AMD Brings 3D GPU Documentation Up To Date

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AMD Brings 3D GPU Documentation Up To Date

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday October 2, 2013 @03:16AM from the go-forth-and-hack dept.

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."

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Steam by Nerdfest · 2013-10-02 03:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

Valve seems to have stirred things up a bit. I know some of this was in the works before, but the timing is nice.
1. Re:Steam by Dega704 · 2013-10-02 04:29 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed. Are Nvidia and AMD now trying to 1up each other with their Linux drivers? That would be great news for us users.
2. Re:Steam by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-02 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  No, just AMD.
  Nvidia has marginally better hardware, but AMD's is far better than "just good enough" anyway, so the real issue with AMD is their piece of crap (which IS getting better, but it is still shit) Catalyst driver. However, AMD is working at getting rid of Catalyst in a way that is not going to hurt their bottom line any.
  We shall see. It is better for everybody if AMD has a huge success now, we need it strong to counter both Intel and nVidia.
That the complete set? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-02 03:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Better late than never, eh. This really needs to be standard practice across the industry.
1. Re:That the complete set? by unixisc · 2013-10-02 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  Northern Islands & Southern Islands would refer to New Zealand, not Hawaii.
X logo? by sanosuke001 · 2013-10-02 03:28 · Score: 1

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...

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-SaNo
1. Re:X logo? by TheRealMindChild · 2013-10-02 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  No one cares about an open video driver on Windows
  
  --
  
  "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
2. Re:X logo? by LoRdTAW · 2013-10-02 03:46 · Score: 1
  
  Yea! There should be a Mir or Wayland logo up there instead.
  Though I do agree with your sentiment, X drivers for Linux and BSD are the primary audience. Sure it could help ReactOS, Illumos and Haiku developers but Linux is the main focus and BSD probably second. Windows and MacOS don't need open drivers, they are closed systems (okay OSX is somewhat open) using closed drivers.
3. Re:X logo? by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-10-02 03:57 · Score: 1
  
  Windows and MacOS don't need open drivers, they are closed systems (okay OSX is somewhat open) using closed drivers.
  And a lot of linux users run the binary blob drivers from AMD and nVidia too.
  I wonder ... since X has insecure keyhandling anyway, could the binary video drivers be Bull-Run'ed? The timing is awfully coincidental.
  
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4. Re:X logo? by UnknowingFool · 2013-10-02 04:12 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Then you haven't been paying attention. There are three majors players: Intel, NVidia, and AMD.
  NVidia has great proprietary Linux drivers but their documentation has been lacking. Open source developers do what they can with nouveau but without the full documentation, they are guessing in places. NVidia is working to make more documentation available.
  AMD has better documentation but their Linux drivers have not been as good as NVidia.
  Then there is Intel who has good documentation and drivers. The problem is their video cards are not as good as NVidia or AMD. If you need a basic video card with average multimedia capabilities like h264 support, Intel is good. If you want to play games with Steam, the experience might be lacking.
  
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5. Re:X logo? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-02 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  Non-sequitur much? What does any of that have to do with trusting open source development for low level drivers?
6. Re:X logo? by Just+Brew+It! · 2013-10-02 06:07 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The main reason Open Source video drivers for newer nVidia and AMD GPUs have had such a checkered history is precisely the lack of public hardware specs. The driver teams have been forced to reverse-engineer some of the hardware features to develop the drivers, which is far from ideal.
  Open Source drivers for Intel GPUs have historically been pretty good (well, at least until they started using the PowerVR-based junk...); the issue there has been slow hardware, not buggy drivers.
7. Re:X logo? by UnknowingFool · 2013-10-02 06:19 · Score: 2
  
  You don't trust open source. So who do you trust? Proprietary? Pffft. Take for example NVidia. Every time NVidia updates their drivers it might break something in Linux or the a kernel update might break the driver. Nouveau generally is stable but it doesn't do everything the proprietary driver does. Rock and hard place. Like I said, you haven't been laying attention.
  
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  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
8. Re:X logo? by hobarrera · 2013-10-02 07:05 · Score: 2
  
  Times are changing fast. Intel's GPUs are catching up with nvidia's. Last-gen games run great on an Intel HD 5000, and the gap between Intel and nvidia/amd is shinking fast!
9. Re:X logo? by unixisc · 2013-10-02 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  No one cares about an open video driver on Windows
  Doesn't matter. An open driver is more relevant to the different kernels that would be needing GPU drivers and providing KMS based on those - it's little to do w/ X11. Once Wayland/Mir & others come aboard, X will be even more irrelevant.
10. Re:X logo? by aztracker1 · 2013-10-02 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  The latest are okay for general desktop use, but still not great with the high-density displays starting to trickle in, or for multi-monitor use in games.
  
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  Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
11. Re:X logo? by ifiwereasculptor · 2013-10-02 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  NV hasn't had "great proprietary Linux drivers" for a while. Performance is good, yes, but Optimus supportd has been denied, older cards are given the shaft (not keeping up with newer Xorg APIs in a timely manner can be excused - marking severe rendering issues on Gnome Shell, Unity and Cinnamon as a wontfix on three generations of their cards cannot) and you can get funny stories such as these: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ3NDE
  So, while NV has the edge in performance still, for owners of particular cards/features the experience can be incredibly frustrating, which is why I would never say their proprietary drivers for Linux are "great". I"d save that for a driver that works as well as NV's on Windows.
12. Re:X logo? by hobarrera · 2013-10-02 23:17 · Score: 1
  
  As I said, I've had no issues gaming with Intel HD 5000. Multi-monitor gaming is something I've yet to come across, so I can't vouch for that. There's no issue using Hi-DPI with Intel video at all, an HD 5000 support 3200x2000. Dunno about gaming no those resolutions though.
Bring it on NVidia by dutchwhizzman · 2013-10-02 03:39 · Score: 2

Try and compete with this and open up all your specs too.

