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AMD Publishes Open-Source "ATI Evergreen" Driver

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the still-watching-and-waiting dept.

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."

13 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. So what does it do? by Darkness404 · · 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.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    1. Re:So what does it do? by Jurily · · 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.

    2. Re:So what does it do? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, 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.

    3. Re:So what does it do? by zyklone · · Score: 4, 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.

    4. Re:So what does it do? by Draek · · Score: 4, 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 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.

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
    5. Re:So what does it do? by WeatherGod · · 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.

    6. Re:So what does it do? by ppanon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your post is either erroneous or misleading - ATI has closed source Catalyst drivers 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.

      --
      Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
    7. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      Every GPU that doesn't have a WDDM driver uses a 2000/XP driver. This includes chipsets like the GMA 900 (famous for not having Aero support).

  2. Re:Baby Steps by goldaryn · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well what IS the driver going to do, then?

    Run Nethack at 120fps?

  3. Nightmare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is some amount of ridiculousness here - perhaps I don't understand something but explain to me if you will, how this works - Every time a new GPU is released, a shit load of new driver code is required to just get it working. And then there a a truck load more of code required to get 2D acceleration working. And then the same for 3D. 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. The you write a per GPU, dynamically loadable module that will deal with that particular family of GPU. I mean there is not a whole lot you can do with modesetting and 2D - no one cares of 2D accel anymore - it should just work the same way with same driver code for all series of GPUs for a particular vendor. NVidia has to drop support for older chips, fork the driver and have it only support newer chips because of bloat that it becomes having to support different families of GPUs each requiring lots of code.

    1. Re:Nightmare by MostAwesomeDude · · 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.

      --
      ~ C.
  4. Re:Baby Steps by MrHanky · · Score: 4, 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.

  5. Re:Name Says It All by Daffy+Duck · · 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!