Slashdot Mirror
AMD Building New GPU Linux Kernel Driver To Unify With Catalyst Driver
An anonymous reader writes: AMD is moving forward with their plans to develop a new open-source Linux driver model for their Radeon and FirePro graphics processors. Their unified Linux driver model is moving forward, albeit slightly different compared to what was planned early this year. They're now developing a new "AMDGPU" kernel driver to power both the open and closed-source graphics components. This new driver model will also only apply to future generations of AMD GPUs. Catalyst is not being open-sourced, but will be a self-contained user-space blob, and the DRM/libdrm/DDX components will be open-source and shared. This new model is more open-source friendly, places greater emphasis on their mainline kernel driver, and should help Catalyst support Mir and Wayland.
That is part of it, to be sure...
The other part is that many trade secrets lay within those binary blobs...
It isn't just you they don't want seeing all that, nVidia is on their radar as well...
Plus, keep in mind that some of their technology isn't theirs, cross licensing and patents protect many things in video graphics, some of it isn't theirs to release...
----------------
It is at least a step in the right direction.