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I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
1. Re:Bring it on NVidia by TheRealMindChild · 2013-10-02 03:44 · Score: 1
  
  It isn't that easy. There is a bunch of code they contracted out or licensed that they have no legal right to release.
  
  --
  
  "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
2. Re:Bring it on NVidia by Ultra64 · 2013-10-02 03:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Sure, it will take time to sort out the legal issues.
  But if AMD can do it, so can nVidia.
3. Re:Bring it on NVidia by Anonymous Coward · 2013-10-02 03:53 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  They aren't releasing their driver code. It's just documentation. nVidia can do that just as easily.
4. Re:Bring it on NVidia by marcosdumay · 2013-10-02 06:13 · Score: 2
  
  Well, that's you. I, on the other hand, do care a lot if I can use my GPUs with unmodified kernels or not, and once one good enough choice has a free driver, I'll certainly stop buying ones that lack it.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
5. Re:Bring it on NVidia by Just+Brew+It! · 2013-10-02 06:13 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see what's so hard to sort out. They make a decision to publish the register-level hardware specs, and they post them. All the Open Source devs need is access to the same hardware documentation that nVidia's own driver developers use; they're not looking for the source code to the existing proprietary drivers (though nVidia releasing their own drivers under an Open Source license would be great too).
6. Re:Bring it on NVidia by Just+Brew+It! · 2013-10-02 06:17 · Score: 2
  
  The problem with being solely dependent on binary drivers is that hardware vendors eventually stop supporting older hardware on newer OSes. With a viable Open Source driver, it is (almost) guaranteed that you will still be able to use your device in the next version of Windows, Linux, etc., even if the hardware vendor declines to port the driver or goes out of business.
7. Re:Bring it on NVidia by armanox · 2013-10-02 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  Except that it's not. I can install binary/'legacy' drivers for older cards in Windows (and nvidia-legacy in Linux) to get old cards to work that the open source drivers have dropped. I'll give you two examples - the Intel i8xx chipset and the nVidia Geforce 2 in my old laptop. I can install drivers in Windows for them (got the i8xx working in Windows 7), and the nvidia-legacy driver (last I checked) still covers the Geforce 2 in Linux.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
8. Re:Bring it on NVidia by armanox · 2013-10-02 06:44 · Score: 1
  
  So I take it you don't use VMware or Virtualbox either?
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
9. Re:Bring it on NVidia by hobarrera · 2013-10-02 07:06 · Score: 1
  
  That's been the excuse for YEARS now! If they haven't addressed this issue in all this time, it's because they don't WANT to release documentation, not because they can't.
10. Re:Bring it on NVidia by Belial6 · 2013-10-02 08:00 · Score: 1
  
  The specs are not code. They do not need to release any code to release open specs.
11. Re:Bring it on NVidia by marcosdumay · 2013-10-02 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  I use them, the same way that I use the proprietary drivers of my GPUs. If there were a virtualization software that run with the main kernel and satisfied my needs, I would use it.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
12. Re:Bring it on NVidia by marcosdumay · 2013-10-02 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  Last time I tried it, I couldn't make it work the way I wanted. But you just made me try it again, so thanks.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
Finally by jbernardo · 2013-10-02 03:48 · Score: 2

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.
1. Re:Finally by LordWabbit2 · 2013-10-03 01:42 · Score: 1
  
  If you like having your crotch bursting into flames.
  
  --
  There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Re:AMD tipping point by sexconker · 2013-10-02 05:07 · Score: 1

The Xbox One has a superior 2012 PC design, and the PS4 has a stunning late 2014 PC design
More like 2010 and 2011.
Re:licensed code by Foresto · 2013-10-02 05:18 · Score: 3, Informative

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 vs. Code by Rob+Y. · 2013-10-02 05:33 · Score: 1

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?

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Mantle by Tim12s · 2013-10-02 06:13 · Score: 1

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.
Re:AMD tipping point by Just+Brew+It! · 2013-10-02 06:20 · Score: 1

Maybe that was meant to be in dog years. Or something.
The prophesy of St. Ignucius must be fulfilled. by VortexCortex · 2013-10-02 06:24 · Score: 2

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.
A W E S O M E. by hackus · 2013-10-02 07:04 · Score: 1

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

--
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Re:You have no clue whether this is correct. by TheRealMindChild · 2013-10-02 07:47 · Score: 1

grep the binaries for © and tell me what you see. Quite a few hits from non-Nvidia entities. It is no surprise you posted as an anonymous coward

--

"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Re:But.. will we actually get a free driver now? by jonwil · 2013-10-02 12:24 · Score: 1

You clearly have never used the open source ATI driver otherwise you would know that its more than adequate for many people and that you dont need the closed-source flgrx driver 99% of the time.
Same with nvidia and their blob, Noveau is getting better all the time (and will only continue to improve now that nvidia have decided to stare info)
I personally run Noveau on my Gentoo box (which has a fairly old card in it)
Re:But.. will we actually get a free driver now? by ShoulderOfOrion · 2013-10-02 15:10 · Score: 1

I've been running the open source radeon driver on my Gentoo box for over a year now. No problems with desktop compositing, no problems with 3D graphic applications such as Blender, no problems running a 3-monitor setup. The binary driver is only necessary if gaming is your thing.
I went for AMD over nVidia solely because of the better open-source support from AMD. I'm happy to see that support is getting better all the time.