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AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs
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."
over NINE HUNDRED!!
The only way to get nVidia to release their specs is to show them that there is a real market.
I'll do my part and replace my AGP nVidia card with an ATI one as soon as there is a good review of an available card with this driver on Ubuntu.
no, wait, the other thing - tedious.
They've actually done it. It's time to buy an ATI card.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Closed-source drivers can be OK, except they tend to discontinue support after a while. Eventually the binary driver won't load into a current kernel and you are high and dry. With open-source drivers, the prospects for long-term support are better.
AMD ie recently making more moves toward the open source community than either it or ATI did prior to the merger.It seems to me that AMD has realized that there is value in not only having the right products rolling off the lines, but also having a greater mindshare.
Google realized this early, and bought off a great amount of geek awe by using Linux as the basis for its computing grid. This popularity among geeks turned into word of mouth advertising which turned into huge market share (having a great product didn't hurt either). Google still tries to maintain the "we're just a benign bunch of geeks" image (an image which is eroding, as it becomes more apparent that they are more akin to a lovechild of M$ and the NSA than a giant sushi eating LAN party). This appeal to mindshare by making steps toward the community, genuine or not, may be part of what AMD is trying to do, at least to an extent.
There are other genuine benefits to being more open about its specs, most clearly highlighted by the use of ATI GPUs to process Folding@Home. Therefore it is conceivable that AMD GPUs and GPU/CPU combo chips in the future may, if more openly specced, be used in a wider variety of HPC applications.
Disclaimer: I am an AMD fanboi.
I hate printers.
One can hope that it actually had the specifications for modern GPUs... and not just stuff you might find in scrap piles or in 15+ year old government computers. Otherwise, it will be like when the RIAA gave a crap-ton of Whitney Houston Christmas CDs as a settlement for their price-fixing practices... technically within the letter of the law, but violating the spirit of the law all to hell...
...will that GPU run Linux?
Just imagine an SLI'd Beowulf cluster of these!
np: Masha Qrella - Insecure (Luck)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
This is amazing news, not only that the specifications have finally been opened, but that the open source community has immediately utilized them to update the driver with a turn around time of only 2 weeks.
I guess we can thank Dell for pressuring ATI for better Linux support.
Maybe now this means we can have some dedicated video cards on the Ubuntu Dell Laptops, instead of just the onboard Intel chip they're using now because of the driver issues?
I wonder if this has more to do with trying to get mind and market share over intel than them really beleiving Open Source is the future of the market. maybe it's both.
Nice bit of good news anyway.
Good luck finding an AGP card; I don't think they're making many these days.
Actually this is the fun part. Governments have been "enforcing" open source as gimmicks. The only way to show there is a REAL market is to have an actual producer get involved and actually PROVIDE the goods and support. Red Hat did its part, various OSS groups did their part, etc.
:)
:) (Or build another one.)
They weren't tax supported, but they did a better job than all the tax supported wealth consuming agencies out there
I agree, once the cards hit my neck of the woods, if they're well implemented in hardware, I'll gladly supplant my 7800's in my SLI rig
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Come off it... that's not even enough for an Office document standard.
Worthless!
I have not bought an ati for a long time after I switched to linux. My last ati card was a 9800. I will next time.
I say again. HOLY FREAKING CRAP.
/. post, I think there's absolutely no reason not to recommend an ATI display card anymore. (Well, except for Intel's or VIA's integrated graphics in a non-gaming desk- or laptop.)
If this turns out the way it seems from an optimistic reading of the
Bits 12 and 13 of D2CRTC_TRIGB_CNTL are D2CRTC_TRIGB_RISING_EDGE_DETECT_CNTL !!!
Hurray, now all Linux graphics problems are solved, it will autodetect all graphics cards like Windows 1.0 did and penguins will dance in the streets.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Are you on crack? Did anyone say anything about government? Has government ever made a peep about video cards and closed or open drivers? Did you read the summary before you spouted off?
STFU, FOAD, and take your paranoid attitude with you.
