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AMD Closes OSRC, Lays Off Several Linux Kernel Developers
From the H reporting on LinuxCon Europe comes news that several Linux kernel developers have been laid off by AMD as part of its workforce reduction. From the article: "OSRC staff primarily worked to develop the Linux support for AMD's server processors, but they also wrote code and extensions for related desktop and notebook CPUs – for example, they looked after the code to support CPU frequency scaling for the PowerNow and Turbo Core technologies. While working on the kernel's IOMMU and KVM support, one of AMD's former employees contributed to the development of the "IOMMU groups" feature that was integrated into Linux 3.6; this feature provides the basis for a new Linux 3.6 technology that allows a host's PCIe devices to be passed through to virtual machines and can also be used with Intel CPUs."
Looks like the group was doing interesting research on hypervisors, lockless data structures, and multi-core synchronization primitives among other things. The Open Source Radeon driver developers are not affected by this at least.
The AMD/ATI linux drivers suck, they are laying off their kernel folks, and no indication they have any plans to change. I hope they survive, but convincing me not to buy your products is not going to help.
The server market, usually Linux-based, appears to be AMD's most stable market. Opterons are very often preferred over Xeons for a variety of reasons. So why exactly would AMD start axing developers in areas related to that? If anything, it'd make more sense to throttle down consumer processors and focus on graphics and server processors, no?
Wish they'd start at the top... just look for the fuckers preparing their golden parachutes and sack them before they can deploy.
AMD is betting the farm on ARM-64. If it fails to take off in the server world, there won't be anything left of the company. Too many cuts and too deep. The worst part of that is that not only would we lose competition in the x86 space, but graphics competition at the high end would also be gone (unless Intel starts working miracles).
Cue the shills to tell us why preferring open source Linux drivers is bad and we should all be happy to run binary blobs on our systems.
This has nothing to do with graphics drivers at all, those were completely unaffected. It might impact implementation of some new server features on Linux, but it is strictly about CPU and related features, not APU or GPU stuff.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
I realize that. I only meant they were already crap, so this was basically their only way of making those products less attractive to me.
Because the actual article does not state that the Radeon driver developers are unaffected....
AMD is betting the farm on ARM-64. If it fails to take off in the server world, there won't be anything left of the company. Too many cuts and too deep. The worst part of that is that not only would we lose competition in the x86 space, but graphics competition at the high end would also be gone (unless Intel starts working miracles).
Is there a good reason Intel doesn't get more serious about graphics hardware? With the fabs and expertise and funding they've got I am convinced they could do it if they wanted to. Why wouldn't they as a company want to expand into this market? Wouldn't it be a way to diversify?
And I mean, the drivers on Linux for intel graphics Just Plain Work. Even more hassle-free than nVidia's linux drivers which are quite good, just of course not bundled with the kernel like almost every other driver.
And no Nouveau sounded nice but just isn't there yet, not if you actually need the performance, tho I sure hope that changes. Some major distros bundling Nouveau as a default driver is just a repeat of the same mistake they made with installing Pulseaudio by default. ESPECIALLY distros aimed at newbies like Ubuntu, hey here's a free tip, newbies aren't so good at isolating and fixing the kinds of problems that causes, they just go back to Windows because Linux "didn't work so good".
And really I hate pulseaudio. If i wanted to play sound over a network I'd share the files via nfs or samba on a local network. Superior in every way. Then I have something generic that can share video, documents, anything. It's *nix man, everything is a file, local or not. And per-app volume adjustment is needless complexity and more stuff to waste time tweaking for no real gain. But I digress.
:~(
I only care about linux support.
I suspect Intel doesn't want to give any more help to GPU processing efforts which are making inroads at obsoleting their main CPU line for large workloads.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
More to the point, they have no need to produce better graphics. People who play more than casual games buy a discrete GPU, so they only need to support desktop displays and basic games; about a third of the die in my i7 system is wasted on an IGP I don't use, and I really don't want that situation to become worse in future.
