gtrinity notes that Hotjobs.com lists a new job offering from NVidia.
"OS X DEVICE DRIVER ENGINEER":
"OS X DEVICE DRIVER ENGINEER":
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Work with Prototype Apple and NVidia Products
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No recognition?
Of course not, pre-release products, which means NDA's out the A$$ (from both companies).
Jaedreth
Of course not, pre-release products, which means NDA's out the A$$ (from both companies).
Jaedreth
They just got about 21309487235 applicants for being able to work with pre-release apple stuff. Just the satisfaction of knowing stuff that other people don't is worth the job (provided an ample salary..)
i guess it would be sweet to see all the hardware before it was released, but then a place like macrumors would become boring for you. 
Yay, Maybe *finally* my GeForce 4 MX can live up to the PC version.
Comeon, driver improvments are ggoodd.
Comeon, driver improvments are ggoodd.
I'm thinking that this is not necessarily for the consumer Nvidia cards.
Forget the GForce cards, lets see some of the high end cards on a Mac. Its bound to happen and having a $2k Quadro card would be sweet. (Its not for games....)
http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx.html
Good news indeed - only bad thing is that they're still hiring people. It would have been better to know that they're ready to go to market with these things....
D
Forget the GForce cards, lets see some of the high end cards on a Mac. Its bound to happen and having a $2k Quadro card would be sweet. (Its not for games....)
http://www.nvidia.com/page/products.html
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx.html
Good news indeed - only bad thing is that they're still hiring people. It would have been better to know that they're ready to go to market with these things....
D
I'm just glad they're hiring. The more cool stuff we can get for mac, the better. I want better drivers for my GF4 Ti 4600.. w00t!
Pixar would definitely benefit - but it wouldn't be all for renderman, but the modeling tools.
D
D
PC Cards mac compatible
Because they need *Drivers*.
Also, these cards are *designed* for use with DirectX, not OpenGL.
So they have to make a rev.
And they usually wimpify it.
I hope they make Mac drivers for those Workstation level cards, the Quadro 3000... SWEET!
Put one of those in a bad boy G5 Workstation.
Jaedreth
Because they need *Drivers*.
Also, these cards are *designed* for use with DirectX, not OpenGL.
So they have to make a rev.
And they usually wimpify it.
I hope they make Mac drivers for those Workstation level cards, the Quadro 3000... SWEET!
Put one of those in a bad boy G5 Workstation.
Jaedreth
Re: PC Cards mac compatible
Yes, and we dreadfully need new NVidia Drivers. My G4 has a GeForce 3 in it, and it runs plenty good on games like Quake 3, reasonable on America's Army, about 50fps on Deus Ex...
But it runs Diablo 2 slower than my friends 350Mhz iMac.
Think about that for a second. It does not make sense. *struggles not to break into south park quote*... The blizzard web page cites bad Nvidia drivers and say it may be fixed in the next D2 update. But, why on earth would it run slower on a 64MB GeForce 3 than an 8MB Ati Rage 128? (I think its 8MB. I DOUBT its 16..) If this new job fixes D2 then I will be a happy man.
Originally posted by jaedreth
Because they need *Drivers*.
Also, these cards are *designed* for use with DirectX, not OpenGL.
So they have to make a rev.
And they usually wimpify it.
I hope they make Mac drivers for those Workstation level cards, the Quadro 3000... SWEET!
Put one of those in a bad boy G5 Workstation.
Jaedreth
Yes, and we dreadfully need new NVidia Drivers. My G4 has a GeForce 3 in it, and it runs plenty good on games like Quake 3, reasonable on America's Army, about 50fps on Deus Ex...
But it runs Diablo 2 slower than my friends 350Mhz iMac.
Think about that for a second. It does not make sense. *struggles not to break into south park quote*... The blizzard web page cites bad Nvidia drivers and say it may be fixed in the next D2 update. But, why on earth would it run slower on a 64MB GeForce 3 than an 8MB Ati Rage 128? (I think its 8MB. I DOUBT its 16..) If this new job fixes D2 then I will be a happy man.
Accelerated MPEG-2 decoding for Quicktime? Might we have some decent DVD player that uses the video card instead of the processor to decode DVDs, then?
Why my iMac 450 w/ 512 MB still sucks at it while my PIII 450 w/256 MB and an oldy TNT2 flies?
Why my iMac 450 w/ 512 MB still sucks at it while my PIII 450 w/256 MB and an oldy TNT2 flies?
I know two people that worked as driver engineers. They both started off as contract employees, and were offered permanent positions after their jobs were done. One stayed with Apple for a time and later left to form a company that created the FPC (floating point calculator) for the early Macs and SunDial (the worlds slowest media player. He did well with both ventures. The other person became a contract software test engineer (He used the bomb app.) and was never offered a permanent positions again.
Both said that the work was just that, lots of work. There was a great deal of pressure and the money wasnt worth the effort, but the job opportunities were. Everybody at Apple doesnt speak about anything unless told, and the Icon Garden is as scary as it looks on QT. The fun corporate culture is dependent on who ever your supervisor is.
Oh, driver development often starts with out seeing or using the product in question. From what I was told, as I was told in non-specific terms, the engineers receive a set of specifications from both the manufacturer and Apple and they may start coding with the final product being present. I would guess that some sort of virtual device is created to test the interface until they receive the prototypes.
I have nothing but respect for people that create interfaces between hardware and software.
Both said that the work was just that, lots of work. There was a great deal of pressure and the money wasnt worth the effort, but the job opportunities were. Everybody at Apple doesnt speak about anything unless told, and the Icon Garden is as scary as it looks on QT. The fun corporate culture is dependent on who ever your supervisor is.
Oh, driver development often starts with out seeing or using the product in question. From what I was told, as I was told in non-specific terms, the engineers receive a set of specifications from both the manufacturer and Apple and they may start coding with the final product being present. I would guess that some sort of virtual device is created to test the interface until they receive the prototypes.
I have nothing but respect for people that create interfaces between hardware and software.
I have checked in about 10 iMacs DV 450 with an ATI Rage Pro 128, and all behave the same. While they do fine at most scene, ones with fast movement on them suffere from severe tearing and interlacing (even if the DVD is progressive), Please try again with movies that include such scenes. There is a notable difference if you try to play them in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 behaves notably better, probably because the DVD app can take more processor than its X sibbling can.
According to ATI's page on that card it did not accelerate DVD playback when it launched although the card was stated to be able to do it. ATI blamed Apple for not including MPEG-2 playback at QuickTime, because their drivers were Quicktime based.
Only the latest mac RADEON 8500 and such report in their specs to accelerate DVD playback.
And besides any technical mumbo-jumbo, there is still the fact that that PIII outperforms every iMac DV 450 I have put my hands on.