Actually there's a good number of modern AMD D3D10 products available on AGP now, and the older R5-series hardware had good AGP presence as well. Not the high-end R600 I should say, but RV630 and RV610 (HD 2600 and HD 2400) are both available. And the Windows Vista driver sucks, somewhat hilariously.
- 'sup, G?
So what you're saying is that I should get a completely new system, all AMD-based?
And that I should send a copy of the receipt to AMD along with the explanation that the only reason I spent that money was so I could run Ubuntu with the new Free video driver? And that I should say that the system I'm replacing was Intel/nVidia?
Well, if you say I should, that's good enough for me.
And you go on to say that everyone who buys an ATI card because of this should also send a letter (not email) to ATI saying the same thing?
These are great news for the FOSS world, and I hope it will be for AMD too. This is one of the things the GNU/Linux desktop world was awaiting the most, and this will prove there is a real market there if AMD benefits from opening their specs.
IMHO, effectively releasing full specs, and doing it fast is not only a matter of "looking good from the geeks point of view" but a real desire of taking the GNU/Linux (and BSDs) desktop from nvidia.
They released full specs for their hardware for ages, and even donated hardware to open source projects. Not just big name ones like linux either, openbsd got AMD64 hardware. This is why all the free operating systems had full AMD64 support very soon after the hardware was released (if not before it was released).
google it. :-)
Starmen.net
Within 6 months i bet nvidia does the same thing
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
Slashdot: Yay!
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
My current card is nvidia because they had the best 3D drivers so far. That's going to change.
Thanks AMD for taking this step!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I promise that you will get my business for as long as your drivers stay open-source. I bought an AMD CPU already and I'll buy the rest (ATI graphics card and motherboard w/ATI subsystem) once I get paid.
May you bottom-line go through the roof, your hardware stay cool (both literally and figuratively), and your (Linux) drivers stay open source.
- On a technical note, how long would it take for MPlayer/VLC/GSTREAMER people to have hardware-accelerated playback of DVDs and the like?
Boy oh boy, this is some juicy news. I had stopped using ATi stuff cause it blew. Maybe I'll start to see some new options open up.
I just bought a laptop with an nVidia card in it; ATI was too late to get their share of my $2200.
However, for my next ~$5000 desktop, ATI will get the nod.
Thank you, AMD.
captcha: solemnly
I am not a hardware hacker, so I was wondering what cards would benefit from this first release.
Open source drivers for my X1900XT :):):) Hot diggity damn !
Gonna start a petition to port command and conquer - tiberium wars to Linux.
or reopen my subscription to transgaming.
-Sundru
>Google still tries to maintain the "we're just a benign bunch of geeks" image (an image which is eroding, as it
>becomes more apparent that they are more akin to a lovechild of M$ and the NSA than a giant sushi eating LAN party).
I think Google's actions towards the open source community and users worldwide has been excellent.
You are I am sure mad at them because of their dealings with China over the treatment of Bob Llama...
blah, blah, blah....
They've released the specs, this doesn't mean anything yet. People forget just how complex graphics cards are. Writing a driver for something like a network card or SCSI controller is fairly easy, and that's also evident from how small the drivers are. There's just little to do. 3D cards are extremely complex, hence the massive amount of documentation. It isn't like there was just some magic number that needed releasing and the OSS drivers would be perfect with full support. There's now a ton of work to be done, since it sounds like it is just specs, not code, they are releasing.
So you'll probably want to wait and watch until the driver is ready to go and up to whatever performance and stability standards you need for your application. Switch now and you are likely to find yourself in essentially the same situation as before: ATi's binary driver, or an OSS driver that doesn't do what you want.
It'll be some time before this information can be transformed in to a fully functional, stable, fast driver. After all, if it were so easy, ATi and nVidia would have perfect drivers out on the launch of a new card and never need to do anything but minor updates.
The Athlon 4800+ runs at 2.4GHz so this 900+ GPU thing must be really dragging ass.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
How would you even know they had good image quality if they had crappy drivers? Does not compute, unless you got lucky and bought the magical cards that ran without drivers. Or is that just some rumors you heard on the internets?