Time to look at alternatives...
I wish I knew this before buying a quad core A6 laptop, their graphics card driver is abysmal compared to nVidia, which is increasing the performance of their drivers even more.
AMD is doing a very risky bet, the ARM64 has not been well tested in real server workloads, it may as well flop and take the company with it, their opteron line was excellent for virtualization thanks to the many cores, hardware virtualization support and a good performance/price point this new ARM64 has only the low power utilization and low heat as main selling point.
C-x C-c
Trust me, even if AMD goes under the company will be bought by someone else to salvage the Radeon GPU business. That's basically whats keeping AMD afloat right now, and it it might not be enough, but someone can profit from it.
i have been having a pulse audio problem on my linux box any suggestions for a replacement just use alsa or anything else?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Well, I get I know from whom my next video card will be purchased. Thanks ATI, for making the decision easier.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot
They haven't been serious about the graphics market since before the millenium. I didn't know they'd ever reached market, but intel's successor to the i740 (752/754, basically the i810/815 in dedicated card form.) was canned for being too slow after only one hardware generation, and relegated to life support status basically until the 965 chipsets came out (The X3000 series GPUs, which were a complete rearchitecting. Everything from i810 to i915/45 were basically iterative designs with few real increases in feature capabilities. As evidenced by the number of games that were incapable of running on them, before even factoring in usable gaming performance.)
Larrabee just proved they don't have the technical assets to produce a competitive graphics chip design even though they're 2 process techs ahead of everyone else.
If that wasn't proof, their utilization of SGX graphics processors for the low end ATOM chips in preference to GMA designs should've cemented that fact for anyone watching.
Honestly though, if AMD dies, I think we're going to see the desktop as we know it die with them. Once intel has no competition in the desktop space they'll be able to cut down their feature offerings (since it'll be take it or leave it) and unless somebody comes out with an ARM, Power, or MIPS (Or even just a generic socket/firmware design allowing a mix of processors) PC-style system at competitive pricing, the available motherboard designs and thus expansion card opportunities will continue to dwindle until your only options are keep it as it is or purchase a predesigned upgrade.
I'm not really looking forward to either option, but maybe we'll get lucky and the vacuum left by AMD's departure will stimulate renewed competition in the 'low end' PC landscape and provide us with new and varied desktop platforms of every shape, color, and architecture.
Most Corporations is investing in their own Operating System(s) for the device(s) that they are making. They want to be like Apple, controlling their own HardWare & Operating System(s). I have been using Unix since 1994 and Linux since 1995. Due to my conditon, I no longer teach Unix and C++. But, I still use the latest version(s) of Linux &GUI(Graphic User Interface). Gnome 3.4 was way too limited for me. I prefer KDE with extra features, functionality, & multitasking. AMD needs to make sure that they have talented Linux programmers for the CPU & GPU products. Gnome, KDE, & Mozilla is adding smart phones & tablets to their HardWare list. When I invest in a Graphic Cards, I try to research the new and old drivers available for the Graphc Cards either proprietary or open source. I don't mind installing closed proprietary drivers as long as it is stable and includes all the functions and features of the Hardware, Graphic Cards.
With Linux growing globally, I don't know why HardWare companies would want to limit themself. I am saving monies to purchase the 4th generation of Bulldozer and an ARM Computer.
, there won't be anything left of the company.
There's nothing left of the company now, and what is left has the vultures, notably qualcomm, feasting on its remains. The main potentially profitable enterprise from the old AMD was globalfoundries, and that's a separate company now.
AMD is basically just a chip design firm now, they sold their ARM business to qualcomm a couple of years ago (the snapdragon and adreno products), and they are going to struggle to catch back up to the big ARM guys at this point, and the GPU products business will probably be absorbed by someone.
Well if you look at who is at the industrial park at the 407 and Leslie (where ATI HQ is in Markham, just outside Toronto), qualcomm seems to have setup shop, and has a conspicuously large number of job openings for graphics people...
