AMD Publishes Open-Source "ATI Evergreen" Driver 159
Several readers have written to tell us that AMD has published their code to support the Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" graphics cards on Linux in an open-source driver. Unfortunately the driver isn't quite as complete as some might hope. The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support. "The DDX driver supports mode-setting on the Evergreen/R800 series GPUs with VGA and DVI connectors while the DisplayPort connectivity is still not working right, according to AMD's Alex Deucher who had written most of this code. These new AMD graphics cards have been around since September while there was no open-source support at that time. In December just before Christmas there was Evergreen Shader documentation that was made publicly available and around that time it was confirmed via our forums that initial VGA mode-setting was working with Evergreen internally on unreleased code. Since then the digital connector support has been added in and this code has finally cleared AMD's legal review. The revised target was to publish this code by FOSDEM, which is this weekend so AMD did hit the target this time."
Baby Steps (Score:2, Insightful)
Atleast they have released the specs out to OSS developers and are working towards a accelerated solution. There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux. Go AMD!
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There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux. Go AMD!
We still are in that time, as TFA states: "The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support." Well what IS the driver going to do, then?
Hopefully due to the profitable quarter they just had, AMD/ATI can hire some Linux devs to get the ball rolling faster.
Re:Baby Steps (Score:5, Funny)
Well what IS the driver going to do, then?
Run Nethack at 120fps?
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A 16550 doesn't really count as a graphics card anymore...
That was the funniest comment in this entire thread. But it flew right over most of these lil whippersnappers heads.
Re:Name Says It All (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, attack the guy's name. Nice. Maybe he should go by "Anonymous Coward" like all the cool kids.
In fact, Alex has been developing open source drivers for ATI cards for years on his own dime, and AMD only relatively recently hired him to do the same thing for money. Would a little gratitude to either of them kill you?
Alex, the only reason I could see anything from my Radeon card for the last six years was because of your work. Thank you!
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By the way, is there any plan for a radeon r600 gallium driver or is that after r300g is done?
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For the last decade (almost), it was always "free the specs and the community developers can do it". It's interesting that now it's "You've freed the specs, but now you need to hire the devs".
The community is no closer to having community maintained drivers. If the IHVs move out of supporting the drivers, where will that leave the community? The specs are there for Intel and AMD, but there doesn't seem to be a large non-vendor set of developers out there.
Sure there are a set of core developers (airlied,
Re:Baby Steps (Score:5, Informative)
The driver is functional for your regular 2d needs. Browsing the web and moving windows around is fast enough. It doesn't crash all the time (only tried it for a few hours, and no problems so far), but it does lack video overlays, so it's not quite ready for media use just yet.
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Or they could just release te specs...
For a while I hoped AMD would play nice with FOSS. Hell, it looks like it is their only chance of surviving, but still, their CXX people doesn't seem to agree.
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I mean, it's kinda like GM dumping a crate of parts in your driveway and calling it a car, but really, would your rather build it yourself, or have some wage-slashed government worker do it?
I'd file a police report against GM for trespassing and then report them to the city hall for illegal dumping. Then I'd go and buy a real car.
Unfortunately that alternative does not exist in the graphics world because Nvidia's Fermi won't show up for a few more months. None of Nvidia's current offerings can stand up to the Radeon R800 series. Even if Fermi shows up it'll be useless for me personally because it will not support triple displays, just like all other Nvidia cards (not counting dual GPU cards
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Or just use an nvidia card from the start. Then you get all the features.
You weren't REALLY going to screw around with the source code anyway, right?
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> At least they have released the specs out to OSS developers
Did they? Or did they only release the specs for 2D? And why is there no word of kernel based mode setting? It seems a bit silly do develop a new driver without it - after all it is clearly the correct solution, and everybody else is moving that way.
> and are working towards a accelerated solution.
Not good enough. At least 2D acceleration (Xv etc) is essential, and with a modern desktop you want at least some 3D functions, too.
> There use
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However, this is about the open source drivers that were just released in their absolutely initial form. If you'd have liked them to withhold their opensource project from outside eyes and outside hands until completion, so that there was no chance for community input, then
So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support.