Hell yes.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
I used ATI products for years, starting with a 2MB Graphics Xpression that let me run at 1152x900 (used OpenLook, so my Linux desktop at home mirrored the Sun at work), but my last card buy had to be nVidia, although I despise them for what they did to 3dfx.
I was just about to build a new system around the Asus M2N32 WS with yet another nVidia card, but not now. It will be an ATI again.
Vote with your dollars AND ballots.
With portables on the up, are we going to get specifications for the Radeon IGP chipsets? These seem to be causing the reverse engineering folks a huge headache and I've seen no mention of the Radeon Xpress 200M RS480 (yes, I have one, so I suppose I had better declare self-interest) or the Xpress 1100 so far. OK, we have 2D with the radeon(4x) driver in Xorg 7.2. 3D would be nice, though.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
I bought an Intel 965 based motherboard for my new computer because Intel have open source drivers but I've been disappointed at the lack of progress with them.
Given that 3d multimedia desktops are the new sexy which all distros seem to be getting into I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be much progress on getting it fixed on what is (as far as I am aware) the only open-driver supported 3d hardware available (at least until AMD release their 3d specs).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Thanks AMD, and to all of the devs, communities, and testers out there who are going to put their heart, soul, time and money into making a rock solid driver set! Make sure that these specs and the others that we all hope will be released are put to the best use possible.
I look forward to any OS drivers that are produced and will at the very least try to put my time to use by finding and reporting bugs with the hardware I have when the time comes.
#1. Send it to ATI and let them use it in their marketing campaign.
#2. Send it to nVidia to show the profit that is going to their competitor from a FORMER customer.
#3. Send it to BOTH.
I came here intending to post just what you did. AGP and all. ^_^
For the record, Nvidia says otherwise.
You all should be grateful instead of pissing in their Cheerios."Thank you, oh benevolent masters, for supplying the software required to use the hardware that you gave me in exchange for money." Was that suitably deferential, or should I bend my knee more?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
1. Get documentation 2. Write driver 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!!!
I once called myself a "pragmatist" when it came to Linux video drivers. If it works, I'll use it. Now that they are releasing an open source 3D driver that works, I will definitely use it :)
Kudos to AMD/ATI for doing this! I've always been an NVidia fan, but will most certainly be buying an ATI video card for my next PC unless NVidia follows suit within the next 6-8 months.
First I would like to say that the GP AC is not this AC, just for clarification purposes.
Secondly will state as a matter of historical proof that absolutely no one can make a statement with 100% clarity as to their intent and meaning to anyone. This becomes even more difficult in a crowd of geniuses as they will analyze and come up with more potential meanings for each word, each clause, each statement, each body language, each typo, etc. That said and with the parent's "apparent definition of an idiot", some might say the parent qualifies under their own definition, but I am not here to call the parent an idiot and from the parent's original post in this string of comments it is obvious that the parent is not an idiot.
IMO the GP noticed the parent was leaving a potential door open and made a statement in the form of a question for clarification and to close that door. Possibly the moderator made the same accessment and modded the GP up. If Google made the parent's statement publicly, Microsoft could have a field day with them either directly, through their shills, or via both paths.
IMO the parent's insulting troll of the GP is unjustifiable and they should consider some confidence building moves so they won't take insult so readily from others who may well not intend the perceived insult. No one who can post at Slashdot would fit the medical definition of an idiot and frankly no one should apply it to anyone who does not meet the medical definition.
Disclaimer: Posted by a nerd labeled as an "idiot" far too many times by subgroups of the larger groups made up of jocks and rednecks, some of whom are family. Ever "married" two bales of hay in a barn? Neither had I when we moved to my mother's part of the world after moving from base to base with my father. Some of my relatives, and others, refer to people like me as "edumucated idjits". The mispronounciation they use is deliberate and not the way they normally say either word. If they hear a word from someone and perceive the word to be too "fancy" they think your conceited for using it if they understand it and consider you a "know it all" if they don't as well as taking insult from it. Communication is an area frought with pitfalls.
Heh - I think you're missing the implication of his statement.
Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.
If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem.
