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AMD Develops New Linux Open-Source Driver Model
An anonymous reader writes "AMD privately shared with Phoronix during GDC2014 that they're developing a new Linux driver model. While there will still be an open (Gallium3D) and closed-source (Catalyst) driver, the Catalyst driver will be much smaller. AMD developers are trying to isolate the closed-source portion of the driver to just user-space while the kernel driver that's in the mainline Linux kernel would also be used by Catalyst. It's not clear if this will ultimately work but they hope it will for reducing code duplication, eliminating fragmentation with different kernels, and allowing open and closed-source driver developers to better collaborate over the AMD Radeon Linux kernel driver."
Better integrated GPUs in lower-cost CPUs. Why choose Intel?
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The proprietary driver includes licensed/patented code that they can't legally use in an open source driver.
Seems AMD have taken on-board what Nvidia chose to ignore.
Being the advice offered by the Kernel devs
http://lists.linux-foundation....
In addition to what other people have said, GPU drives contain shader compilers and probably other kinds of optimization routines which actually give a "competitive advantage".
Lower power consumption in better CPUs. Why choose AMD?
The most recent generation of chips definitely has power issues, but it seems like you get a lot more bang for your buck with AMD. What can you get that is decent from Intel for $120? You can get a fairly decent chip from AMD for that.
Hell, a 40$ APU from AMD beats anything Intel has to offer for almost twice as much, not to mention that even at that price the AMD has a decent GPU while the Intel has none at all.
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Well, both of the high-performance current-gen game consoles use AMD. On that basis alone, they're quite unlikely to go anywhere.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Hell, a 40$ APU from AMD beats anything Intel has to offer for almost twice as much, not to mention that even at that price the AMD has a decent GPU while the Intel has none at all.
This is why I think AMD tends to be represented more in the DIY arena. Companies like Dell don't want to sell you a $150 CPU+motherboard upgrade. They want to sell you a $1200 PC. If you're going to throw away your old case, PSU, video card, RAM, hard drive, DVD drive, etc - then you might as well spend an extra $200 on the CPU.
On the other hand, if you're only upgrading CPU+MB, and maybe RAM, then AMD makes a lot more sense. If my options are to spend $500 every 6 years on an Intel CPU+MB, or $150 every other year on an AMD CPU+MB, then I'll take the latter. I'll actually spend less money, and for most of the time I'll have a better system. Sure, the Intel system will outperform the AMD system in years 1-2, but the AMD system will outperform in years 3-6, and by a huge margin in the last two years. A CPU is a rapidly-depreciating asset, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of money going high-end - you're far better off buying something moderate and replacing it more often. Then Moore's Law will work for you, and not against you.
AMD still has roughly 20% market share, so I would say yes, AMD still matters. It's a pretty big market for what can be considered only two-players. AMD certainly has it's struggles, and with the prospect of an NVIDIA\Intel APU alliance on the horizon competition is going to get tougher. But even then they will probably be the "most bang for your buck" option which is a large but not exclusive part of what is keeping them alive. I use AMD APU's, but as a Linux user the first thing I do is disable the Radeon portion in the BIOS on pop in an NVIDIA card. My current frequency-unlocked quad core is no slouch and I hope to be getting an 8-core AMD in a couple of months.
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That point was specifically addressed the the article. It isn't that AMD can't legally open up the code, but that is where they view their secret sauce of optimizations and tweaks. If they were to open it up, they fear that competitors might get a leg up and be able to use the same tricks.
Well, here's the thing... to at least a moderate extent, Intel isn't really competing against AMD or nVidia, because unless something has changed relatively recently, they don't have anything that comes even close to the offerings of the latter in terms of performance. So if AMD or nVidia learns something about how Intel chips works and improves their own a bit as a result, they're not going to take away much business from Intel. On the other hand, if AMD open-sourced the guts of their driver and nVidia learned enough to raise the performance of their own cards by a few percentage points or something, that'd be a somewhat big deal.
The complement to this argument is that because Intel can't win customers based on performance, they have incentive to seek other distinguishing factors. One of those factors would be openness and Linux support.
I'm not even drinking yet I'm honestly not 100% sure what you are saying. I've tested it and CPU benchmarks are the same with or without using the integrated graphics. I'm not a gamer so I use cheap, lower end cards. I just really really hate dealing with Linux AMD drivers. I also dislike shared memory.
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Not sure what you're thinking..
A Linux graphics card driver has 3 components: the kernel module, the X module and the libGL/CL/etc implementation.
There are two AMD driver for Linux -- the proprietary one and the open source one, each with it's own 3 components.
The proprietary one offers better OpenGL/OpenCL performance and features (eg, OpenGL 4.4 instead of 3.1), as well as official certification for a number of applications.
