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

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."

Comments

I remember a time...

[mangu]

...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?

Re:I remember a time...

[Travoltus]

The big picture is that runaway Capitalism is where they have gone wrong.

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 infidels question the market!" right wing Republo-jihadists with mod points...)

Re:I remember a time...

[sqrt(2)]

I don't have mod points but I'll agree with you here. With one caveat. The "free market" (can't exist btw, it's just a idealized concept) IS working how it's supposed to. There isn't really a demand for an open platform GPU and thus the market doesn't provide one. If there were enough people wanting one that a company could make money selling them then you could buy it. Capitalism does tend to screw the little guys who have niche or obscure needs, unless you can pay to get things custom designed and produced.

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.

Re:I remember a time...

[Marcion]

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.

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.

Re:I remember a time...

[rdoger6424]

because free markets can't exist in real life.

Re:I remember a time...

[Marcion]

Markets start free, they just become non-free through layers of government intervention and large firms colluding. Certain agricultural products are more or less free markets, as well as light bulbs, screws, etc.

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.

Re:I remember a time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialism (communism, really) is based on the idea that people are not content with leisure but instead a) have an inner drive to create and b) understand that doing chores because they have to be done is better than doing chores because your boss tells you to. It's naive, but if you look at certain segments of the population, it is understandable how one could get that idea, particularly because in capitalism the people who exhibit these traits tend to miss out on the rewards compared to people who are in it for the personal gain.

Re:I remember a time...

[MMC Monster]

Capitalism is working, only slowly. Open APIs and open source drivers weren't a selling point, so they weren't available. Now with the slowly rising popularity of Linux, and the realization that Linux users are generally more influential in the purchase of hardware than the average buyer, the APIs and drivers will open up.

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).

Re:I remember a time...

[RAMMS EIN]

I agree with the general message of your post, but I have to nitpick.

``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.

Re:I remember a time...

[eggnoglatte]

Ah, but in the world wars, the bill was footed by the taxpayers. Only the influx from government money was able to push forward the necessary research under these conditions.

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, because there would be no way to exctract a decent return on investment from such activities (**). As I said above, companies will start to focus on commodization (i.e. building the same stuff cheaper).

(*) As an aside, it is beyond me how some (note I say some) supposed libertarians can advocate mandatory opening of product specs. Apart from the irony of a "libertarian" requesting more regulation, this would reduce freedom, not improve it. One of the key aspects of freedom of speach is the freedom to shut the fuck up and not tell you what I don't want to.

(**) Note how already today the companies that are the real innovators are often not the ones who are commercially most successful and leading their market. Abandoning patents and similar measures would just bias the system more thoroughly towards replication rather than innovation.

Re:I remember a time...

[AncientPC]

From the Read More section: AMD Release 900+ pages of GPU Specs.

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. 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.

Re:I remember a time...

[Marcion]

Ah, but in the world wars, the bill was footed by the taxpayers. Only the influx from government money was able to push forward the necessary research under these conditions.

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 war to really start plane production, but when the wars finished, they carried on building the planes and the commercial air industry was born.

Far more people are employed by the airlines, airports and so on, than the plane manufacturers; then you have to mention all the jobs created through international trade that results from the ability to jump on a plane in London and arrive in wherever-the-hell you want.

So the net-benefit to society in having a thriving airline industry, is far more than the net-loss faced by the people who owned the invalidated patents to the airline technology. While airplanes only got more advanced, not less advanced.

This external net-benefit also, I would argue, now applies to computing technology. The potential net benefits of computing technology to wider society and the wider economy, out weigh any loss faced by certain technology companies if we liberate the supply.

If you change the rules to treat all products as commodities, then only commodities will get built.

Is that true? Airplanes are a lot more advanced now than before the second world war, so the situation is a lot more complicated than the "patents-foster-innovation" doctrine would suggest.

If you abandon patents, companies will try to protect their knowledge keeping more trade secrets.