I agree that IGP can be a waste, but why should Intel limit themselves to integrated graphics? AMD seems to have done fine with both discrete and integrated GPUs.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I don't even want to consider how many patents are involved in GPUs these days. Hardware AND Software have probably got to be in the 10s of thousands. If they started to get uppity and make something very good, they'd be blow out of the water in the courts because they couldn't possibly have gotten better without deliberately copying our patents...
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
i have been having a pulse audio problem on my linux box any suggestions for a replacement just use alsa or anything else?
I personally just use ALSA for everything.
I use Gentoo so this system has never had PulseAudio installed (the way Gentoo works, I would only get Pulse by putting it there myself, which I won't).
Ubuntu and most major distributions have wiki pages concerning PulseAudio and how to remove it. Most of the time it's as simple as running a command or two involving your package manager. Binary distros tend to build programs with all features enabled and they simply won't use functionality you don't actually have (for example mplayer on stock Debian complains about not finding LIRC support when run in a terminal but this won't stop playback).
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I was convinced a couple years ago that AMD/ATI had no intentions of actually supporting open source despite their repeated promises to do so. This is the nail in their coffin. Two years ago I decided to start buying Intel despite the fact that I was against them up until that time. I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome as my system works and the issues I have with Intel graphics aren't nearly as bad as what I had with ATI over the years.
They've done this before. When Intel went Itanium, AMD went x86_64. AMD won big, and AMD lived to see another day.
AMD has realized that it's slowly losing to Intel, and catching up would take resources that they don't have. Making the switch to ARM allows them to compete in power usage, but without having to develop the tech to compete with Intel (sub-32 nanometer production, intelligent scaling, etc).
Linux already runs on ARM, so they can keep their server market. Since servers are often IO bound, not CPU bound, this sounds like a great nitch that AMD can take over. With ARM getting more popular, AMD can have a presence in the laptop/tablet/netbook markets.
Servers are often IO bound, not CPU bound, so ARM makes sense. Expand the max memory it can use and it's just as good as an x86_64 database/file server.
in other words, you had nothing new to add.
your 2 cents has already been priced in.
about 5 years ago. bugger off.
How does one go about laying off a hobbyist?
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
That was a point I made to a co-worker. If there's anyone that would be interested in swooping down and grabbing the GPU division, it'd be Qualcomm. They bought AMD's mobile GPU IP for Adreno, no reason for them not to add another feather to their cap and restore the ATi name for a discrete graphics brand, while having all the same knowledge to enhance their mobile GPUs even further.
I just hope that if it happens, Qualcomm doesn't drop all non-Android Linux support.
I trusted AMD since K6-2, was very dissapointed because of the ATI driver support on Linux, changed to Nvidia... they suck more, now if I have change in the future, if I have to change to Intel's going to be like a pain in the ass... what the heck are they doing? I remember the Athlon days... they were superb, X64 for consumers before Intel's one's... it was a great company. Nowadays I trully don't know what are they doing.
Is there a good reason Intel doesn't get more serious about graphics hardware?
Well, I'd say that the biggest reason they wouldn't is because then they'd have a problem "explaining" why they use up your CPU die for an IGP. Intel wants your GPU to be something that comes with your CPU, because that's obviously a huge advantage for Intel. That's why they've made real effort to improve Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell promises to take this even further. Reportedly their fastest IGP configuration GT3 is supposed to have 40 EUs compared to 16 in IVB, obviously it's unreleased yet but Intel claims to achieve same FPS on Skyrim at 1920x1080 on high quality as the HD4000 did at 1368x768 on medium quality. They're looking to win over the mass market laptops, the high end graphics cards are increasingly a niche for FPS gamers. There's a lot of WoW addicts that don't need anywhere near a GTX 680 to get their kicks.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I just hope that if it happens, Qualcomm doesn't drop all non-Android Linux support.
hard to say, Qualcomm doesn't seem even remotely interested in the desktop market, but that's what acquisitions are for.