So it's not an issue of what's *wrong* with Linux, it's what's *right* with it. The problem is that this presents circumstances the hardware world isn't used to dealing with.
well well i never tought i would live to see this day
hell actually froze over today
Needs much moar. I suggest jihad against the front page till Taco blocks teh 20721 carpfolder.
ATI have historically always had excellent features on their cards for supporting media playback. The downside was that accessing them in Linux has always been much harder than using the equivalent features on nvidia hardware.
If these specs allow a good stable XVMC driver to be written for ATI hardware, ATI could become the top choice for Linux media centre boxes.
Mirror: http://mirrors.tumbleweed.org.za/www.x.org/docs/AMD/
here is a torrent for the files: http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3804798
For those of us who have an ATI X1250, that's not much good.
I'm reading these, stuck wondering to which products they actually apply (as in, Marketing Names(TM)). It would be nice if they mentioned the products by name. Also, there's no high level overview, so you just have to guess how the registers work.
Hopefully someone can provide a link to more documentation, because this is just trickle compared to what the OEMs must get from ATI. Normally, you'd get a datasheet, a register reference, a technical reference manual, and programmer's guide. ATI provides one of these, and people are ecstatic? This is hardly open.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
1. It takes years for a corporation to do something related to a press release.
2. Press release was only released weeks ago.
3. FAKE
Im going to stay in JAVA (sum microsystems) world where corporate decisions happen at a snails pace and impeded the companies operations for years (case in point open sourcing of java)
Sarcasm Inside
The last time I bought a computer, I went with AMD because I was mad at Intel. I still am, though less so. It fades over time.
... solely because they had an open source video driver. This will soon eliminate that benefit.
Last year I did an evaluation, and Intel came out on top
N.B.: For me to choose Intel it must be 5% better than the competition. This is due to various corporate actions that I dislike. (Two years ago it was 10%...I use a time decaying function.) If they were up against a competitor that didn't support DRM, they'd need to be 50% better, but I don't see one, so that part of the playing field is level.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I have been buying nVidia video cards for forever for their... let's say less bad support for GNU/Linux and I recomended them to my Windows-using friends. But this changes everything: from now on I know that I can buy ATI cards and be sure that they'll work and have good software support. Thanks AMD, thanks ATI: you have made a new loyal customer today.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
... what about all those X1100 and similar in all these notebooks? And pardon my ignorance - are there already good, reliable, full-featured drivers for the likes of 9800 etc?
Not many but at least for last-gen cards you can get a decent one. As an x1650 Pro AGP owner I'm happy to hear these news :)
The tags to this story are awesome also.
Actually, mostly targetting the gamer market, there are still newish AGP cards out there - basically, PCI-express gfx chips with a PCIe to AGP8x bridge chip. Works quite well. I've got one myself (because I delayed my usual upgrade cycle due to AMD's Barcelona delay (I want one, best memory bandwidth...), but wanted to play with OpenGL 2.1 features).
The thing that gets me is that Wikipedia seems to know more about the ATI chips than ATI. Of course this can't actually be the case, but I think it is somewhat telling that ATI is not the authoritative reference for even their own hardware. There seems to be some uneasiness with releasing the full product specs, which suggests to me that they don't have a real committment to openness.
Well, if I can't get specs, my next video card will be an nVidia. Why should I suffer because my HW vendor wants to hide something from me? Do they really believe that non-functional hardware gains them any marketshare?
With Windows hopelessly insecure, my only real option is to either buy a Mac, which is too expensive for my taste, or to use Linux. Which means that if ATI doesn't provide the documentation that I - or somebody - needs to write open drivers, I'm just not going to buy their HW. Period. That super-secret, proprietary graphics pipeline won't sell ATI cards if no one can use it. Do they really think that I'm going to run Windows just to get video to work?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Seriously, what the hell took them so long? Still, I've got to give them credit for doing the right thing - even if it took them a while to do.
If it's for real, I guess I'm going to switch over to being an ATI customer.
> Come off it... that's not even enough for an Office document standard.
>
> Worthless!
You said it. It's ONLY 900 pages, nowhere near the OOXML 6000+. They didn't even include documentation for every legacy chip, much less the unannounced next-generation ones that they've no doubt got ready for first tape-out.
