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AMD Overhauls Open-Source Linux Driver

Posted by Soulskill on from the added-support-for-individual-tree-leaf-motion-and-rump-physics dept.

An anonymous reader writes "AMD's open-source developer has posted an incredible set of 165 patches against the Linux kernel that provide support for a few major features to their Linux graphics driver. Namely, the open-source Radeon Linux driver now supports dynamic power management on hardware going back to the Radeon HD 2000 (R600) generation. The inability to re-clock the GPU frequencies and voltages dynamically based upon load has been a major limiting factor for open-source AMD users where laptops have been warm and there is diminished battery power. The patches also provide basic support for the AMD Radeon HD 8000 'Sea Islands' graphics processors on their open-source Linux driver."

7 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Yay AMD by Noishe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a great step in the right direction. Hopefully it's not the last step.

  2. Good guys AMD by Reliable+Windmill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm excited about getting the upcoming Kaveri. APUs are the way to go unless you have needs that call for huge CPU or GPU power, and I think AMD is definitely leading the innovation here. It's a nice bonus if I will be able to run Linux with good graphics acceleration as well.

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  3. Still not Stallman-approved. by snarfies · · Score: 5, Informative

    Per http://stallman.org/to-4chan.html:

    "Regarding graphics accelerators for PCs, ATI mostly cooperates with the free software movement, while nVidia is totally hostile. ATI has released free drivers.

    However, the ATI drivers use nonfree microcode blobs, whereas most of nVidia's products (excepting the most recent ones) work ok with Nouveau, which is entirely free and has no blobs.

    Thus, paradoxically, if you want to be free you need to get a not-very-recent nVidia accelerator.

    I wish ATI would free this microcode, or put it in ROM, so that we could endorse its products and stop preferring the products of a company that is no friend of ours."

    This sort of thing gets discussed quite a bit on 4chan's technolo/g/y board. Also, installing Gentoo.

    1. Re:Still not Stallman-approved. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Blobs are definitely not ideal; but I've never really understood the distinction between people who put them in ROM and people who require them to be loaded at initialization time(as long as they aren't assholes about redistribution: if Distro X is legally unable to distribute firmware.bin and I have to go to your site, download the Windows driver, and then chop it open to get firmware.bin, just to get an unaltered copy of your firmware to run with your device, I'm going to be pissed).

      Both approaches involve exactly the same binary firmware blob, one just stores it on comparatively expensive, board-space-consuming, flash ROM and one stores it on system mass storage.

      Firmware that is open is better than either; but closed firmware that is handled behind the curtain on the card seems no better than closed firmware that is supplied to the card during startup(again, assuming proper redistribution terms and proper driver support for that aspect of initializing the device).

    2. Re:Still not Stallman-approved. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't understand why simply putting the closed source firmware on the card suddenly makes it ok for free software. Same code, just different home.

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      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  4. Most likely pulled from your butt. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    NVidia tried that and made the mistake of saying who the IP that was the roadblock was: Sun. Sun Microsystems said "There is nothing that they have of ours that we would refuse to have open sourced". NVidia's response was to clam up and let the fanbois repeat the claim for ever more.

  5. AMD Financials Summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    $2B in debt, $1B cash, lost $600M last year, sales dropped 30% last year. They have no assets (spun off their manufacturing facilities). If the next gen consoles do not sell well because of casual / tablet gaming and potential Apple TV games, AMD will be bankrupt in one year and shuttering in two. Spending money on open source drivers is a long term investment - it's not going to get them an additional $600M in revenue next year (>2M additional graphics cards or >5M systemic wins) when PC sales are on the decline.