To use this optimus setup on linux I use bumblebee
> >    ([1]https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee) which sets up a separate X
> server
> >    to run the nvidia card. Then use virtualgl to show the image on the
> >    current (intel sandy bridge) run X server.
> >    Will it be possible for me to get VGA passthrough running? I can
have
> it
> >    running with a separate output (hdmi/vga, hopefully one of them is
> >    connected directly to the nvidia card, and doesn''t use any
hacks with
> the
> >    intel card to work) if it will be needed (and I figure it will, as
two
> >    cards are here trying to use the same display).
> >    Has anyone looked into this?
>
> Hello,
>
> Which nvidia card is that?
>
> Nvidia officially supports VGA passthrough only with the pro-cards
> (Quadro),
> so the consumer-cards require some more hacks.. (=custom patching).
>
> -- Pasi
>
>

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