Plus there's no Swahili translation, either.
It's too little, too late, may as well stick with the old closed-source stuff that "works."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
And the Windows Vista driver sucks, somewhat hilariously.
It wasn't too long ago that I was at Microsoft's Philadelphia offices for an Exchange 2007 presentation. The first thing that they wanted to show was a short video on a projection screen -- what they actually showed the audience was a Vista laptop with ATI graphics choking half way through a two-minute video and then puking an error message saying that the video driver crashed and was being restarted. And some guy behind me said "Twelve years later and they still can't get the presentation right."
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
They won't work in your SLI rig. Only NVidia cards support SLI. ATI have a different system that uses a different motherboard, so you'd have to replace that too, if you want SLI type performance.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
My printer is working overtime tonight....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I have always given kudos to nvidia for producing a very good driver for linux [good as in, performance and stability wise], but this really changes everything. i don't even know anything about ati cards, ive not really needed to in the last 10 years since starting to use linux full time, but if ati can give me more bang for my buck, then they will definitely be on the cards next time i buy a card. i bought a 7950gt last month, so it should be a while, and by then. the drivers produced may be good enough by then :]
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov
"It's about fucking time that companies realize the trickle-down effect of abusing nerds."
Pfft! It's not abusing nerds that got ATI were it is presently. It's good old fashion competition, business fuck-ups, and a deep-pocket buyer.
"Who do the ignorant masses go to when they need advice? Their nerdy friend.."
No, they go to you to be insulted. They go to wherever advertising tells them to go.
"ATI lost market share for almost the exact reason that IE did (albeit to less extent)."
More like the reason 3DFX did.
The issue with a closed driver for the nVidia cards that actually performs somewhat well is actually a detriment for the community at large. It causes some people who would be interested in making a better open driver to just suck it up and use the existing closed driver because it's easier even though it has many problems.
I am very thankful that AMD has released specs. Until nVidia follows suit there should be no real reason to buy nVidia cards. This means that they will be forced to eventually release specs and those of us who had no support from nVidia will finally get a working driver.
As an nVidia customer, all I can say is Thank You AMD!
Was a bit sceptical when he went to work for ATI having been a long-time 'open saucer' but its good to see some good came of it in the end ...
...
Now if only Ubuntu on my thinkpad had 3d drivers which worked
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
So what are the cards that will have open source 2D and 3D acceleration? I have an x1950pro and I am sick of crappy linux drivers. Never the less a good start by AMD to release some of their specs but they should release everything.
I find myself in the market for a new graphics card, what's ATI got in the low range x16 slot type that's one of these R500 or R600 cards?
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Well, there is a real market.
Since DELL has been shipping pre-installed Linux PCs, they will eventually favor ATI if it performs better than nVidia due to higher quality drivers.
I just got home today to find that my Nvidia card on my MythTV system has 3 blown caps (probably through no fault of NVidia). I'll probably be picking up an ATI card to replace it. It's well worth it to have the piece of mind that my card will be supported in the future.
I am MuchTall
I wish I had mod points -- the question would be funny or insightful though -- it's both.
With respect to your previous comment, I upgraded my system last weekend and I didn't really get $500 worth of improvement. My old motherboard was on the verge of fritzing though so it had to be done (Athlon XP 2200+ system), and even though the various parts are maybe 4 years old, nothing fits in the new motherboards anymore. Thank goodness I had an old PCI IDE card in the closet -- none of my HDs are SATA.
I'm proabably one of the few people who went out specifically looking for a GMA950 motherboard -- I was impressed with how well Fusion ran on my macbook with the open source drivers compared to how it worked on my Desktop/nVidia system. I still am impressed with that on my new Desktop, I'm just dissapointed in the ridiculously long BIOS startup time which negates the quicker boot time (from the grub prompt). If I could have found the GMA950 on an add-in card, I would have bought that and stuck with AMD processors. At least I'll still get to help out AMD and buy a video card once a bit of driver work gets done.