Honest question, how do you get multiple apps doing sound without pulseaudio?
Im pretty hardcore linux user, and I dont know a better option then pulse audio, and it does not crashes on me, it is a little PITA on first install, but after that it works great for me, maybe I am lucky? ( currently using it on a dell laptop, asus lapto, and amd desktop)
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
It's profit margin, stupid. :P
Looks like the group was doing interesting research on hypervisors, lockless data structures, and multi-core synchronization primitives among other things.
Lovely. The most interesting tech in the summary, and what is most of the discussion about? Drivers sucking, and who get's to pick over the carcass.
You have always been able to get multiple apps doing sound. You've just not been able to individually control the sound levels before. OSSv4 allows you to do this too.
The AMD/ATI linux drivers suck, they are laying off their kernel folks, and no indication they have any plans to change. I hope they survive, but convincing me not to buy your products is not going to help.
AMD is the only choice in my mind. Intel is big and evil monopolist who hates consumers , and Nvidia hates Linux and OpenSource.
AMD is the only alternative to these goons in the PC market.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You're not lucky. I haven't had any issues with PulseAudio since about Fedora 11. Obviously distro support will be different, and Fedora is intentionally bleeding edge, but that was 3 years ago that a mainline distro had PulseAudio just work.
AMD "loves" Linux and open source but won't do anything for it. Hey fanboy, AMD drivers still suck today many yeas after they started "loving" open source. AMD gives you a crash happy blob with less features than its competitors (and less features than its Windows version) -OR- open drives which are stable, rock solid, but devoid of features. You can either crash with AMD or you can turn your discrete graphics card (you payed extra $$ for it) into something competitive with the low cost on-board solutions.
Meanwhile the hateful NVIDIA Doubles Linux Driver Performance. Aside from a philosophical argument against closed source software, there's basically nothing wrong with the drivers from NVIDIA. Queue FUD about NVIDIA or the Linux kernel pulling the plug on it all.
They're okay with that. They ran the numbers and found that the sells to freetards like yourself don't pay the salaries and overhead of their linux development department.
It's business. I know it's foreign and not well-understood by the freetard, but this post will hopefully serve as a first step.
Well, here's a quick rundown:
1. Google for the website with two ships with black sails on it. Sometimes they put some dumb photo up to imply they're repressed, but it's just mental masturbation.
2. Search for Windows 7 Ultimate and download ISO.
3. Burn ISO and insert into drive and reboot.
4. During Windows setup, click the advanced setup. Be sure to delete the partition containing linux.
5. Proceed with your Windows installation.
6. Your audio should be functioning now. Downloading updated drivers is optional, but not necessary. If you do decide to download the drivers, just click Next through the installer. I assure you that you won't have to spend 50 hours reading wikis and forums and fucking around with config files.
Interesting that neither my 4870 or 7770 has ever give me crashes in Linux (or Windows). As for doubling their performance they only did so due to a brand new incentive , namely steam and the best ever opportunity for a gaming market in Linux. With that in mind I expect major improvements in AMD's performance to follow as well. Of course for some people in linux nvidia is a sacred cow for reasons that maybe applied some years ago but most certainly don't today.
It sounds as though this research could be tuked away for commercial release, perhaps embedded hardware would take the place of server pc's with this research. I hope the developers would continue to further development and I wonder what a non-compete contract with the developers would take precedence over gpl code development?
Competition in terms of price? Possibly. But competition to push the envelope in terms of performance? I thought game makers pushed hardware makers to innovate?
I love that rearrangement of their corporate names...
For real, that is totally not my experience, just one app will work, any other simultaneous app trying to send sound would lose the ability to until the working one is killed and sometimes a restart of both apps is required
This must be related to sound card model I guess, but I have never been able to do multiple apps with plain OSS or ALSA
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
et least the boys know now what end wherefore (witch kind of processor) they are developing