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AMD Promises Open Source Graphics Drivers
MoxFulder writes "Henri Richard, AMD's VP of sales, has promised to deliver open-source drivers for ATI graphics cards (recently acquired by AMD) at the recent Red Hat Summit. A series of good news for proponents of open-source device drivers. In the last year, Intel, the leading provider of integrated graphics cards, has opened their drivers as well. But ATI and NVidia, the only two players in the market for high-performance discrete graphics cards, have so far released only closed-source drivers for their cards. This has created numerous compatibility, stability, and ethical problems for users of Linux and other open source OSes, and prompted projects like Nouveau to try and reverse-engineer NVidia drivers. Hopefully AMD's decision will put pressure on NVidia to release open-source drivers as well!"
$SUBJECT. If AMD really means it, it bodes well for the future - I always hoped that their openness with the Linux community over the x86-64 porting effort wasn't a one-off.
The big question though is whether or not they will try for mainline inclusion, or if they will go with an out-of-tree effort.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
The agp specification is proprietary and you need to pay (heavily) for the spec. Releasing their driver source would be like giving away the agp spec. It might not be legal.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
VP of sales: We have to delay the r600 again!!
CEO: WTF?!?!? Ok, ok. Let me think a moment... with all those problems, it seems that we are not developing _anything_... I got it!! You just have to go to one con, one full of hippys with long hair, and make a new press release stating something wonderful of our new cards... No! much better! something wonderful of all of our cards. That is. This will give us some good press and nobody will remember the delay
VP of sales: what kind of press release can afford such incredible thing??
CEO: I don't know... well, these hippys are always requesting new and shiny drivers that works with their toy operating system. Just promise that.
VP of sales: But... we promised that 18 months ago, and still...
CEO: And?
VP of sales: Well... but our customers are not stupid.
CEO: We'll discuss that later. Just give me a month without news of r600 and I'll remember you in the next stock options party.
I havent bought an ATI card ever (unless you count the GC and Wii). I would imediate buy one if they had robest OS drivers. Currently I always buy Nvidia.
It is that simple really, not about gaming nessesarily, more about trust, I trust OS more.
Last time I looked at the Intel driver source, there were a ton of calls into the video BIOS. Not something I would call an "Open Source" driver. This may have changed since then,- I really hope so.
Why is it important to have more source you might ask. Well, for one thing it would be really nice if we can get rid of the video BIOS altogether. A full source driver which shows how to switch video modes is a very good start to accomplish this (although not necessarily enough).
And then you might ask, why do we need to get rid of the video BIOS? Well, when evaluating graphics chips for an embedded systems, I found out that the video BIOS can spend an insanely long time initializing stuff and displaying stuff that we don't want/need (some like several seconds). In general, video BIOSs are over-engineered and do waaaay more than needed.
If you are aiming to build a near-instant-on system, and/or something that doesn't look like a PC, you want this sort of flexibility. If AMD steps up to the plate, that would be awesome.
IMO, using binary blobs that run in the card, not in the kernel (i.e. downloadable firmware), are a reasonable way for vendors to hide trade secrets while keeping the card updateable and the kernel driver open source. As long as shared memory between the graphics card and main system is restricted to a window, bugs in the firmware shouldn't cause security holes in the kernel. In fact, one benefit of micro-kernel architecture is that isolated drivers that run in their own process and address space, can run in an intelligent I/O card instead.
The IBM Series/1 was built on the principle. All I/O was done by intelligent cards with a common API: submit Device Control Block with command, memory block, and parameters to start an operation. Receive vectored interrupt and find results in updated DCB and memory block. Interrupt included address of DCB, so interrupts were trivially "object oriented".
It's pretty simple, really:
- You != an average Linux user.
- Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.
Now granted, part of Loki's problem may have been that they were shipping ports of Windows games several months after the game originally shipped on Windows, but the fact that Linux gamers wouldn't wait a month or three to support their platform of choice was damning.The market for Windows software is large enough, even with the pirates, to make it profitable to sell them software. The problem with Linux is that the number of "Free or bust" users is large in relation to users who would pay for software, thus making it a losing proposition to try to do anything but niche software on Linux (by that I mean it may be worth selling Oracle at $10,000 per CPU, but it's not worth selling TurboTax at $30, because you have to sell a lot fewer copies of Oracle to break even or make a profit).
there are a number of reasons why this would be in ati's interest:
- the cards cost up to 4000 euros a shot, so it's a lucrative market
- they could advertise with "we make the cards they used for harry potter 14"
opening up the drivers ensures that every linux kernel within a short time will come with a version of these drivers and there will be a good chance that the cards will just work and work well.Elsewhere on the web folks are wondering whether this means that the a new GPGPU will be accessible but the actual graphics driver itself will remain closed. AMD/ATI has also announced open source drivers before which translated into more stable and more frequently released Linux binary x86 drivers...
I think the coward's point was that nVidia's drivers are better right now. If ATI hasn't made good on their commitment to open source (and thus foster an environment for better drivers) then he's just going to keep on as if nothing has changed.
Why should he believe the promises of an PR person and let that influence his buying decision?
I just ordered parts to build a new PC and the GPU is an onboard Intel X3000. Why? Open source drivers. If ATI has open source drivers the next time I buy parts, I'll probably choose them for the GPU, even if nVidia also has open sourced, despite the fact that I've been an nVidia fan. Why? ATI has better hardware! It's just too bad their drivers have always sucked, on all platforms.
The AC stated it like an ultimatum, but I think he/she was just stating a fact: Their next purchase would depend on ATI's action or inaction.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I always try to be fair and make exceptional recommendations and deals for the folks at work.
... upgrades, an additional 100 desktops (900 total), 35 HP Intel Servers, 20 SUN-Cisco nodes, and three Alcatel-Lucent Omnicore switches. Yep also the cable, patch-panels, wire-racks, transceivers, and all the other required hardware and software trinkets (let me think, was that Gates-Arrow, Ingram Micro, or CDW we made the deal with? Dang, I forget...). Total screw-ups were kept at less than 0.5% of cost which the vendor we went with resolved at no cost. Saved $2.5M ... had a ~$27K problem resolved for $0.
... scaleability and upgradeability as CFO/CIO infrastructure like to call it.
... when I make a recommendation %~$, most of the technophobes in management remain silent and just hope I screwup.
A couple years ago I turned a CFO projected enterprise $8M deal into a $5.5M deal while getting hard-drives sizes doubled, RAM doubled, all CRTs swapped to same size LCDs
Maybe next time I will look at the MB-graphic or cPCI cards and decide ATI is easier to support over the lifecycle requirement. It will have to prove a better business decision, but I will look, and if all is about equal well ATI will win my recommendation.
I still have another year before I need to seriously start thinking again about big problems, but I won't forget to look at the ATI and NVidia lifecycle supportability issue. The recent distributed content management and storage network was set too a non-proprietary architecture for lifecycle compliance requirements
I am seldom questioned
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
as-many-different-cards-as-you-can. Quake 3 speeds are spotted in binary drivers any way and it doesn't explain fglrx which are some of the most unsuitable drivers for gaming on Linux.
Read the proceedings for detailed explanation of why no more kittens need to killed!
Pull your head out of your ass please.
I do my fair share of gaming under Linux.
And I'm not here for the free ride. The free part just makes the decision to switch easier.
There are quite a few large open source games.
Ever played Bzflag? God that game is addictive.
There is also Nexuiz which I hear is pretty good.
Then you get the small really really fun games like Frozen Bubble.
The story is well known and a little research on your part would reveal it. From wikipedia: