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Future AMD GPUs To Be More 'Open-Source Friendly'
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 30, 2007 07:23 AM
from the finally-get-some-good-games-going dept.
from the finally-get-some-good-games-going dept.
skaroo writes "Phoronix is reporting that future AMD GPUs will be more open-source friendly. After AMD started releasing their GPG specifications to the open-source community, questions arose whether there would be information covering the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) found on the Radeon HD 2000 graphics cards. The UVD information is needed in order for hardware-accelerated video playback, but it likely cannot be opened due to DRM. However, an AMD representative said that moving to a modular UVD design is a requirement for future GPUs and that they will be more open-source friendly. They will also be opening the video acceleration information for their earlier graphics cards."
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Hardware: AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs 325 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off ATI's GPU specifications to David Airlie on a CD. However, the specifications are also now available on the X.org site. Right now there is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next week."
Firehose:AMD To Develop "Open-Source Friendly" GPUs by Anonymous Coward
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I remember a time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Where have they gone wrong?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Consumer freedom is now irrelevant. What good is the free market when you can't buy what you want - namely, to keep this on topic, where can we get a powerful video card with the full specs for making open source drivers? Good luck building your own fab. Apparently only a trillionaire can afford such simple freedoms.
This is clearly an example where capitalism fails miserably.
(Uh oh, here come the angry "Capitalism is God, how dare you
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it looks like AMD is finally going to start servicing that section of the market, I'm still skeptical but we'll see how things turn out.
Parent
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's important that we, as a community, reward the good guys (with more purchases) and to let the sales people know why we choose them over their competitors.
That being said, I'm a little ambivalent about the whole AMD/ATI video mess. They've been talking this up for the last year, but have the 3d specs for the hardware been released? Is there a stable opensource driver for Linux even close to the performance of the WinXP/Vista drivers (I don't know).
Parent
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Informative)
There is a fairly stable closed source ATI driver from the AMD website that supports AIGLX (required for Compiz).
As for ATI open source drivers refer to this list [ubuntu.com]. Copy and pasted for convenience:
Unsupported
X1300 / R515 based cards.
X1600 / R530 based cards.
X1800 / R520 based cards.
X1900 / R580 based cards.
2D acceleration only
Xpress 200M Northbridge integrated GPUs
Good 3D acceleration support
9500 / R300 based cards.
9600 / rv350 or rv360 based cards.
9700 / R300 based cards.
9800 / R350 or R360 based cards.
X300 / rv370 based cards.
X600 / rv380 based cards.
X700 / rv410 based cards.
X800 / R420 or R423 or R430 or R480 based cards.
X850 / R480 or R481 based cards.
X1050 / rv370 based cards.
Full 3D acceleration support
7000 / rv100 based cards.
7200 / R100 based cards.
7500 / rv200 based cards.
8X00 / R200 based cards.
9000 / rv250 based cards.
9100 / R200 based cards.
9200 / rv280 based cards.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
ATI is more open, but their Linux drivers suck, and have pretty much always sucked, for new hardware. You could get a free driver for old hardware, but not everything would be supported.
nVidia is completely closed, but their Linux drivers generally work. You pretty much never have to worry, when upgrading your kernel, whether you're going to b
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the classic "free market", as an idealized concept, requires commodities that can be produced by multiple people/companies, with little or no barrier to entry, knowledgeable buyers, and the flexibility to switch products at will as supply, demand, and prices dictate.
The current situation with graphics cards fails those prerequisites on all counts.
Re:I remember a time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Among certain industries, free markets have been replaced by cartels. These cartels then send out waves of lobbyists and campaign contributions to get governments to further weight the system against the consumer.
If you look at how the airplane developed, the market was hampered by cartels, patents and so on. However, in the two world wars, the war effort was considered more important than entrenched interests within the early aviation industry. All these cartels and patents were swept aside in favour of truly free markers, and they could finally build decent planes, and build them in quantity.
Society is slowly but surely going to realise that computers are more important for the development of the economy and society as a whole than for the narrow interests of the technology industry, and then radically free markets will be introduced once again.
Look at the Microsoft vs EU decision and the OLPC project, both of these in their different ways are interesting early signs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you change the rules to treat all products as commodities, then only commodities will get built. If you abandon patents, companies will try to protect their knowledge keeping more trade secrets. Products will become less open. If you legislate that possiblity away(*), then research and advanced development will simply stall, becau
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is important to separate the supply side from the demand side. Ditching all the patents and agreements and so on was a supply-side change. The government needing lots of planes for the war is on the demand side.
So yes the money is part of it, but I think the longer lasting effect was on liberating the supply, it did need the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I agree. I think there's plenty of capitalism, but I also think that capitalism is a lot like freedom - if you take it forgranted, you'll eventually get screwed. Participation in an capitalistic society is an active process, not a passive one. The passivity is born from laziness. Change only really seems to happen when somethin
Not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism is about free competition. CRM, the cited problem here, is about regulation. Regulation is not the same as free competition.
Some people have a tendency to think that when exploitation and capitalizing on other people is going on, then automatically capitalism is to blame. It is of course not that simple. Exploitation and capitalizing on others happen under capitalism, but also under a lot of other systems.
