You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (December 2008)
|
|
This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (December 2008) |
| Developed by | Xi Graphics |
|---|---|
| Latest release | Accelerated-X Summit v2.4 |
| OS | multiple (Linux, Solaris, AIX) |
| Type | Windowing system |
| License | Commercial[1] |
| Website | www.xig.com |
Accelerated-X is a commercial port of the X Window System to Intel x86 machines. It is fully compliant with industry standards for the X Window System that is used on UNIX systems, including Linux.
Contents |
The Accelerated-X server is built on top of the X386 X server that was created by Thomas Roell for X11 Release 5. He founded a company in Colorado named Xi Graphics which still provides the Accelerated-X server.
The XFree86 project was intentionally created as a free alternative to the Accelerated-X server.[citation needed]
A particularly notable feature of the Accelerated-X server is that it supports "overlay mode" on several graphics cards which basically means that old UNIX-programs that are tailored to 256 fixed colors (8-bit PseudoColor) can run in parallel with modern applications using 24-bit TrueColor.
Accelerated-X provides native support for many video chipsets allowing it to sometimes provide higher-performance screen updates than the X Window server provided by the operating system, particularly if the specific video hardware is poorly supported by the operating system. Many motherboard-integrated video chipsets tend to be poorly supported by the drivers shipped with Linux or Solaris.
Many desktops come with an Add-In board with graphics chips from ATI, NVIDIA, etc. While some desktops have a graphics chip embedded on the motherboard, such as an Intel chip. Accelerated-X has been used as an upgrade to the performance of the Linux graphics drivers shipped with the Linux distribution pre-installed on the box, or to replace MS Windows graphics drivers when Windows is replaced with Linux or Solaris.
Accelerated-X graphics has been used as an upgrade to the performance of the Linux graphics drivers of laptops/ notebooks which were not properly supported by free Linux drivers, or by graphics drivers available from Sun Microsystems for 32-bit Intel based laptops.