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Intel Releases 5,000 Pages of Open-Source Haswell Documentation
An anonymous reader writes "Intel has ended out 2013 by publishing 5,000 pages of new GPU documentation about their latest generation 'Haswell' graphics hardware. The new documentation complements their longstanding open-source Linux graphics driver that has supported Haswell HD / Iris Graphics since last year. The new documentation covers the hardware registers and special information for 3D, video acceleration, performance counters, and GPGPU programming."
... thanks Snowden!
Does it include APIs for the NSA backdoors?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Way to go Intel! Fully documented hardware is essential to the future of Free Software.
Scooped!
Please take notice, this is how to support GPU hardware correctly.
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
Documentation is ONE PART. It says what the design was supposed to be like.
Then you have errata and variations - when some of the hardware doesn't correspond to the documentation and acts differently.
Then you have examples - where someone shows you how to, e.g. draw a simple triangle using the documented opcodes and all of the boilerplate and set up necessary.
And then you have actual working code. Where you give away, for example, a complete implementation that conforms to a higher, standardised API and issues instructions to the hardware to perform those actions.
Out of all of those, documentation is the easiest thing to do. You can just (for example, just flicked through a PDF from that site) say that instruction X transposes a matrix. No idea of performance, whether that's the recommended way, what it contends with, how it works, whether the Intel drivers use that themselves, whether it's a legacy function, whether it has huge constraints on its use.
Without some code, it's all just fancy tech sheets. Sure, better than nothing, but a long way from actual co-operation. I'm not saying Intel don't co-operate in other areas, but documentation like this? That's the "quick reference" stuff for when your thousands of lines of existing example code don't act like you expect when you tweak them and you look up what that operand is supposed to do and how.
Put a hardware driver author in front of a documentation pack and a compiler, and tell him to write a driver, and he'll tell you to fuck off.
Put a hardware driver author in front of many working examples of device, with debug-level access, with example source (that he can't just copy due to licensing), errata, a direct line to cooperative hardware engineers AND this documentation and he'll start.
This is why I've never been that bothered by documentation releases, or even unmaintained source-drops. Supposedly Broadcom did something similar for the RPi's graphics chips. I think we're still waiting on anything that's not a binary driver there. And we have this sort of stuff for some ancient 3D graphics cards - it's just not as easy as reading it all and then sitting down to write a driver.
Intel, nVidia, ATI: Give us drivers with code that have no reliance on "black box" information/code, and we'll be happy. Until then, it's just lip-service. And you know that. That's why you don't release this kind of stuff for graphics chips, and nor does anyone else. Because you can drop this in someone's lap and years later STILL end up being pestered to the ends of the earth for an open-source driver (or assistance to help write one) because it doesn't exist.
Code is a lot more than writing things to perform a protocol described in the documentation. If only it were that easy.
Can I see the source code for the documentation please?
Sure. It's written in TeX. Like most open source code, you can't really understand it but at least you have the freedom to modify it.
This release would make it completely possible for a manufacturers to easily create completely supported devices without the need for the Windows OS. Given the long stability and versatility of GNU and OSS. There is no reason why manufacturers could not jump ship. The average joe does not care which OS is on a device. It is only those who hold Windows as something akin to a religious experience on their computing device that bleat away against OSS operating systems.
Chrome books, android devices, even the iPad have proven them wrong. The consumer is not hooked into Windows, in fact the most common question I hear from most who consider a laptop with something other than Windows on it is whether or not they need anti virus. Sorry Microsoft until you shed the consumers perception that all of your devices must have AV and anti malware software you are vulnerable as a software and hardware company.
With Intel opening up completely on their key hardware it is now entirely possible for Windows to become irrelevant and this could happen almost overnight if manufactures cooperated and released an OSS operating system highly tuned exclusively for their devices completely independent of Microsoft. Either that or Intel is just blowing smoke ////again LOL Remember how pissed Microsoft was when Intel released a C compiler for hardware that made the Linux kernel out perform the NT kernel on big iron? And all the manufactures started to seriously consider Linux as an alternative to NT on servers. Well this release of key documentation brings the war down to a consumer level and if Microsoft does not act fast to quell things down with patent extortion through the Rockstar Consortium the possible market share drop of Windows in the consumer end of the market could hurt Redmonds bottom line this time. So I predict that within 2 years Microsoft will make more money off patent extortion than sales of the Windows operating system, the same way they make more money the sale of android phones and tablets than they make from sales of Win Phones!
We will see if the scare tactics of the men in black showing up with lawyers when ever a manufacturer releases a device with something other than Windows works for them the same way it did with Android.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
So intel gfx hardware has, and always will be garbage.
Want to cripple a good machine? use Intel for the gfx.
that Intel GPUs are always inferior products compared to what's on the GPU market.
Intel, thank you for your continued strong support of Linux. Already, if 3D performance wasn't an issue on one of my machines, having an embedded Intel video controller was a plus. As your GPU performance continues to grow, and I see you continuing to support Linux, there are less use cases where I feel I need a discreet video card. The release of this documentation indicates to me that you intend to continue your support of Linux, and I appreciate it.
All the doc you ever want - but what the comparison compare to AMD fastest GPU?
and why would I want to spend time on this vs AMD GPU?
Dear samzenpus,
Please don't include any link directly to the documentation.
Regards
The Community.
Maybe someone will now be able to fix the driver issue with my new PC that does not output HDMI. This is a huge issue that is impacting a lot of people: https://communities.intel.com/message/202922
The irony is that it's not written in TeX. So unlike open source you get nothing, not even the pittance of being able to see and examine the source document.
Caution fud attack. Here we go OSS can never be as good at GPU acceleration. B ULLOLCKS AND FUD STICK. Tell that to my laptop which is running an old Radeon mobile and Google Earth 7 in opengl mode on Linux faster than my newer DirectX Win7 machine with the same release cycle of Google Earth. STOP SPREADING BULLSHIT AND FUD about Linux GPU optimizations period WE KNOW BETTER.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
They may attract patent trolls, they may have third party IP under NDA, they may have stuff they keep secret instead of patenting to avoid telling other how it works
or they may just be paranoid and have a legal department that need to justify their existence
If you really need the source of the document, ask Intel and they might provide it to you.
Fuck you, bitch.
Female redheads rule, of course...that is, password rules rule, and redheads of the feminine persuasion who are older than punched cards and just as code-savvy, know how to put almost-unbreakable passwords together. You figure it out!