This time it is
Not capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism is about free competition. DRM, the cited problem here, is about regulation. Regulation is not the same as free competition.
Some people have a tendency to think that when exploitation and capitalizing on other people is going on, then automatically capitalism is to blame. It is of course not that simple. Exploitation and capitalizing on others happen under capitalism, but also under a lot of other systems.
This time it is
Re:I remember a time... (Score:4, Insightful)
The resistances in the system are not physical properties of nature but man made structures. The problems are never that the speed of light is too slow or gravity is too strong. The problem is that those who think they are against government intervention, often are the first to argue for patents, trademarks, trade barriers, special protections, and so on.
Free markets are the optimal solution for the majority of the population, both as consumers and employees. Cartels only benefit the minority.
If governments became truly accountable to voters, such that the voters could clearly get actual representatives, rather than a choice of two identical people who will ignore the voters for the next four-five years, then I don't see why the interference cannot be removed in most industries if the will was there.
Parent
Re:I remember a time... (Score:4, Insightful)
``As demand grows, you'll see more vendors opening up specs. It's their right to do so or not, and your right to vote with your wallet.''
Your right to vote with your wallet is only useful if you _can_ vote with your wallet. If nobody will sell you hardware with available specs for a price that you can afford, what will you do?
``The only place OSS is making a dent is server space. Why do you need an advanced GPU on your server?''
A number of points can be made here. First of all, open source is making inroads in other places than server space, too. I don't have exact figures (nobody does), but I see KDE, GNOME, and fvwm desktops often enough. Wal-Mart and Dell are selling PCs with Linux pre-installed. Many routers and like devices use Linux and Busybox. All development work I've been involved in used open source, usually exclusively or almost exclusively. Open source web browsers hold a sizable chunk of the market.
Another point is that there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. It doesn't make a lot of sense to open specs for the hardware if this will only benefit you a little. So you don't do that if only few people are asking. It doesn't help a lot to ask for specs if you aren't going to get them anyway. So few people ask. There also isn't a lot of software in th open source world that would see a great benefit from working 3D. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to start developing that software if 3D doesn't work anyway.
This is the pit the world's been in, but it's slowly changing. Nvidia has made available good 3D drivers, allowing 3D software to be developed. Now there are Neverwinter Nights, Compiz, Blender, etc. Apparently, Intel has seen value in supporting open source, and there are good open source drivers for Intel graphics cards. And the number of people using open source software appears to be growing. Certainly, awareness of open source is greater than it was, say, 10 years ago. Day by day, the landscape is changing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More to the point, socialism, fascism, and communism are based on the idea that central planning works. I am sure there are many more -isms which fit this bill.
It is easy to extend this to politics in general. People who want to be politicians think
Re:I remember a time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of friends who brag about being communists, "but not Stalinists".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, the most complex chip for which the manufacturer sent me the full data book and a free sample was the Motorola 68020, this was around 1988. Of course, at that time very few people had CD-ROM drives, so it made sense to use paper books for that.
Don't buy AMD. (Score:3, Insightful)
Correction: Don't buy Vista. (Score:5, Interesting)
Better advice would be, "Don't run your new GPU on an OS that forces it to enable the stupid DRM logic that the engineers really didn't want to build into it in the first place." Yeah, that's much better.
Parent
The End Times are Near (Score:5, Funny)
Hold me, I'm scared.
Specifically... (Score:3, Insightful)
Contrast this to nVidia which for the GeForce 8 series they've decided to stop supporting XvMC in their closed-source driver.
From my perspective, currently if you are buying a new video card, your system is probably already able to keep up with 1920x1080 playback using only the CPU. In a year to two years time, I can't imagine the generation of systems not being able to cope. XvMC only helps for MPEG-2, wasn't updated to be usable for more advanced codecs. I've seen at least discussion toward changing that, but I think the community is in largely a 'what's the point?' sort of mentality.
As much as I'm all for this strategy, if it costs them a significant amount in terms of production cost someway, it may not be worth the benefit, which is relegated mostly to a token gesture now. The 3D acceleration and, by association, the proccesing capabilities of the GPU are far more interesting. It sounds like they face no insurmountable obstacles in releasing those specs (though they have taken their sweet time about it since their announcement a few months ago).
The Artiicle is abot GPU's not CPU's (Score:5, Informative)
And as far as raw performance goes, Intel GPU's are a bit 2nd division. Granted that they have opened up their specs. However this has tipped the hand of ATI(AMD) and Nvidia to do the same with theirs.
After all, how many top notch graphics cards are there on the market that use Intel GPU's?
Here, AMD seem to be saying that we are looking at ways to change parts of the GPU so that bits that we can't get permission to release(patents DRM etc etc) are no longer used. To me, that is good news. That statement has nowt to do with Intel or Nvidia.
This is an ongoing process and will not happen overnight. Remember that Sun took a long time to open up the Solaris source code due to licensing issues. IMHO, this is just the same process.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got some video clips that can't be played on a reasonable-spec laptop (1.8G Core Duo, 2G RAM) unless I'm using the proprietary ATI driver - and even then, the only way to get nice-looking picture is to render to opengl interface.