As for the old board, which is basically a complete system sans drive (well, I have a couple unused 40gb drives in the closet), powersupply (one of those in the closet too, though I can't remember if it works), and case (in the closet, no powersupply, small case requires specially sized PS), I decided to try my hand at replacing capacitors -- 3 had leaked and one was bulging. If I get lucky, I'll have that old machine back for other uses.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
At work I bought over 50 desktops during the course of last year, all with nVidia cards because they were supposed to support Linux better. Sigh. Well, at least I know for my next purchases.
I'd love to get a comment from Theo de Raadt on the subject. This (with 3D drivers) is what he appears to be after, it would be good to hear confirmation from him. Maybe he's holding out the praise until they release the 3D specs.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Speaking of redistribution rights, consider the following quote from page two of the two released docs:
If we assume that the propaganda term "intellectual property" is to include copyright, it would seem that distributing copies of these specifications non-commercially and verbatim is disallowed. One wonders what else you're not allowed to do with these specs, make derivative works perhaps? After all, "no license" is granted.
Digital Citizen
If (IF) the driver works with the latest ATI card, then I will dump the Nvidia card (NVIDIA TOO), and go ATI. From now till then, Nvidia is still the best bet. When you prove otherwise (and remember I'm hopeful that you do), then I'll switch. Right now Nvidia is the best solution, but its not perfect. Their driver releases tick at 6 month intervals, and every so often changes in the kernel wreck the driver. Some argue "so use an older kernel", but I'd rather have a very very small binary (if I had to have one at all), and have the rest as software that changes with the kernel. Better than that would be a full in-kernel driver. I would dump Nvidia in a heartbeat.
SLASHDOTTED!!!
LMAO
can't access the website
Fuck NVIDIA in the ass!!!!!
Glass
Reading comprehension much? From your link:
Below are the legacy GPUs that are no longer supported in the unified driver. These GPUs will continue to be maintained through the special legacy NVIDIA GPU driver releases.
Or you might notice that they plan to support those with the legacy driver which can be upgraded to compile against newer kernels. They just aren't adding features or fixing bugs for those older cards.
Consider this: I'm actually surprised how far nouveau development already went, without any specs and starting from the obfuscated nv driver. How much further could they be now if they had the specs and didn't have to waste uncountable hours tracing register changes and second-guessing their use?
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
There is an error on page 175. It says: "others - reserved" in the if (D1GRPH_DEPTH = 0x2) section. All options are defined, so there are no others that can be reserved.
I have often heard in open vs. closed graphics driver binaries the reasons that manufactures keep the source closed is that it contains a lot of proprietary technology and a lot of licenced / patented technology.
Now I realise that ATI/AMB have only released specs, but at some point in an open source driver development will someone "re-invent the wheel" and come up with a technique that is already patented.
What will happen in that scenario? Will open source drivers always be held back in this respect?
Do you think AMD wiould apply for permission to use the tehcnoologies for the open source drivers to continue support for the open source driver effort?
Also the opposite scenario, what happens if an open source coder comes up with a valuable new technique for graphics drivers and graphics display that no one has patented before? Having an open source driver faster / more useful than a closed source driver will defintly be an interesting scenario as to use it the the AMD's and nVidia's would need to open up everything correct?, which they are supposed unable to do...
What are your thoughts on this?
Those specs could probably be used to build open source Windows drivers, too. There should be a few very interesting possibilities for Windows users as well if someone creates such a driver, I think.
Does anyone know if there will be any specification for this as well ?
Related :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIVO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder
Thank you.
Amusingly, when I bought my Ubuntu PC from Dell's UK site a few weeks back the graphics card section had a giant ATi banner above it but only offered an NVidia card as an option. I assume that this is because right now NVidia's linux drivers are better, though neither are open source. Hopefully this'll change soon.
(Interestingly, the system shipped without NVidia's drivers installed, so I had to explicitly install NVidia's driver using the Restricted Driver Manager. I suppose you could argue that NVidia's driver has no business on a system being sold as an "Open Source" computer, but this is an annoying extra barrier for the potential non-technical user.)
If they aren't bugfixing, in what way are NVidia supporting the older cards?
