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Future AMD GPUs To Be More 'Open-Source Friendly'

Posted by Zonk on 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."

6 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. I remember a time... by mangu · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...when chip manufacturers gave away the full specifications. I even received by snail-mail thick books, 500 pages or so, with the specs from companies like Texas instruments and Motorola. Some manufacturers even sent free samples of the chips themselves.


    Where have they gone wrong?

    1. Re:I remember a time... by rdoger6424 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      because free markets can't exist in real life.

      --
      "Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
    2. Re:I remember a time... by symbolic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think the problem is not too much capitalism, it is too little. Adam Smith's free markets have been replaced by an international neo-conservative monarchy and nobility.

      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 something reaches the tipping point and enough people are being affected by a specific capitalistic influence. As an example, it is conceivable that the citizens of the US could have put the RIAA out of business a long time ago. But people still insist on giving them money (for the mediocre crap they produce, no less), which the RIAA then uses to continue to tightening the noose around copyright law and fair use.

  2. Correction: Don't buy Vista. by n+dot+l · · Score: 5, Interesting

    DRM "functionality" in hardware? No thanks. You know, I remember an NVIDIA engineer complaining to me about how they'd had to do a bunch of really fucked up stuff to get the G80 GPUs to support HD playback on Vista. I'm pretty sure Intel's latest stuff has to deal with the same bullshit too. So really, the title of your post should read "Don't buy post-Vista GPUs". That kinda puts a damper on the whole 3D graphics thing, doesn't it?

    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.
  3. Re:I remember a time...Back in the day. by mangu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since we're living in the past. I also remember when chips were a lot less complex and came in ECL, TTL, and BiCMOS.*

    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.


    Wrong to who? The minority hobbiest? The people who really need the specs have their boss pay for them as well as agree to all the needed NDAs. They're not the ones complaining.

    Despite you claiming to be an EE, you have never really worked in designing electronic systems, have you? I don't think Intel or anybody else would send a free sample of a $1700 chip to just anybody who asked, and a hobbyist wouldn't know where to start in designing a motherboard where that chip would work.


    The contract and NDA signing phase comes when you have settled on who is going to be your supplier. The problem is that more and more corporations want to go direct to contracts and NDAs, without letting the design engineers decide for themselves. If I go to my boss and say, "hey, let's sign a contract with AMD", he will ask "haven't we done this with Intel already".


    I'm not worried about hobbyists, because, as I mentioned, they wouldn't be able to make the circuit boards to use advanced chips. The problem is that chip manufacturers today insist on having a contract for I-don't-know-how-many thousands of chips before they give out the full specifications. This makes not only driver design impossible for third parties, but also makes it very difficult for engineers to perform preliminary designs.

  4. Re:This sounds ridiculous to me by Fry-kun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I see you haven't tried playing HD content without hardware acceleration.
    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.

    --
    Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?