So if it doesn't offer 2D acceleration or 3D support... what does it do? Framebuffer mode? Seriously why would ATI even release a driver in this pathetic of state, at least when I can buy an nVidia card for the same amount and have 100% of features work just fine.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
why would ATI even release a driver in this pathetic of state
To gather developer attention. At this stage, it's not about the features, it's about the mindshare.
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It's not a "great leap" - nor anybody involved claims that it is.
But this is nevertheless important statement from AMD/ATI that they are still on the OSS track. What is IMO rather important and significant.
P.S. Plus it is extremely important to folks who run systems which are not supported by nVidia. Unless you run x86 or x64, nVidia wouldn't even acknowledge your existence.
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What do you mean by "standard"? If you mean "standard across devices of similar type", then different companies have different expectation for what the OS is responsible for and what the device is responsible for.
If you mean "standard for a particular hardware", the driver still has to interface with the OS, and OSs change over time. Drivers need to be recompiled and modified over time to allow them to continue functioning.
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Why should drivers be standard for Linux? Considering that it represents a pretty minuscule percentage of their market it seems to me they are going above and beyond by supporting it at all. On top of that they have "standard" drivers for previous cards.
Seems to me they are doing the right thing.
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As a programmer who does scientific computing (and apparently cares about software/platform freedom), you should be coding for OpenCL rather than proprietary CUDA.
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Then explain why my printer doesn't work on Windows 7, when it works in XP, VIsta, OSX and Ubuntu? Out of the box in two of those four(I'll let you guess which).
I would also like you to explain why my 4 year old Dell laptop doesn't let me pick the appropraite resolution in Windows 7, when it will in XP, Vista and Ubuntu.
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No, the correct answer is that Intel discontinued support for it... and now it doesn't work. It is a DX9 capable chipst too. Runs Compiz just fine on ubuntu.
I have been tring to turn that old system into a media center, and it has been a disaster.
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Well I have the Inspiron 6000. One generation chipset behind yours, and Intel stopped supporting it.
The system itself is more than capable of playing back HD video and working as a media center, but it is essentially a file server now because all the actually useful hardware is useless.
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In "real world" you can just install an old graphics driver in Windows 7. You can even use the XP drivers for GPUs that have native Windows 7 drivers; of course you are then limited to the features of the old interface.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 7 manages to support the same graphics driver interface as did Windows 2000, which is nearly ten years old.
I don't think this is correct. While Windows Vista and 7 support Win2K drivers for many devices unchanged, video driver model in particular was completely rehashed in Vista. I'm not aware of any video drivers for XP, much less 2K, working in Vista or 7.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Informative)
Every GPU that doesn't have a WDDM [wikipedia.org] driver uses a 2000/XP driver. This includes chipsets like the GMA 900 (famous for not having Aero support).
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No it doesn't. Try using a WinXP video driver on 7. Won't work.
I've tried this with the i855 laptop-video driver, because 7 doesn't even include a driver, even one that's limited to 2D accel.
I guarantee you it wouldn't work with an ATI or Nvidia driver either.
Now, I /have/ gotten a 3Com 3C905B to work on 7 with a WinXP driver (out of necessity), but only in the 32-bit version.
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Of course it will work - this is how non-Aero capable GPUs work on WIndows 7.
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64-bit? 32-bit drivers won't work with 64-bit Windows and vice versa.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, Windows Vista/7 do support 2000/XP (XPDM) drivers.
It's unfortunate that you can't get your hardware working in Windows 7, but that's no reason to insult anonymous people on the Internet.
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Except it doesn't, and whoever modded you up is an idiot.
Don't be a dick. Windows 7 does support XP/2000 drivers, I've used them myself.
Don't assume it doesn't just because you can't fix it yourself and you can't google for help from someone who can.
I installed win 7 on my wife's old compaq NX5000 laptop. Video didn't work out of the box. Its got an 855 GMA graphics chipset. There are no WDDM drivers for this POS.
