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AMD: It's Time To Open Up the GPU (gpuopen.com)
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has called for the opening up of GPU technology to developers. Nicolas Thibieroz, a senior engineering manager for the company, announced today the launch of GPUOpen, its initiative to provide code and documentation to PC developers, embracing open source and collaborative development with the community. He says, "Console games often tap into low-level GPU features that may not be exposed on PC at the same level of functionality, causing different — and usually less efficient — code paths to be implemented on PC instead. Worse, proprietary libraries or tools chains with "black box" APIs prevent developers from accessing the code for maintenance, porting or optimizations purposes. Game development on PC needs to scale to multiple quality levels, including vastly different screen resolutions." And here's how AMD wants to solve this: "Full and flexible access to the source of tools, libraries and effects is a key pillar of the GPUOpen philosophy. Only through open source access are developers able to modify, optimize, fix, port and learn from software. The goal? Encouraging innovation and the development of amazing graphics techniques and optimizations in PC games." They've begun by posting several technical articles to help developers understand and use various tools, and they say more content will arrive soon.
XBox, Playstation, etc. You know, the gaming devices that are currently all using custom AIT cards. Oh, wait-- you were just trying to be clever.
How about they open a few QA jobs and don't make available the stillborn of a software that is "Crimson" I was a loyal AMD fanboy since the K6 era, And and ATI loyal from around the same time, but my last CPU from them was a Phenom, I got tired of waiting for a decent replacement and went with intel, now I'm trying to camp with this old HD7750 because I love the passive cooling and don't really need much video performance for games, but the drivers are making it hard for me to keep supporting them, (yay new actual improvements in performance and such, too bad it crashes anytime you wan to switch a tab in the control panel and your settings get eaten by the grue randomly), truly Alpha quality right there.
Translation: quit optimizing for proprietary Intel technology
This is not targeted at Intel. It is targeted at NVidia. They are looking to the future when GPGPU is expected to be a bigger slice of the GPU market. NVidia currently dominates with their (proprietary) CUDA interface, while AMD relies on the less efficient OpenCL. More openness will help AMD (and Intel) while working against NVidia.
In almost all markets the dominant company will prefer to push their proprietary solution, while companies with smaller market shares will push openness.
What's all "proprietary" about Intel graphics exactly?
Their open source support in the Linux kernel is substantially better than AMD's half-assed "sorta kinda open when we feel like it for obsolete parts" approach.
Another thing about this "open" concept that nobody is really talking about amidst the cheerleading: AMD is trying to push *proprietary* AMD-only hardware features that don't fit very well with current APIs -- and that includes Vulkan, BTW, not just the old APIs.
So what are they doing? They are "open sourcing" a relatively thin layer of code that exposes their proprietary GPU features to work *outside* of any cross-platform APIs.
So basically, they open source some relatively low-value shim code for their hardware so that they have an excuse not to make bug fixes since that's been handed over to the community. Meanwhile, the "open source" AMD product is actually encouraging software developers to write code to *non-standard AMD features* that aren't part of any accepted API that would work across platforms.
Just because some code is open sourced doesn't make it a happy "open" cross-platform experience, and there needs to be a little more critical thought applied to this media event.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Intel graphics products these days are pretty decent and many people already do use them. You are living in a fantasy if you think otherwise...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey, AMD, show us your new CPUs for 2016. Everything you got now is long in the tooth.
How right you are. But their basic problem has been that they were still stuck on old semiconductor fabrication processes. Intel has spent a bunch of money on fab technology and is about two generations ahead of AMD. It didn't help that their current architecture isn't great.
I'm not a semiconductor expert, but as I understand it: the thinner the traces on the semiconductor, the higher clock rate can go or the lower the power dissipation can be (those two are tradeoffs). Intel's 4th-generation CPUs were fabbed on 22 nm process, and their current CPUs are fabbed on 14 nm process. AMD has been stuck at 28 nm and is in fact still selling CPUs fabbed on a 32 nm process. It's brutal to try to compete when so far behind. But AMD is just skipping the 22 nm process and going straight to 14 nm. (Intel has 10 nm in the pipeline, planned for 2017 release, but it should be easier to compete 14 nm vs 10 nm than 32/28 nm vs 14 nm! And it took years for AMD to get to 14 nm, while there are indications that they will make the jump to 10 nm more quickly.)
But AMD is about to catch up. AMD has shown us their new CPU for 2016; its code-name is "Zen" and it will be fabbed on a 14 nm process. AMD claims the new architecture will provide 40% more instructions-per-clock than their current architecture; combined with finally getting onto a modern fab process, the Zen should be competitive with Intel's offerings. (I expect Intel to hold onto the top-performance crown, but I expect AMD will offer better performance per dollar with acceptable thermal envelope.) Wikipedia says it will be released in October 2016.
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/processors/amd-confirms-powerhouse-zen-cpus-will-arrive-for-high-end-pcs-in-2016-1310980
Intel is so far ahead of AMD that it's unlikely that AMD will ever take over the #1 spot, but I am at least hoping that they will hold on to a niche and serve to keep Intel in check.
The ironic thing is that Intel is currently making the best products, yet still they feel the need to cheat with dirty tricks like the Intel C Compiler's generating bad code for CPUs with a non-Intel CPUID. Also I don't like how Intel tries to segment their products into dozens of tiers to maximize money extraction. (Oh, did you want virtualization? This cheaper CPU doesn't offer that; buy this more expensive one. Oh, did you want ECC RAM? Step right up to our most expensive CPUs!)
Intel has been a very good "corporate citizen" with respect to the Linux kernel, and they make good products; but I try not to buy their products because I hate their bad behavior. I own one laptop with an Intel i7 CPU, but otherwise I'm 100% non-Intel.
I want to build a new computer and I don't want to wait for Zen so I will be buying an FX-8350 (fabbed on 32 nm process, ugh). But in 18 months or so I look forward to buying new Zen processors and building new computers.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
and by "absolutely nobody" you actually mean "90% of the computing public that are fine with 'good enough for what I'm doing'"
Here's a hint: You don't need a $400 GPU for Netflix.
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