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Intel Releases Ivy Bridge Programming Docs Under CC License
An anonymous reader writes "The Ivy Bridge graphics processor from Intel is now fully documented under the Creative Commons. Intel released four volumes of documents (2400+ pages) covering their latest graphics core as a complete programming guide with register specifications. Included with the graphics documentation is their new execution unit and video engine."
The documentation referenced is available from Intel Linux Graphics: Documentation.
This is a release of a large and very complete set of formal documents, but open source driver code (GPL'd and part of the mainline Linux kernel) has been released under a public development process since just after Sandy Bridge first came out in preparation for the Ivy Bridge launch. This code is written by paid Intel employees.
Incidentally, large portions of the DRM infrastructure in the kernel *and* the X server *and* the upcoming Wayland project are all being made by paid Intel employees. Note that this development work also has major benefits to the open-source AMD driver development and we would all be better off if AMD (not to mention Nvidia) adopted Intel's approach to paying people for open-source work.
In a similar manner, there is already 100% GPL'd code that is available for the next-generation Haswell graphics engines. Obviously at this stage it isn't complete, but things are not hidden behind closed doors and, just like Ivy Bridge, there should be solid launch-day support for the Haswell IGP. Considering the rumours going around about the extra resources that Haswell will offer for the GPU, this could chip could provide very solid launch-day out-of-the-box graphics support in notebooks and other devices that don't require a dicrete GPU.
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