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Intel Releases Ivy Bridge Programming Docs Under CC License

Posted by timothy on from the buncha-commies dept.

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."

5 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Take that you morons at nVidia! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you won't allow us to write software for your crappy cards, then they'll be no software for your cards. I don't understand why these Microsoft-style closed source morons always think not allowing people to use what they sell will help them. They're letting their paranoia get in the way of good business.

    1. Re:Take that you morons at nVidia! by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They don't need opengl code to release hardware documentation... Given appropriate documentation, people could implement a clean room version of opengl and replace the bits that can't be released. There are already several open source implementations of opengl which could be adapted.

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  2. Good news! by tramp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And a showstopper for those other graphic card makers (AMD/NVIDIA) with their halfbaked support for Linux.

  3. Re:Captain Obvious Here by lobiusmoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And Broadcom too, while we're at it - it's not as if we're asking for the schematics to copy the chips, just some low-level api information would be nice for OSS driver development.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  4. A good start... but Intel graphics still need work by JDG1980 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is a good thing - it means that open-source drivers can now be written that will be adequate for most users. Unless you are doing heavy 3D gaming or HTPC, Intel's products are fine.

    For HTPC, Intel would be a great choice if only they'd finally fix that lingering 23.976 FPS bug. They just don't seem to be taking it that seriously, though, since it's existed since the G45 days at least. Also, I don't know if this is supported through the registers (even the documents may not make it clear) but it would be great to have real YCbCr 4:2:2 output – AMD cards claim to do this, but they are actually converting the data from YCbCr (on DVD/Blu-Ray) to RGB and then back to YCbCr for output. Allowing source-direct YCbCr output (which currently only dedicated SoCs can do) and fixing the 23.976 FPS problems would make Intel-based HTPCs a viable option at the high end. (Advanced videophiles want to use a dedicated scaler device, which offers much better scaling and/or deinterlacing results than what software and average standalone players can do.)