C H A P T E R 1

Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator.

Installation Kit

Graphics Accelerator Overview

Video Formats

Installation Process

Technical Support

Installation Kit

The installation kit for the Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator includes:

Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator

Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator software (CD-ROM)

DVI-I to HD15 monitor adapter

Internal multiview genlock ribbon cable

Antistatic wrist strap

Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator Installation and User's Guide, this document

Graphics Accelerator Overview

The Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator is PCI-Express based. It provides high resolution and high performance PCI-Express 3D graphics. The Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator has 256 Mbytes of unified memory for video and OpenGL features. The Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator occupies one full-height, full-length PCI-Express slot.

FIGURE 1-1 shows the Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator.

FIGURE 1-1 Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator

Figure showing the Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator.

Features

256 Mbytes of unified memory for video memory, texture memory, Pbuffer, stencil, multisample, Z-buffer, accumulation buffer memory and display list memory

10-bit gamma correction

Dual 1920 × 1200 screens supported from a single board

Dual 1280 × 1024 stereo screen support

Six programmable 36-bit vertex shaders supporting up to 1K instructions, subroutines, loops, and conditionals

48 programmable fragment shaders supporting up to 256K instructions, subroutines, loops, and predicates

Programmable pixel shader

Hardware cursor

Stereoscopic viewing support (frame sequential)

Display data channel (DDC) monitor support for communication

Display power management signaling (DPMS) to enable monitor's power-saving mode

High-speed, full-featured DMA over the PCI-Express bus

Multiscreen support using multiple cards in a single workstation

Multiview functionality for genlocking two graphics accelerators

Stereo output

Dual DVI-I video out

Additional Features

Geometry acceleration

Model view matrix transformation of vertex and normal coordinates

Texture matrix transformation of texture coordinates

Perspective transformation

Viewport transformation

View volume clipping

OpenGL operations (support Sun OpenGL 1.3 and OpenGL 1.5 for Solaris)

Multitexture and cube mapping

Points (2D, 3D, wide)

Vectors (2D and 3D lines and line strips; wide, stippled

Polygons (triangles, triangle strips, quads, quad strips, polygons, point or line polygon mode)

Antialiased points, vectors, and polygons

Scissoring

Window clipping

Masking

Fogging (linear, exponential, exponential², user-defined)

Texture mapping (point, bilinear, trilinear, multiple internal formats)

Stencil operations

Dithering

Rich set of blending operations

Fast window-mode double buffering

Programmable vertex and fragment shaders (OpenGL 1.5 required)

Extensive support of OpenGL

Imaging extensions such as pixel buffer, color table, and color matrix

Blend extensions such as blend color, blend minmax, and blend function separate

Texture extensions (edge clamp, border clamp, LOD (level-of-detail) clamp, generate mipmap)

Texture color table

Post-texturing specular reflection

Stencil operation wrap

Video Formats

TABLE 1-1 lists the Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator video formats. TABLE 1-1 also includes multisampling sizes for the applicable resolutions for single and dual screens (spp is samples per pixel). The heading "Dual Screen" refers to double-wide or double-high dual displays

TABLE 1-1 Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator Video Formats
Display Resolution	Vertical Refresh Rate (Hz)	Aspect Ratio Format	Sync Standard	Maximum Number of spp Single Screen	Maximum Number of spp Dual Screen
1920 × 1200	60, 75	16:10	Sun	8	-
1920 × 1080	60, 72	16:9	Sun	8	-
1600 × 1280	76	5:4	Sun	8	-
1600 × 1200	60, 75	4:3	VESA	8	-
1600 × 1200	60	4:3	Sun	8	-
1600 × 1024	60	4:3	Sun	16	-
1600 × 1000	66, 76	16:10	Sun	16	-
1440 × 900	76	16:10	Sun	16	-
1280 × 1024	96, 108, 112	5:4	Sun stereo	16	-
1280 x 1024	67, 76	5:4	Sun	16	-
1280 × 1024	60, 75, 85	5:4	VESA	16	-
1280 × 800	112	16:10	Sun stereo	16	4
1280 × 800	76	16:10	Sun	16	4
1280 × 768	56	5:3	Sun	16	4
1152 x 900	66, 76	5:4	Sun	16	4
1152 x 900	120	5:4	Sun stereo	16	4
1024 × 800	84	5:4	Sun	16	4
1024 × 768	77	4:3	Sun	16	8
1024 × 768	96	4:3	Sun stereo	16	4
1024 × 768	60, 70, 75	4:3	VESA	16	8
1024 × 692	100	4:3	Sun stereo	16	4
960 × 680	108, 112	7:5	Sun stereo	16	8
800 × 600	75	4:3	VESA	16	8
640 × 480	60, 72, 75	4:3	VESA	16	8

Note - Not all resolutions are supported by all displays (that is, monitors, projectors, and so on). Using resolutions that are not supported by the display might damage the display. Refer to your display manual for supported resolutions.

Listing Video Formats

To list all graphics devices on your system, type:

host% fbconfig -list

To list available resolutions for your display device, type:

host% fbconfig -dev kfb0 -res \?

Video Display Ports

The Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerators provide two DVI video output ports. Each DVI video port supports both analog (DVI-A) and digital (DVI-D) video formats. Although the DVI port supports both analog and digital video formats, they cannot be used simultaneously from the individual DVI port.

Installation Process

Caution - The Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator are nothot-swappable.

1. Install the software (Chapter 2).

2. Shutdown the system.

3. Install the hardware (Chapter 3), repower the system, and reboot.

4. Modify the Xservers configuration file, if needed (Chapter 4).

5. Video format and other features are described in Chapter 5 (optional).

Technical Support

For assistance and other information not found in this document concerning the
Sun XVR-2500 graphics accelerator, see Support Services at:

http://www.sun.com/support/

For the latest software patches, go to http://sunsolve.sun.com