2012-07-06, 05:58
(2012-06-21, 22:32)dougdeep Wrote: The other route on Linux is virtualization. I've poked around on this before. In KVM, there's a low chance you'll get PCI passthrough to work for your video cards because of some VGA bios problems. I've found few successes, and those who did got lucky with very specific video cards. If it worked, this would be my preference.
Using a motherboard and CPU with IOMMU virtualization extensions, I gave this a shot. I passed through the video and audio PCI devices from my NVidia G210 to the KVM Linux Guest. Unfortunately, the NVidia driver refused to load, saying the adapter is not supported. Using lspci, the devices looked like NVidia devices. Unfortunately, I think the nvidia driver may be making some bad assumptions about the PCI cooardinate, the bus #s, slot #s, etc. I was able to modify the kernel module to load, but the binary blob threw out a not supported error when Xorg started. Oh well. I can try to talk to the NVidia guys at nvnews.net, but I doubt Nvidia will make any meaningful changes.
You could try other manufacturers, but I believe nvidia still has the most comprehensive hardware accelerated video playback support on Linux.
My next attempt will be to use multiple Xorg displays/screens.