AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. [LWN.net]

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 1:57 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
Parent article: Free Intel i965 graphics drivers released

AT least according to this guy:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/02/32OPcurve_1.html

"Lastly, and remember you heard it here, AMD is strongly considering open-sourcing at least a functional subset of ATI’s graphics drivers. It’s time for X Window System, OpenGL, and client virtualization for which ATI binary drivers aren’t available to escape the ghetto of the 1980s-era framebuffer. And what a boon for PR. If AMD’s graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two."

As far as me personally with my experiance with Intel and DRI graphics.. I have a i945 chipset in my desktop and it fully performs 2d and 3d acceleration on Debian Sid.

Works very well actually. And a bit more stable then even Nvidia's stuff.

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AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 1:58 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh, I found it on the front page of digg.com

I just wanted to mention that, but forgot to.

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 3:16 UTC (Thu) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link]

> " ... If AMD’s graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two."

Well, I guess they missed the boat on *that* one...

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 5:21 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Remember in 1998 when Informix ported to Linux, then Oracle announced a port to Linux, then all proprietary databases except one just started running on Linux? This could be like that -- the breaking of the dam.

NVIDIA and ATI haven't open sourced because they strongly suspect they're infringing various patents and having a driver out in source code form makes it easier for the other side to sue them. With Intel and its huge patent portfolio taking the first step, now they don't have to be the ones to take the risk first.

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 14:22 UTC (Thu) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link]

Some differences:

Porting was low cost to vendors, because Linux at that time was already very similar to the closed platforms the databases were running on.
There was a very clear benefit for customers: orders of magnitude cost savings by running on an x86 box running Linux instead of a proprietary Unix offering.

In the case of graphics cards, the cost to vendors is significant because AFAIK the Linux/X.org model is very different from the Windows model. Plus the benefit to customers is not very clear, because people who need decent graphics support are gamers, and they play in Windows.

Mind you, I fully support vendors supporting their products in Linux, and in fact asked my company to get laptops with the Intel graphics chipset instead of ATI because of Intel's support for open software. Mind you, this was only 3 laptops, but it's something. :)

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 14:33 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]

Keep in mind that ATI and NVIDIA already _have_ Linux drivers. They're
just not open source. That technically means that they own at least a
substantial portion of the copyright, and could decide to open up at
least those parts any day they wanted to.

Hell, if nothing else, they could at least release their _hardware
programming specifications_ and let the damn community make a good
driver.

BTW, NVIDIA, it's very offensive when your public relations people tell
your customers they're too stupid to make good graphics drivers. I have
news for you - you're telling this to the folks that made the fastest and
most portable operating system on Earth -- the one OS that can use _one_
driver regardless of any of the many, diverse CPU architectures are out
there. You guys in the proprietary driver industry can't even seem to
move to 64 bit without freaking out.

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 22:09 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

That's pretty odd.. Nvidia and ATI and such already ahve drivers.

The Nvidia binary driver, at it's core, IS the Windows driver. It's the same code as far as anybody can tell.

And their OpenGL stack is probably the same as used in Windows.

Everybody and their mom already supports 3d graphics in Linux because in high-end 3d visualization and animation workstations Linux is 'were it's at'. This is due to a veriaty of reasons, but just remember that when you watch a movie on the big screen and if it has fancy 3d graphics it was probably designed and rendered on Linux machines. The compositions of the scenes and edits on the images are probably done on Linux machines also.

Of course it's a complete propriatory system using propriatory programs and a lot of in-house code, but basicly it's all done using Linux systems.

The problem with the state of 3d graphics in Linux is that none of these companies support Linux properly. No open source 3d graphics.

And people are even willing to pay lots of money for them.

For instance you have the Wildcat line of workstation cards. In Linux the cards themselves cost several hundred dollars, but also the DRIVERS cost several hundred dollars. And they are not paticularly good drivers either.

.... HOWEVER ....

There is a lot of proccessing power in them-there graphics cards. I would expect that high end 3d graphics and scientific computing people would LOVE to get their hands on that and use it in ways that OpenGL doesn't allow.

If you get ATI to open source their drivers then this means that all of a sudden this makes their cards very very desirable.

One of the major reasons high-end people like Movies studios choose Linux over Windows or OS X for a lot of things is that they can do special stuff with the kernel and other useland stuff in isolation. They don't have to share the source code or go into negotiations with some propriatory company or anything like that.

So it would be the same for the drivers. These people would choose ATI not because they want the freedom for freedom sakes, but that they can use the freedom for their own benifit. (which is ultimately the point of all this)

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 22:24 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh, and just in case you dont' beleive me..

Look at things like this:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=28...

"Disney Animation will be at SIGGRAPH 2006 Boston from August 1st through
3rd and would like to meet with you! If you would like to interview with
us in Boston, please contact us today!
We are currently looking for GRAPHICS SOFTWARE ENGINEERS, PROCESS TOOLS
SOFTWARE ENGINEERS, and LINUX KERNEL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERS to
join the team at our Burbank, CA studio.
GRAPHICS SOFTWARE ENGINEERS are responsible for analyzing production
procedures and problems, evaluating the effectiveness of existing
systems, and making recommendations to improve output, efficiency, and
workflow. They partner with production personnel to determine user needs
and review system capabilities to decide what changes can be made within
the existing systems and when new systems must be added. Graphics
Software Engineers will often work with developers and/or end-users on
multiple films. Design responsibilities include the creation of new C,
C++, Mel, Perl or Python code or the modification of existing code,
whichever meets productions needs in the timeliest manner. Regression
testing and analyzing of software, code check-in/integration, and
distribution are part of the SWE's implementation responsibilities.
Experience with commercial 3D packages such as Maya (preferred), Houdini
or Softimage and with the development of 3D graphics applications is
required."

PIXAR was at the USENIX 2006 confrence
http://www.mulix.org/lectures/impressions_from_usenix_06/...

They used Linux because it was the best aviable, but it still sucks.

They are looking for improvements in debugging tools (basicly gdb is god-awful in their opinion) and such and are willing to pay people to help make it happen.

Anybody want to be paid to advance the state-of-art in Linux debugging tools? :-)

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 23, 2006 12:45 UTC (Wed) by csamuel (subscriber, #2624) [Link]

There is a lot of proccessing power in them-there graphics cards. I would expect that high end 3d graphics and scientific computing people would LOVE to get their hands on that and use it in ways that OpenGL doesn't allow.

Erm, you mean like this ?

Personally I'd love to know whether these things do double precision floating point or whether they're just single precision cards..

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 15:32 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Well, I guess they missed the boat on *that* one...

I don't think so. I bought a PCIe DVI video card recently. The choice was essentially ATI, nVidia and some obscure chipsets. The choice was pretty much obvious.

AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.

Posted Aug 10, 2006 15:54 UTC (Thu) by brugolsky (subscriber, #28) [Link]

In the near term, perhap AMD/ATI legal could start by reviewing Dave Airlie's R5xx 2D modifications to the radeon driver and allowing him to release it. If they don't take that minimal step, I certainly won't be buying a Turion X2 any time soon. Next question is whether one can get a Core2 Duo laptop with Intel graphics.