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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."
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.
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.
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.