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AMD Open Sources Their Linux Video API

Posted by Roblimo on from the every-little-open-source-bit-helps dept.

An anonymous reader writes "AMD has open sourced X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, their API by which they expose the Universal Video Decoder 2 GPU under Linux." They may be a little late with this move, and not everything you could wish is now open source, but it's better than nothing.

1 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Okaaaaaay... by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ATI drivers for Linux were never perfect, but they worked decently. But ATI/AMD would drop support for older chips that were still in use. The open source community never provided a shim to let these older drivers work with newer builds of X.

    Does open sourcing the drivers really fix the compatibility problem? To me, not building a shim suggests a general lack of caring about ATI drivers. Do we really need the source to give a future to aging ATI/AMD chips?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."