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AMD Releases Open Source Fusion Driver

Posted by kdawson on from the knock-yourselves-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday AMD released open source Linux driver support for their Fusion APUs, primarily for the first Ontario processor. As detailed on Phoronix, this includes support for kernel mode-setting, 2D acceleration, and 3D acceleration via both Mesa and Gallium3D graphics drivers."

13 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. When AMD turns to 28nm production... by IYagami · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Any chance Apple could use that for the next versions of Mac mini and MacBooks? Or is a Core 2 Duo with nVidia 320M still better than Fusion?

    ... according to Fudzilla.com

    http://www.fudzilla.com/notebooks/item/20888-amd-apple-deal-is-28nm-notebooks

    "Fusion goes Apple 28 / 32nm
    It all started here, when AMD’s Senior VP and Chief Sales Officer Emilio Ghilardi was brave enough to show an image of several Apple products in a Fusion presentation. After we wrote our part AMD was quick to deny it, perhaps a bit too quick, which gave us a reason to dig some more, only to find that we were on the right track.

    We asked around and some sources close to Intel / Nvidia have denied the rumour saying that they know nothing about it. However, just a day later we managed to confirm that the leak is real and that Apple will indeed use Fusion, here.

    Our industry sources have indicated that the deal will be announced in at some point 2011, that it will involve 28nm and 32nm Fusion parts particularly Krishna and that Apple plans to launch notebooks based on AMD chips. Apple is also not cold hearted on Trinity 32nm Fusion parts.

    The announcement can be as far as a year away, as 28nm parts won't materialise until the second half of 2011 and since AMD doesn’t have a tablet chip, it won’t happen in iPad segment. At this point Apple doesn’t plan to use any AMD chips in desktop or server parts, but in case Bulldozer impresses us all, maybe Steve might change his mind.

    So if you like Apple and love AMD, start saving money as roughly a year from now you should be able to buy Apple notebook with Fusion Krishna / Trinity class APU."

    And if you want Fusion benchmarks, check the usual suspects:
    http://techreport.com/articles.x/19981
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/4023/the-brazos-performance-preview-amd-e350-benchmarked

    1. Re:When AMD turns to 28nm production... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One of the complaints I've had about Apple was that they don't have any products at all that use AMD chips. Not really a deal breaker, but I prefer AMD because for as long as I can recall they've had the best performance for the price. Sure Intel is almost always faster, but just about anybody can if their not worried about price.

    2. Re:When AMD turns to 28nm production... by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 4, Funny

      And you think Apple customers are that worried about price?

    3. Re:When AMD turns to 28nm production... by C_Kode · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And you think Apple customers are that worried about price?

      Apple customers are going to pay a premium no matter what. It's Apple that wants the discount. The less Apple pays for the hardware, the larger the margin they get with each product. Apple's customers aren't going to see any discount, even if Apple's discount is $100 per processor to move to AMD.

      Apple has $50B in the cash. Considering what they sell, that's an absurd amount of money. Enough to buy Sony outright. It just goes to show you the enormous margins that consumers pay for Apple products. It's like Sun / Oracle / Cisco in the 90s except these are consumers that are paying the outrageous margins rather than large money-fat corporations.

  2. Time to move away from NVidia now? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Long ago, I went with ATI video because it had the best support for Linux. Eventually, NVidia caught on to this trend and started supporting Linux too... and better than ATI. So I switched. Now NVidia has screwed the community that had helped it to grow in popularity by putting out "Optimus" hybrid graphics everywhere and then refusing to update their Linux drivers to support it and refusing to release any details about it either. So now, the best anyone had been able to do is disable the nvidia GPU to reduce power consumption in laptops not able to utilize the nvidia hardware.

    As AMD/ATI is doing this, perhaps my next selection will be to the exclusion of NVidia (again).

    When will these jerks ever learn? The future of computing is in embedded devices and those devices will run Linux. Get Linux developers using YOUR hardware and it will have a better shot at a prosperous future as well. So far, Intel and ATI are the only options.

    1. Re:Time to move away from NVidia now? by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      nVidia is the last man standing in a sense. Both Intel and ATI (Obviously now owned by AMD) have released or are releasing pretty much everything necessary to have native drivers for whatever OS one wants to use. At some point they'll likely give up on that as more and more geeks decide that they don't want to recommend something that's limited like that.

      Not so much with cutting edge gaming rigs, but with older computers especially it's fairly common for video cards to outlive their manufacturer support and still contain a few bugs or optimization problems.

    2. Re:Time to move away from NVidia now? by RotateLeftByte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      NVidia had their opportunity but since AMD got their ATI dept's act together their GPU performance and importantly their Linux support has come on in leaps & bounds.
      With NVidia being squeezed out of the chipset market by AMD & Intel and even the consumer Graphics card able to play most FPS games at more than adequate frame rates, I see (sadly) NVidia slowly but surely going the way of Novel's Netware. i.e. to an inevitable death.
      They really need to buy an ARM user and get their GPU's into mobile devices, provided they can make them sip power instead of gulp it like a 6ltr Dodge Charger

      --
      I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
    3. Re:Time to move away from NVidia now? by diegocg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Time? You are late. ATI has been releasing specs and employing engineers to write opensource drivers for some time already. I haven't bought a Nvidia GPU for years, and I have no plans to do it in the future.

    4. Re:Time to move away from NVidia now? by ArcherB · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They really need to buy an ARM user and get their GPU's into mobile devices, provided they can make them sip power instead of gulp it like a 6ltr Dodge Charger

      Doesn't NVidia make the Tegra/Tegra2 processors for mobile devices?

      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
  3. Ontario Processor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I went to buy an Ontario processor, but cheaped out -- I ended up with a Quebec processor. Now, I can't understand a thing it says, it never seems to do anything, and I keep having to give it money!

  4. Re:Fusion by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 4, Informative

    huh?

    Double huh?

    It's rare to read someone post something both factually and subjectively wrong at the same time in so few words. Congratulations.

  5. Re:Price of Android pod touch by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's the same argument fanboys always use to call Apple products cheaper. Hand pick your specific criteria the must be included (app store) and excluded (and actual phone . . .) until you get just the right oddball combination of features that you can call it cheaper.

    Meanwhile, when you compare the iPod Touch to other touch-screen media players, it's pricing is atrocious, and Apple's laptops, desktops, and servers all fair equally poorly against their general competitors.

    As a matter of fact the only segment in which Apple competes well on price is with iPhone. It's about the same as other similar smartphones. Other than that though? You're definitely paying your turtleneck-tax.

    --
    "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
  6. Re:Cool by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've not got a 5850, but a close ATI card. I found that the drivers ubuntu installed were unstable and quite awkward in multi-monitor configurations, but the ones that I got straight from the ATI site worked very nicely. They are the same basic software, right down to the control panel layout, but the ones on the site are a few revisions further along and it shows. At least in the multi-monitor area.