Yes, lots of people have trouble getting these to work in 7 or vista, but some claim to have got it working, and that should have twigged you in tha
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The text you quoted says "Windows Vista continues to support the ability to use older XPDM drivers for upgrades and corporate editions" (emphasis mine). So if you bought a retail (non-upgrade) copy of Vista or 7 and did a clean install, you wouldn't be able to use the XP drivers?
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No, the implication is that new versions will be used with GPUs having WDDM drivers. XPDM drivers work with any version.
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A new graphics driver interface was added to enable Aero, but the old "XPDM" interface still works. This is why non-Aero compatible GPUs like the GMA 900 continue to work with Windows Vista and Windows 7.
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Microsoft doesn't pay ATI or NVIDIA for hardware specifications; the vendors write their own drivers. And then vendors pay Microsoft [wikipedia.org] to have their drivers tested.
Will you personally take the time to write a driver?
The vendors probably make more money from working closed-source drivers than they would
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If they released open drivers the same as they release closed source drivers, they would get their asses sued to oblivion. Everything else flows from that.
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Which unfortunately is a complete waste of money for the vendor because WHQL testing is absolutely completely demonstrably worthless. Whatever they do test (if anything) seems to have missed several key features related to stability. I've seen way more BSOD's using "WHQL" tested drivers than NVidia's BETA drivers. Sometimes after installing the BETA driver I never see another BSOD until the next WHQL release. As things are goin
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Of course they do.
Do you have evidence for this?
Why would community written drivers be any better? How are you so confident? Do you personally write drivers for other companies' hardware?
More importantly, when would they be better? Drivers written by the vendor wi
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Clarification: ATI and NVIDIA (and other graphics driver authors) write the code to implement Direct3D rendering on their hardware.
Slashdot: where people don't even read the summary (Score:4, Informative)
FTFS:
The DDX driver supports mode-setting on the Evergreen/R800 series GPUs with VGA and DVI connectors
Re:Slashdot: where people don't even read the summ (Score:4, Insightful)
Also important: it supports userland mode-setting, *not* kernel-based mode-setting yet.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well they have a working proprietary driver. This is just the OSS one. ATi is attempting to make nice with the "OSS only" crowd. The problem is they can't just open up their normal driver, it contains licensed, patented code from other companies they can't hand out. As such you get a very different, stripped down, driver for the OSS community to work on. How useful this is is something up for debate.
nVidia's approach is that they only want to release the proprietary, fully working driver. They aren't interested in releasing a semi-broken driver just to be OSS. As such you only get their binary download.
Now in either case, the nVidia drivers are superior quality wise. They've always been good at drivers on Windows, and it translates over to Linux it seems. However ATi does have an open option that nVidia doesn't. For some people, this is important as they won't run closed code at all, even if it means a better experience.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well they have a working proprietary driver.
For varying definitions of "working". As an ATI user I must say, the propietary driver is the single worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure to run on my Linux system, and the only thing besides faulty RAM and a dying HDD to ever cause Linux (yes, the kernel, not just X) lock up on me. It sucks so badly that ArchLinux even removed it [archlinux.org] from their repositories, prefering to not give it as even an option rather than deal with the support nightmares it causes.
The Open Source driver on the other hand is excellent, stable and completely hassle-free (something I can't quite say of NVidia's propietary driver, though it wasn't nearly as bad as ATI's), and even supports 3D acceleration on older chipsets. My guess is that it won't be long until 3D is also supported on the HD5x00 series as well, development is quite fast on it.
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Last ATi card I had was a Radeion 8500. The Windows drivers came in two flavours, the Microsoft Certified ones that didn't support a recent version of DirectX, and couldn't actually run anything that used the GPU in a nontrivial way, or the ones from ATi which ran software reasonably well until you hit a bug in the driver and the kernel crashed. Sometimes the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live drivers would crash the machine before the ATi ones had a chance to (same situation there; you could use the MS Cert
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For varying definitions of "working". As an ATI user I must say, the propietary driver is the single worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure to run on my Linux system, and the only thing besides faulty RAM and a dying HDD to ever cause Linux (yes, the kernel, not just X) lock up on me.
