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AMD Brings 3D GPU Documentation Up To Date
jones_supa writes "Things are starting to look even better for the status of open specifications for AMD Radeon HD hardware. AMD's Alex Deucher announced via his personal blog that programming guides and register specifications on the 3D engines for the Evergreen, Northern Islands, Southern Islands, and Sea Islands GPUs are now in the NDA-free public domain. These parts represent the 3D engines on the Radeon HD 5000 through Radeon HD 8000 series graphics processors."
Valve seems to have stirred things up a bit. I know some of this was in the works before, but the timing is nice.
Better late than never, eh. This really needs to be standard practice across the industry.
Why is the X logo by the story? This has nothing (directly) to do with X. Just because they opened their documentation doesn't mean X is the main focus...
-SaNo
Try and compete with this and open up all your specs too.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Now, with 3D to add to video acceleration and fully documented power management, ADM APUs are even more the chipset of choice for netbooks and light laptops. In terms of value for money they were already hard to beat.
AMD and ATI have had three or four significant 'glory days' in the past, but have been famous for never being able to capitalise on their success long in the face of Intel and Nvidia. However, since the merger of AMD and ATI, AMD has been slowly but surely moving towards a position of hardware perfection in the mains-powered x86 marketplace.
The Xbox One has a superior 2012 PC design, and the PS4 has a stunning late 2014 PC design (Sony paid AMD for access to its Kaveri II architecture, and AMD hasn't even launched the Kaveri I in the market yet).
AMD is the ONLY company that can provide complete, state-of-the-art solutions in the PC space at all price points. AMD's GCN graphics architecture is in the next-gen consoles (which will be a massive base of programming for the next EIGHT years), and all future x86 APU and SoC parts for se in standard PC designs. GCN is gaining a low-level driver/API (Mantle) that makes it the next x86 ISA/C/C++ like programming environment for high performance computing tasks. (PS I know Mantle is programmed via C++. The point of the comparison is to describe where programmers 'go' when they need high performance. Mantle isn't a programming language as such, but you will go to Mantle for the same reason programmers once went to assembler or C.)
AMD is even going to produce ARM parts with GCN, conquering the emerging mains-powered ARM market from 2014 onwards.
My point is that AMD now feels the future so confidently, it no longer has a problem with making open its hardware documentation. The Intel tax, and Intel's lack of acceptable GPU hardware makes Intel a non-player outside prehistoric PC designs. Nvidia's lack of x86 CPU cores, and their complete failure to get even close to having the most important GPU in the current ARM space makes Nvidia a non-player as well.
We are now in the age of single chip computing (which, of course, does NOT mean only one IC in your computer). This especially impacts desktop Linux/Android computers, which traditionally have been built from a mess of discounted PC parts, making them far more complicated to maintain than is logical or sensible. Linux computing needs a "it just works" paradigm for the hardware so it can properly take off for the first time. Linux 'wars' over hardware drivers, and whether they are open-source, is a cancer to the success of Linux. Computers should be about the use of the computer, not moronic 'politics' over issues 99.999% of users have no reason to care about.
Now AMD can bring the same SoC thinking to desktop PCs that has revolutionised the tablet market (via ARM SoC parts), we can move on to the next phase of computing, and make Intel and Microsoft a distant memory. AMD's GCN ISA is a beautiful 'start-over' moment, much like when IBM adopted the (then god-awful) x86 ISA for its PCs. If the market is sensible, it will pressure AMD to allow Nvidia to become a second source for GCN compatible GPU designs (and it looks increasing likely this will happen when Intel uses Nvidia to design its integrated graphics in their 2015+ parts, probably leading to a merger of the two companies).
Traditional PC hardware companies are in a race against time. If they don't get their act together, the 'race to the bottom' seen in the ARM market will lead to traditional PCs being replaced with ultra-cheap 'good enough' ARM based ones (using hardware from anyone BUT Intel/Nvidia/AMD). If this happens, AAA gaming will become the domain of the consoles only, and AMD/Nvidia would be left with the GPGPU markets alone (and how did that work out for Sun, SGI et al).
AMD is the last great hope for the evolution of the traditional PC. Intel has purposely created the stagnation of the PC architecture for more than a decade now, so it can sell people insanely expensive CPU chips with fractional improvements generation-by-generation. If AMD's x86/GCN APU chips don't sell (in the Linux/Windows space), then ARM will win here as well.
And last time something was attributed by nVidia, the putative owner said explicitly: there is nothing that nVidia has from us that we refuse disclosure on on the subject.
Ever since then, only nVidia fanbois have repeated this lie.
Irrelevant. We're not asking for their driver code, we're asking for documentation on the hardware that we buy from them, so that we can write our own driver code.
Specs and code are two different things, no? Do you think they have no legal right to release API's that talk to code running on their cards? Nobody's talking about writing open source firmware for the cards - that's not OS-specific. Or am I missing something?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Late last-night a flash of insight grew out of the understanding of Mantle. Ultimately, long term, x86 and GPU instruction sets will merge. The problem is that once the instruction set has merged, the architecture is locked preventing subsequent drastic innovation. With mantle, there is a software "driver" that decouples the specific instruction/chip architecture from the software that utilizes it allowing massive subsequent innovation without disrupting the applications that depend upon specific instructions.
Brilliant.
thank you Alex Deucher. you do amd and the community a great service. hopefully amd will continue to scrub the sleep from it's eyes regarding linux and it's own future. keep up the good work.
Gee, so you mean, hardware companies can just focus on making better hardware and actually give us the information we need to make the most out of the hardware they sell us rather than holding the documentation for ransom? RMS can finally stop rolling in his grave!
Seriously, stop. If you're "not dead yet", that's just weird, man.
The drivers from AMD and NVIDIA are both dependent on non-free code so if your goal is a perfect video driver it is far from it and this clashes with the free software development models Linux/GNU are based on. It's preventing the OS from thriving amongst the masses. Even if you as a technical user can figure out how to and have no problem with manually upgrading the driver on every release and dealing with the headaches it presents most users don't want to deal with it. And specifically it is a headache to install and maintain the non-free drivers. But it goes beyond that in there is no indefinite support. It ends when these companies no longer feel like supporting it. That is unacceptable. I'm a technical user and still on Ubuntu 12.04. It's not because I dislike 13.04, it's purely because my time is more valuable and I just don't have the time to deal with this upgrade non-sense, let alone add additional proprietary drivers (and figure out other related issues afterward), and I do support for a living (sort of, higher up on the food chain, but a techy, none-the-less).
Just made my Day.
With open access to GPU's, nothing can stop the Linux Desktop from taking over Microsoft's dominance.
After all, it is the largest installed application base/use of Microsoft Windows.
When Microsoft goes the way of the DoDo, infrastructure will have NO CHOICE but to open up.
Open Standards, Security and Reliability I predict will go through a renaissance, as infrastructure guys like me are required to vette software all the way down to the source code level.
We can't do that today, and it is causing all sorts of problems trying to protect the security and reliability of the systems we design for delivery to customers.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.