AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer) [LWN.net]

AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Posted Jul 3, 2007 9:05 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer) by drag
Parent article: AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Oh..

And this may not remain true for ever. There is chances that ATI may decide to help open source driver developers (which I doubt)

A much more likely scenerio Intel is going to release new discrete video cards that will compete head to head with Nvidia's high-end offerings.

This is just hearsay and you know how stuff changes as time goes on.. But this is suppose to happen late 2008 or into 2009.

Described as x86-like in terms of programming API they will sport up to 16 GPU cores and have a gig or more of very high speed memory.

One of the more expensive things that happen in CPU making is that when you move to a new manufacturing technology, which is required for each new generation of CPUs being made, is that you have to pretty much abandon your old manufacturing lines. It's cheaper for AMD or Intel to simply build whole new assembly lines then to try to upgrade their existing facilities.

So I figure what Intel will do is when they upgrade to the next generation of state-of-the-art CPUs instead of using the old line to build Celerons or embedded stuff they will use it to build video card cores.

Seems like Intel's previous generation cpu making technology outclasses Nvidia's current generation stuff.

And the sky is the limit. Intel currently a 80 core cpu that they are using for testing and evaluation purposes... http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2925

The future is to have the GPU integrated directly into the CPU. When you have 80 cores I can't imagine that you'd want all of them to be general purpose stuff like we use now. Many of them would be for graphics proccessing and general floating point acceleration. Most of things that use that sort of stuff should be able to scale nicely with cores.

AMD/ATI and Nvidia seem to be heading towards making the GPU designs they have now and making them more CPU-like. Intel seems to be aiming at taking their CPU designs and making them more specialized, like IBM is doing with their Cell proccessor.

This may end up putting Linux in a unique position. It's more able to adapt to changes in hardware platforms compared to Windows.

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AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Posted Jul 3, 2007 22:02 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Oh how I wish Intel could compete head to head with nvidia. We're a year now into the GMA X3000 chip being on the market, advertised as their foray into "Hardware T&L", and still they have shipped only "beta" drivers which actually enable this feature.

Maybe transformation and lighting is working great on Linux already. I wouldn't know. When I run an intensive OpenGL application on the current linux kernel's intel DRM with GMA X3000, my box locks up. No network even.

When I want to do some OpenGL wankery (play games), I have to boot Windows. It doesn't lock up.

AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Posted Jul 3, 2007 23:52 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

It's suppose to be working in the Linux drivers I beleive. I think they are a bit more advanced then the equivelent Windows drivers.

I am curious.

What versions of everything are you using? X.org, Kernel, distro, motherboard etc etc.

I would like to get a X3000 motherboard to replace my perfectly stable GMA 950, but it's hard for me to justify spending another hundred bucks to replace a already working motherboard.

I am curious about the actual performance of the thing. The only benchmarks that I've seen were only for the GMA 3000 which lack the extra hardware features.

AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Posted Jul 6, 2007 12:55 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

X.org 7.2, Kernel 2.6.21.IForget. The motherboard is an asus job but it's really irrelevant. It's an Intel G965 chipset and video, and the only variations here are things IDE controllers.

The problem could well be debian's build of X.org, or the dri component, or perhaps the fact that I've an amd 64 box and kernel, but the dri in this question is 32 bit x86 (wine games), which is all supposed to work fine, but might not be as well tested.

I'm sure I could be helping the developers more with detailed and tenacious reports but I'm losing interest in that sort of thing over the years. The specs for the hardware are open, the company behind the hardware wants to make Linux stuff work well and is paying developers to do so. I really don't see why it doesn't just work already. Sure I understand development takes time but this is no longer new hardware.

AMD applies make-up to the face of its Linux Control Centre (the Inquirer)

Posted Jul 4, 2007 4:36 UTC (Wed) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

> When I want to do some OpenGL wankery (play games), I have to boot Windows. It doesn't lock up.

LOL that's ironic. In any case, linux has never locked up on me no matter how much OpenGL gaming I do with the proprietry nvidia drivers. Sorry to hear the intel drivers are still so bad.