But it also tends to suffer from system integration issues, at the kernel and X level. Sometimes, they work poorly for basic things, they don't work with the latest kernel or X for a while, etc.
So, what looks here is that AMD wants to reduce the proprietary to the libGL/CL component and leverage on the open source for the kernel driver. Maybe X driver too, eventually.
I'm HSAying what I'm HSAying. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
What you fail to mention is the fact you could have probably built most if not all of an AMD 6 core system for the cost of the i7-860 alone, and if one were to go one notch down to the quads (which lets face it software just hasn't kept up with hardware and even more triple cores spend more time at idle than under load) then one could have easily built the entire system. The 8 cores were built just to say they could and frankly have never been priced competitively, no different than those 5Ghz chips they released not too long ago.
My oldest boy has an AMD hexacore, 8Gb of RAM, a 1Tb HDD and an HD7750, the whole system ended up costing something like $375 after MIRs. It kicks ass at gaming, transcoding, hell it'll do anything your average user will be able to think up for a PC to do and do so quite well and cost a grand total of $70 more than your i7-860 BY ITSELF without so much as a stick of RAM or anything according to Intel.
So if you want to sit here and argue that you are one of the 1% that actually NEED every MHz of speed you can get, which until we see benches done that are compiled with GCC I wouldn't trust the benches BTW but that is a different story, then fine, do so. But the bang for the buck is so far in AMD's camp right now it isn't even funny, you can choose from several quad cores including fully unlocked for less than a Pentium Dual, and if all you care about is power the AMD Jaguars spank the Intel Atoms on performance while using less than 25w for a quad. AMD is just a crazy deal ATM which is why I've had no complaints when it comes to being AMD exclusive, the customers get great performance at a great price.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Funny, but I changed from an i7-860 to an FX-8350 last year... It was because the motherboard went bad, not because it was too slow... I find that the 8350 does a lot better for the work I do (web application dev, generally with a couple of different DBs in the background) I have 32GB of ram, but it's only seeing 24 for some reason... next time I wipe and re-install, will probably update the bios. That said, it is still leaps and bounds better than the i7 for me. I cannot attest to gaming, as I don't really game much at all.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Well, they seem to be shipping enough GPUs for the likes of the XBone, and the PS4 ... That said, I think if they had the exclusivity with Dell that Intel has had, then they would be able to supply. I see a lot of AMD from most other mfgs, and sales overall are down for everyone, including Intel.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I'm sorry, but realistically proprietary GPUs aren't a big issue... the PCIe slot is pretty standard, and they all come on boards that fit into that slot, and beyond that, the odds of a regular person spinning up a fab order for non-proprietary CPU/GPU/board combinations is just plain unlikely. Having open software that works with said hardware is a *much* bigger issue... unless you are planning on using some under-powered GPU that will have trouble with 1080p 3D that is. That said, having open drivers allows for faster and better integrated updates from linux distributions, and more options as a whole.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
A comparison amongst users in typical rigs, rather than in review-site benchmark rigs.
i7-860 1217 / 5110 (812 samples, single threaded / overall)
FX-8350 1512 / 9049 (3149 samples, single threaded / overall)
The AMD in question is winning against the Intel in question in single threaded, and winning greatly in multi-threaded. However this AMD chip, at $200, is not really what the GP was talking about. He was talking about ~$150 APU's that also saves him money on a video card.
Comparison of the i7-860 vs the A10-6800K
i7-860 1217 / 5110 (812 samples, single threaded / overall)
A10-6800K 1555 / 5006 (205 samples, single threaded / overall)
"His name was James Damore."
I would say AMD generally prices their parts competatively. If you are talking about >$300 Intel parts, you are correct that AMD has nothing to offer (I don't count 220W parts as viable, as I'm not in the market for a desk-side-vacuum-cleaner). But at $180 an FX-8350 looks pretty competative vs a $200 i5-4570:
http://www.tomshardware.com/ch...
If you are using efficiently multi-process applications (e.g. video compression), AMD is the clear winner. If you are using mostly-single-process applications (Blizzard games?), Intel is the clear winner.
In my usage, single-process applications tend not to be CPU-bound, or they tend not to be computationally taxing. But YMMV. And some games are obviously highly 1-2 core CPU bound (Blizzard), which is worth considering.
Finally points:
Over clocking: If you are planning on overclocking, the least expensive intel part is $240 (33% over FX-8350). Overclocking won't close the FX-8350 single-threaded performance gap, but it helps.
Heat: The FX-8350 is rated at a TDP of 125W... The i5-4570 is rated at 84w. So AMD is hotter and louder.
Disclaimer: My next system is going to be Intel, primarily because I want the machine to be near-silent, and 125W is hard to work around.
Note: All prices based on Newegg at the time of writing.