I don't think that is necessarily true for a lot of modern technology, it hasn't been true for a long time. How many computer technologies can you replicate from the patents? Patents are increasingly obfuscated legal boilderplate that do not really help you in engineering. Even if they could, by the time the patent expires the knowledge you gain is obsolete anyhow.

Microsoft has many many patents, but the patents did not help Samba replicate CIFS and so on. Samba had to go to the EU to force Microsoft to produce protocol documentation.

So patents don't help when they are secrets. However, for many computer technologies, there are no secrets. When you have the thing you know how it works.

research and advanced development will simply stall, because there would be no way to extract a decent return on investment from such activities

That is the rhetoric, but again on a practical level, that is not really how R&D works in the 2007 technology industries. In countries or industries where there are no patents, people still innovate.

One of the key aspects of freedom of speech is the freedom to shut the fuck up and not tell you what I don't want to.

Well in America you have the right to remain silent. In Britain you don't:

You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

Microsoft did not have the right to keep it's networking protocols secret.

Note how already today the companies that are the real innovators are often not the ones who are commercially most successful and leading their market.

I agree 100%. However, I would say that in some high-technology area, patents and so on are not really helping but making things worse.

The problem in technology is that you hundreds of ideas to make a high-tech product, and so large companies like Microsoft or IBM cross-licence, canceling each other's patents out. So they can replicate all they want. Microsoft or IBM have huge piles of patent lawyers, so every that moves is pat

Re:I remember a time...

[A nonymous Coward]

Socialism (communism, really) is based on the idea that people are not content with leisure but instead a) have an inner drive to create and b) understand that doing chores because they have to be done is better than doing chores because your boss tells you to.

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 they are more moral and smarter than everybody else and deserve to run things since everyone else is an ignorant amoral schmuck.

Re:I remember a time...

[A nonymous Coward]

I suppose you mean in theory as opposed to practice, just as many remarks on capitalism are confused between theory and practice. However, since all modern and historical governments which have called themselves communists did have central planning, I stand by my definition.

Reminds me of friends who brag about being communists, "but not Stalinists".

Re:I remember a time...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, recently, it seemed pretty obvious to me -- Intel always has good, open video drivers. But, the performance on Intel video cards sucks compared to nVidia or ATI.

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 break your video drivers -- nor do you have to worry about a particular feature (other than HDCP) being unsupported on Linux.

So, it may become difficult if ATI is suddenly completely open at some point in the near future. But right now, it seems pretty obvious -- for video, buy Intel if you don't need performance, and nVidia if you do.

I could do a similar analysis of various other pieces of hardware. It's been hard to choose a hard drive recently, but at least there's no compatibility issue there. But you can usually find out pretty easily what's supported by Linux, and what isn't.

Re:I remember a time...

[jbengt]

The "free market" (can't exist btw, it's just a idealized concept) IS working how it's supposed to.

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...

[symbolic]

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.

Re:I remember a time...

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'm saying is, if you list socialism and communism, you can't ignore what separates them. Otherwise, what's the point of listing both? Socialism and communism aren't synonymous political and economical systems just because people call socialist states "communist" to lure or scare others. If you had just written "communism, like fascism, is based on the idea that central planning works," I would have simply ascribed that to the usual imprecise use of the word communism. By listing both, you insinuate that there is a difference, but then proceed to make a conclusion which negates that very difference.

The topic is difficult enough without thoughtlessly mixing up the vocabulary. As long as people think of the failed and failing socialist states when they talk about communism, they can't really discuss what communism was meant to overcome and what the problems with that are. Everybody likes freedom, right? So we hate commies, right? Well, the people who like the promise of communism are not thinking of it that way. To them communism is the very promise of freedom which they don't have in feudal, capitalist and socialist societies. They think of socialism as a necessary step (put the means of production into the hands of the people) towards communism, which then frees them of the central authority. If you mix up the two, you rob yourself of the chance to discuss the problems which are inherent and unique to the communist model. Without removing the misattributed overshadowing central authority from the model, you can't discuss the motivations and hopes which are nourished by the communist model, and if you can't discuss them, you can't disprove them.