NVidia drivers are blobs. They may or may not work with any future kernel and the developers of the kernel don't know when this will happen because the NVidia driver is a blob. They may be making assumptions about processor registers that won't work in the future. They may be assuming certain calls that won't exist. NVidia drivers even had a remote expoloit. If another is found, you aren't supported.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 hour 6 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
This means http://free3d.org/ will have updates soon :-)
Also, I've been running an ATI RV380 [Radeon X600] and a Radeon 9250 for a while now. They're not crazy gamer cards, but they fit my needs. As long as I can play Torcs, use Blender, and edit/watch some movies I'm happy. I've had Torcs crash because of unimplemented features in the r300 driver, but other than that everything has been very stable.
Debian is my primary desktop. I use, and advocate, linux all the time. But, I must admit, windows seems to have a crisper, snappier, gui. I have dual booted several PCs, with several different versions of linux, and several different WM/DEs, but windows is always noticably faster.
I think part of it may be linux, but I'm guessing that it mostly because of X11.
For those of us who really dont care about binary blob vs FOSS when you just want drivers that work:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeonhd.html
The release notes say it is not intended for x1900 or lower, but be sure I'll be trying it on my T41p anyway.
Compiz Fusion awaits!
i think it's a semi-smart move. they've lost market share to nvidia and probably won't be able to keep up with them technology wise. so it's their way to get some free look at some genuine open source drivers. using the community to get back into business. i think it's a little similar to what IBM does: being kicked in the ass by it's "little child" microsoft, they now try to get back at them through a movement that can't be stopped or buyed or whatever. they're all just using the open source community to their ends in my opinion.
what they don't seem to realize, is, that in the end they all won't matter. on the other hand, for the next few years it may work well for them and who cares, what's happening to their "old company", when they are already in pension, but that's another story...
"Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly."
In short, we have 2D documentation but no 3D documentation. It's been this way for years, nothing is different.
The last time someone (Matrox) said "3D specifications to arrive shortly", a whole bunch of suckers (including myself) bought cards and got shafted because the promised specifications were never released. My G200 was replaced by a Riva TNT2 within six months and I haven't left NVidia since then.
Others promise open specifications and fail to release them fully, resulting in cards that are paperweights.
NVidia doesn't promise open specifications, but at least they deliver solid drivers that work (and work well).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"Until nVidia follows suit there should be no real reason to buy nVidia cards."
Yes there is still real reason to buy NVidia cards. They have working functionality, ATI has only promised (but not yet delivered) 3D documentation. The last company to do that (Matrox back in 1998) never delivered. I'll believe it when I see it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And how dear sir, do you calculate that? To my knowledge /. doesn't publish the karma numbers, and if it is that high and you've tracked it their, you have way way way too much time on your hands.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
"Until nVidia follows suit there should be no real reason to buy nVidia cards"
I can think of a reason...huge performance gains perhaps?
But seriously, if...i mean when the open source community produces a fast, quality driver for ATI cards that exploits the GPU's full potential, I will definately be reconsidering ATI as a viable solution. Until then, it's nVidia.
In cases it cannot be done. NVidia did, for a long time, FORBID the inclusion of the download driver binaries and installer. You HAD to get it from nvidia.com.
Under GPL, you cannot add this restriction.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 53 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
I think he was referring to the fact that some governments are pushing open source, which means that when the time comes for them to make the decisions of which video card to use in their corporate desktop standard, this move could influence their decisions. When you think about how much hardware governments buy, you can see how this could have a positive impact for ATI/AMD. Plus, 3D is not so important for most government workers, so pushing out a 2D open source right away seems like a good move.
This appears to be the biggest obstacle to open source drivers. The current US patent laws have created an environment where any sufficiently complex, or even non-complex piece of software can be construed to violate someone else's bogus software patent.
There's a lot of risk attached to sharing source code. It allows hostile entities a free opportunity to pursue their bogus software patent litigation.
On the positive side, we're starting to see more ways to mitigate this risk, such as creative licensing (GPL3), creative code ownership arrangements, and not but not least pressure to reform the US patent system.