ATI drivers have been causing me crashes in various operating systems since they brought out the Mach32. Their subflavors of the Mach64 caused me crashes in Windows NT 3.51, and Solaris x86 2.5.1. The catalyst drivers were amazingly foul and had a footprint I would never have believed had I not installed many, many drivers trying to get their driver to stop cratering Windows XP. ATI has never been able to develop a worthy driver, and their donation of OSS drivers is worse than useless, as they can use it as
so, which troll did I offend? (Score:2)
While some of my recent negative moderation may have been justified, I've never been down-modded so much, so quickly. Am I really being attacked by Scientologists? Pretty amazing. This post, however, is NOT a troll; I believe all that I have said. I will stand by it until I die.
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I think you got modded troll because there is no 'wrong' mod. The specs that they have released have been as complete as you could ever realistically hope for.
The specs that they have released have been consistently late. Instead of providing them in advance of the release of the hardware they are continually released well afterwards (if the continual bitching about same from ATI owners is any indication) forcing strict FOSS users to buy last year's card at best if they want the full functionality of their hardware, which still does not work for many older cards (esp. regarding acceleration and TV out) for many users who have otherwise-supported hardware.
Believe
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The windows drivers are shit too.
I supported ATI for a good while, but the quality of their drivers is so horrible that I refuse to have anything to do with them anymore. I'd rather use a crappy intel integrated chip with stable drivers than the crap ATI pedals.
At least the OSS driver may be more stable since others can contribute fixes.
I'd bet the OSS driver is more useful to ATI for bug fixes than anything else, and wouldn't be entirely surprised if it became
Re:So what does it do? (Score:4, Interesting)
How many years did it take for nVidia to add DRI support to their driver? Xinerama support? Not-corrupting-the-virtual-console-when-running-more-than-one-instance-of-X support? Do they support XRandR 1.3 yet? (That last question isn't rhetorical---I've stopped following the status of nVidia's proprietary drivers.)
The last time I used them, the nVidia drivers exhibited a severe case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome, and they weren't particularly stable.
I really don't know where all these people come from who say "nVidia's drivers just work". I suspect it's just a lack of experience with *actual* stable drivers. The best X driver experience I've had is with free drivers for hardware that's a few generations old. Super stable and everything *really* just works.
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I really don't know where all these people come from who say "nVidia's drivers just work".
I guess people like me - that use distros with driver versions we know work, if nVidia doesn't support the latest kernel I don't upgrade. There are things I haven't been able to get working, but I've never had a crash I could trace back to the closed source drivers. Unlike Catalyst, which I had one really, really bad experience with from back before AMD bought ATI. To put it this way, if nVidia's support was bronze then ATI finished last with a broken leg. Open source is stable yes, but Intel always sucked
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Still? Did you not understand? They were forced to invent their own because it was impossible to implement the features they required, with DRI. This is not the same as a "Not invented here" attitude.
As for why they don't use DRI now, well, isn't it DRI2 that's the future these day? Anyway, as I have no association with nvidia I can but venture a guess that their design works well enough for them. As my ancient Geforce 6600GT was a hell of a lot faster in Linux than my last year's new ATI 4830, I kind of se
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Still? Did you not understand? They were forced to invent their own because it was impossible to implement the features they required, with DRI.
No, they had the source code to the entire X server, kernel, and anything else they might have needed to improve. They chose not to.
If every video card manufacturer behaved like nVidia, X would never improve and the implementations would be completely balkanized.
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If every video card manufacturer behaved like nVidia, X would never improve and the implementations would be completely balkanized.
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i.e. with time the nVidia binary-only driver will only get worse (binary bit rot has a half-life of say 1.5 years), while the ATI OSS driver will only get better with time and is not locked to yesterday's Linux kernel or X11.
It is a choice of candy today, or no candy today but candy for the next month.
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The funny thing is that your analogy is irrelevant anyway because generally you replace video cards between 1 and 2 years anyway.
I tend to repurpose old hardware, so anything that's not on the motherboard tends to float around for ~ 3-5 years. Free drivers are important on that timescale.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me where nVidia has an open source driver with 100% features working?
This is about the AMD open source driver, not about the AMD closed source drivers, which supports Evergreen just fine.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Please tell me where AMD has any good Linux driver? Their closed source driver is such a piece of crap.