Your friends who are "communists but not stalinists" are entertaining these hopes. If you want to talk about these hopes, know that your friends are not trying to establish another central authority regime. They are not just aiming for "good central authority." You have a much better chance if you start from there and let them try and explain to you how that's supposed to work.

Re:I remember a time...

[c_forq]

The problem is that those big companies don't care. The free market idea assumes that if there is enough need, someone will supply something to fill it.

I hate this "big company" rhetoric. Let me ask you a question, how did these big companies become big companies? If there is enough need it will happen, no matter what the current providers want to happen, due to the creation of new companies and new players. Notice how Intel has now made moves into the graphical arena, and note that their are still graphics companies that could be potential competitors if they thought they could generate profit from the niche market (potential companies include VIA, Transmeta, 3DLabs, Matrox and others).

Re:I remember a time...

[Kristoph]

All politicians think some degree of control over society is required. It's not an idea unique to communism, socialism, or fascism. Also, every successful nation engages in 'central planning' to some degree (ever hear of the ECB and the FED).

In respect to your specific point about 'central planning', one can clearly argue that it does work as:

(a) China has raised the standard of living for 100's of millions of people in a few decades by a percentage much larger than what the west has achieved this century. (Admittedly, China only managed this because of the existence of the free market outside it's borders but it was done through 'central planning' nonetheless.)

(b) US managed to avoid a recession in 1995 and in 2001 by effectively managing its monetary policy.

The problem with broad central planning is that it often serves not society but the politicians and their cadre, either directly through corruption or indirectly in support of their position. So in China where central planning is extensive there is a great deal of corruption. In the EU and US there is less corruption but you'll often find many cases where politicians take action largely to secure their re-election (farm subsidies being a prime example).

]{

Don't buy AMD.

[ni1s]

DRM "functionality" in hardware? No thanks.

The Artiicle is abot GPU's not CPU's

[RotateLeftByte]

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.

Re:AMD haven't released all the specs yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's true. All the documents have to filter through their legal department before publication, and that takes time.

Correction: Don't buy Vista.

[n dot l]

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.

Re:Correction: Don't buy Vista.

[mooothecow]

Hardwired HDCP compliance which is required to get a high definition stream that is standard? Without it, it's illegal to play Blu-ray and HD-DVD? Let's place blame where it's due.

Re:I remember a time...Back in the day.

[BiggerIsBetter]

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. Um, yes they are. Name me ONE 3rd party X-server vendor that supports current ATI graphics products.

Re:I remember a time...Back in the day.

[mangu]

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.

The End Times are Near

[sykopomp]

..it's the only conclusion I can reach. ATi drivers are going to be Linux-friendly, the courts and colleges are actively pushing back against the RIAA and MPAA, both of which are starting to change their business model, and Duke Nukem Forever is actually going to be done at some point.

Hold me, I'm scared.

Re:Worked for me.

[Eddi3]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Nvidia cards are supported just fine under Linux. Just because they aren't supported how you like, doesn't mean they aren't supported. Not that I wouldn't like it if they opened up their specifications, though.

Not capitalism

[atlep]

>The big picture is that runaway Capitalism is where they have gone wrong.

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, it's regulation of competetion through CRM, in many ways the opposite of capitalism (yes, that statement is oversimplified), that is to blame.

Not capitalism

[atlep]

>The big picture is that runaway Capitalism is where they have gone wrong.

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 not capitalism, it's regulation of competetion through DRM, in many ways the opposite of capitalism (yes, that statement is oversimplified), that is to blame.

Specifically...

[Junta]

They are talking about ensuring that in 1 to 2 years time, video acceleration will be architected to be open-source accessible without compromising DRM (if they continue to implement that).

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).

Re:This sounds ridiculous to me

[Fry-kun]

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.

Re:Worked for me.

[chromatic]

Nvidia cards are supported just fine under Linux.

Perhaps that subset of Linux known as x86 has fine support, but the last time I looked, PPC Linux (for example) had no support from NVidia. Synecdoche does not make for accurate engineering.