Sharing surfaces and multiple drivers

[Jim Gettys]

On Sat, 2005-04-30 at 13:26 -0600, Brian Paul wrote:
> Jon Smirl wrote:
> > I haven't worked with PCI Express yet so I haven't figured out how
> > video works on it. How do surfaces work on PCI Express? There are
> > motherboards now (big $$, quad Opteron, Nforce4) that can support 16
> > full 16 lane slots. That lets you plug 16 top of the line cards into
> > the system.
> 
> I don't think there's any motherboards quite like that yet.  The max 
> I've seen is something like support for two x16 PCI Express graphics 
> cards, plus a few more lanes for a few other slots.
> 

Certainly our high end workstation (Dual Opteron) is two slots of PCI-E;
we brag about them being full speed.

There may be server systems which have that many though, which crazed
individuals start using as workstations.  It isn't a part of the market
I watch, however.

PCI-E is even appearing in laptops (this mail is sent from a laptop with
an ATI x600 chip, on PCI-E).
				- Jim