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Good point. Let's take this opportunity of AMD doing something for the open source community to bitch about all the stuff they didn't do yet. Way to play right into nVidia's hands, smart guy.
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That about right? Or am I "playing right into nVidia's hands" like the GP? If so, nVidia's hands is where I want to be, because their drivers work.
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It's called critique, and it's supposed to make people who are on the receiving end of that think better.
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Yeah, I would be happy if the proprietary driver could play video without flickering.
Amen to that. The on-chipset Intel adapter on my netbook (using open source drivers) plays video with far more grace than a last generation ATI card using their propietary drivers.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It gives a basis for the community to work around. The entire issue with NVidia has been that developers have been asking for at least some sort of documentation so that they don't have to reverse-engineer everything. Companies have said that they don't want to support Linux or handle bugs, and we reply "you don't have to!". With documentation and a core set of code to work around, AMD has done exactly what we have asked for. Now, it is up to us to take that code and build it up to be a full-fledge graphic driver.
AMD/ATI has nothing but my fullest appreciation for what they have done.
Re:So what does it do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post is either erroneous or misleading - ATI has closed source Catalyst drivers [lwn.net] that support Evergreen cards with 2D and 3D acceleration. What the Evergreen cards haven't had up until now is the open source driver support. However, the open source driver support for NVidia cards is much worse because the developers are having to reverse engineer functionality from NVidia's closed source drivers because NVidia hasn't made any open hardware specs available. When it comes to open source driver support for 2D and 3D acceleration, NVidia lags far behind AMD/ATI and Intel. As a post in the above link indicates, in the long run the shared open source code base eventually will be a significant competitive advantage for Intel and AMD and a disadvantage for NVidia.
I have switched over to the open source AMD R600 drivers because, even though the 3D support is not yet quite as good as the closed source drivers, it should catch up and it's already good enough for what I do. In the meantime I won't have to worry about waiting a number of months for the closed source drivers to become available when a new distro/kernel release requires new binary blobs from the vendor. That also means that my graphics hardware investment is protected and not dependent on the continued support of the hardware vendor if I want to continue to upgrade the O/S in the future.
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Not exactly. You can not buy an nVidia card for the same amount and have 100% of the features work just fine using FOSS drivers.
However you can get closed drivers for both ATI and Vidia.
Just goes to prove that the myth that if you just release the specs great FOSS drivers will get written quickly and by the community.
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>So if it doesn't offer 2D acceleration or 3D support... what does it do?
unaccelerated 2d
It is just like any other code push to upstream. You get a feature working on your local branch, you push it up. Then go on to the next feature. And this is not a standalone driver, it is just new code for the driver that currently handles r600 and r700.
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A relatively new nvidia card is going to have support for full video decode acceleration in Linux.
It's the ANCIENT cards that aren't going to have that capability. Although the xvmc on the older
cards is actually quite helpful while not being a "complete" acceleration solution. Really, the
only thing xvmc can't help with is high bitrate 1080p h264 or VC1.
This is why the really ancient nvidia cards are even better than newer ATI cards on Linux.
Decent hardware + good driver trumps whatever + really crappy drive
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Nightmare (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nightmare (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, we're fortunate to be able to reuse most of our code on lots of GPUs -- there are some bits that apply from r100 to r700. The "fun" is in the sheer complexity of the hardware, the inability of the hardware to cope with incorrect programming, and the lack of documentation, manpower, and testing available to assist us.
Oh, and hardware bugs. You don't wanna know how many there are. Really. Try getting an RS480, or RC410, to do 3D. It ain't fun.
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You wrote you need more manpower and testing. How hard is it for, say, someone proficient in C to get into video driver development? Do you have any pointers to materials that would help one get started?
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How come the GPU vendors do not have a freaking portion of their hardware always work the same way, with same driver code - it just does mode setting and sets up the GPU for decent level of 2D acceleration.
Because it doesn't have a 2D engine anymore, it's all treated like a special case of 3D where z is always 0. That is just one example, there's a lot of rewiring going on inside the pipeline. Try for example reading this page [anandtech.com] on how nVidia is changing their fixed function pipeline and see if you manage not to get a headache. The drivers have to work the new way even just to achieve the old ways, it's not like CPUs where you slightly extend the x86 interface.
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"no one cares of 2D accel anymore" - yes they do. Try running your desktop (whatever OS) with the 'standard' drivers. Yes that's right, there is a default way of running most graphics cards, probably VESA or something. How else do you think you can install your OS without the correct drivers from the get-go. Likewise, the bios screens etc. all operate through a standard interface (VGA adapter?).
2D Acceleration is probably more important that 3D, it just doesn't get noticed as much. Try dragging/resizi
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That's not 2D acceleration. The big win in desktop performance is from accelerating compositing. Every app draws to a private display buffer and these are then composited by the GPU. This is basically performing something like a scaled multiply operation, but on every single pixel. It's very slow on the CPU, but the GPU can typically do something like 128 pixels simultaneously, while the CPU can do 4 if you're lucky. If your windowing system doesn't do compositing then every window has to redraw when i
Previous series of cards has good acceleration... (Score:1)
Hopefully it's only a matter of time until the 5000 series is supported -- the proprietary driver just isn't an option if
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Oh goodie, more Phoronix. (Score:3, Informative)
Some reading between the lines is needed.
Any r600 acceleration code *should* work with only minor tweaks on Evergreen (r800). The biggest changes are supposedly in GPGPU-land; r800 supports a lot more shader instructions than r700 or r600.
I don't have one of these yet, but I'm sure Cooper and Richard, the AMD 3D devs, are furiously coding away to make stuff run.
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It worked after a git pull and make for me, no tweaks necessary.
Legal Review? (Score:4, Funny)
>and this code has finally cleared AMD's legal review.
Has nothing in it that we feel might be secret or licensed....
Doesn't do 3D CHECK
Doesn't do 2D CHECK
Passes our legal review- let people enjoy it now!!!!
As long as it's "opensource" (Score:1)
'The driver doesn't offer 2D or 3D acceleration' -- o.O
Intel (Score:2)
Thats why I stay with Intel graphics, they may not be the fastest graphics card in the world
but their Linux drivers never made any problems. Be it mode switching or dual-head, everything *just works*.
And that by using existing Xorg standards (XRandR, etc.), e.g. no nightmare "nvidia-settings" program as in the case for "the other" manufacturer.
And yes, for most models the drivers are open source, IIRC.
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Very happy with the Open Driver (Score:4, Informative)
I've had a R600 based radeon HD3870 on linux for a while. I used to go with the fglrx proprietary drivers, but I've recently switched to the radeon (ddx) driver.
I have to say I'm extremely happy with the Open driver. Now is it Free Software? I'm not sure, I mean *most* of the driver seems to be, but you still need to load microcode firmware.
As far as the quality of the driver though, it seems very bug free and the kernel mode setting is awesome. Switching from vt-1 to an Xorg session for example is instantaneous. Mesa seems to need some work on the 3d side, but you can play quakelive on it and run the kde version of compiz.
It's really great that ATI has both released documentation and paid developers to work on getting these drivers up and running, they should consider both sponsoring some 3d work on the mesa side and also figuring out a way around the microcode situation.
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Is there some reason you ignored this ideal solution?
lets hope via follows (Score:3, Interesting)
Its great to see some hardware companies coming out with open source drivers for their technology. Even if the driver is so far incomplete its at least a good starting point which will hopefully be improved on. I feel that by providing this sort of information AMD may have a repreive which will help it have a fighting chance in the future. Its such a shame that Via have not been doing more with their graphics drivers in Linux. I really wish that openchrome had more support given that so many cheap nettop/netbook style systems have via chipsets (at least in asia).
Windows driver (Score:2)
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Port it. All the required tools are free, I'm pretty sure the Windows DDK is free as well. I get it from an MSDN subscription so I haven't actually tried to find it without one, but I seem to remember it being there if you look for it.
You have the source for a Linux driver, shouldn't be that hard to port it for someone who understands the WDDM model, or hell the 2000/XP model since the this driver isn't accelerated anyway.