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AMD to open up graphics specsAMD to open up graphics specsPosted Sep 5, 2007 15:25 UTC (Wed) by asamardzic (subscriber, #27161)Parent article: AMD to open up graphics specs
WOOHOO! Kudos for persistence of everyone involved from our side, and kudos to AMD.
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AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 15:43 UTC (Wed) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] That's still not nearly as good as Intel's approach of writing Freedrivers in-house and employing major X hackers. A change of attitude from 'We will actively screw you' to 'You're on your own' is certainly an improvement, but it's quite a way short of kudos-worthy.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 15:47 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] "You're on your own" is not the position I heard here - sorry if my posting made that impression. AMD intends to actively help with this process. If they follow through (and one assumes they will) there is little to complain about here.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 15:54 UTC (Wed) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] It's definitely not a 'you're on your own' kind of proposition: this is exactly what was asked for, giving the community all the information it needs to complete a proper driver.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 16:11 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Even if they do follow through, it remains to be seen if the community will manage to produce a fully-fonctionnal driver out of this. Last time ATI played this card the result was somewhat lacking.
AMD is to be commended if this happens, but a FLOSS driver won't happen overnight. And its silicon is said to be a lot less nice to play with than NVidia's.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 22:17 UTC (Wed) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link] A few years back ATI did release specs, the ATI 9200/9250 series (G200?) is the highest for which they did so.
I have a 9250 card and the FLOSS drivers work pretty well for it, including 3D acceleration (such as the card is capable of).
There are already FLOSS drivers for the later cards, based largely on reverse-engineering. With the specs available they should catch up pretty quickly.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 23:49 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Sorta.
They released it under NDA and only to certain people.
Same thing with Intel. From what I remember Intel originally farmed out development to Tungsten Graphics and then brought them into the fold.
Intel's graphics are definately open source, but they aren't as open as they should be. I bought lots of Intel hardware because of this and I've recommended it to other people.
Intel did a good thing releasing source code, but like most things everybody does, it can get better.
(to the other people: )
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, this is the BEST thing you could hope to get!
The ATI proprietary drivers are going to be a minefield of nasty NDA agreements, cross licensing and all sorts of other stuff. Companies involved in those drivers are going to be numbered in the dozens. SGI, Microsoft, Nvidia, S3, etc etc. Some of them are very anti-open source, very pro-patents in their legal stances. Some of them have sold their patents and copyright assists to other companies, the legality of everything is going to be very uncertain.
In other words: The drivers are not AMD's to give away. Realise that the legal/political issues revolving around closed source can screw over developers as much as end users. (Free software is about liberating both the user and the developer.)
So in order to give away the source code to the drivers AMD needs to make new drivers. If they are going to open source it, then why not get 3rd party developers involved from the start?
Makes sense to me!!!
Ra-ra-ra Open source is starting to win in the 3D graphics arena.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 16:38 UTC (Wed) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] I read "a skeleton driver as well [...] The rest will have to be written" as 'written by people outside of and unsupported by ATI/AMD'. Which is a bit of a leap, but not an entirely unfounded one given the history.You're there though, and I'm not, and I'm very happy to believe that I'm wrong. I certainly hope I am.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 7, 2007 18:51 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link] http://airlied.livejournal.com/50187.html
It's definitely more than what you say. AMD is giving access to the engineering staff to help out, as well as working to clear out old NDA issues and help get code out there. This isn't just a vaporware promise, as code has already been worked on under the new model before this public announcement.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 15:53 UTC (Wed) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link] Maybe, but open specs is all that was asked by the driver community since ages. And now, AMD gives specs *and* a minimal reference driver. They must be commended for that.
Of course, Intel's way is yet better. But look at the bright side: NVIDIA is now the only one to keep closed hardware, the status-quo between them and ATI is over and they'll probably have to do something about it one day.
All in all, very very good news.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 20:28 UTC (Wed) by hitmark (guest, #34609) [Link] also, as ati is a major player when it comes to laptop graphics, and dell specifically called for something like this, its win win for everyone imo.
hell, if amd plays its cards right, it may well be able to get dell to use their cpus and similar in the laptops rather then intel.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 22:22 UTC (Wed) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link] This is actually a quite interesting take on the matter.
If things turn out this way, AMD have made quite a case for using their CPUs and GPUs, so let us hope Dell sees things the same way.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 15:56 UTC (Wed) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link] While I certainly do appreciate Intel's significant contributions to X (both their driver and the infrastructure work to support it), they have not released full documentation for their chips.
A driver written under NDA is far better than no driver, but a full release of documentation is better still.
Of course, it remains to be seen just how complete this documentation release will be.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 17:01 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Apropos drivers written under NDA, I know of a case where the developers of a driver got specs only under an NDA. They assumed the specs would be full of detailed, third-party data. Far from that, it was a hastily thrown together bunch of loose sheets, with handwritten amendments and margin notes. They speculated later that the NDA was just out of shame ;-) I've also heard from cases where the specs just don't exist at all: All there is is the experience of the people that developed the hardware and drivers, plus an unorganized list of "this works", "this doesn't", with lots of gaps. Just look at what is done kernel-wise: The talks from LinuxConf.eu about user-kernel interface that Jon reported on are precisely about there not being enough documentation on (new) system calls...
Hardware without Specifications Posted Sep 5, 2007 19:23 UTC (Wed) by jwmittag (guest, #43097) [Link] I've also heard from cases where the specs just don't exist at all: All there is is the experience of the people that developed the hardware and drivers, plus an unorganized list of "this works", "this doesn't", with lots of gaps. Dirk Hohndel, Intel's Open Source Guy, mentioned something like this in his LinuxTag 2005 Talk. Essentially, the guys writing the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Linux driver had to reverse engineer just like everyone else would have, even though they are also Intel engineers. jwm
Remember their slogan ... Posted Sep 6, 2007 1:33 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] "Only the paranoid survive" is Intel's motto (and their competitors feel much the same way).A lot of the big chip designers don't trust their own people with the company's own designs; everything is need-to-know. And then there are all of the details of operation that simply aren't written down anywhere; the driver guys ask the hardware guys questions when they get stuck, and sometimes comments in the driver is pretty much the only documentation for some of the tricky bits, other than comments in the (Verilog or VHDL) RTL source code, and there's no way anyone's going to get to see that.
Good for them! Posted Sep 5, 2007 16:05 UTC (Wed) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Hey, we Open-source/Free software advocates have got to take any good news we can get relating to a vendor opening up specifications to a previously-proprietary hardware device (generally speaking). Besides, who doesn't suppose the Community can/will code a graphics driver that might even be better than ATI's in-house version? (Not meant to impugn the expertise of ATI's engineering team.) But, more importantly, this sets a precedent for other hardware manufacturers to follow, in general. Kudos to ATI.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 17:45 UTC (Wed) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] Though in general a pessimist and quite skeptical in nature I cannot agree with you Ewan. I believe one of the major bug-bears of the FOSS crowd for some time has been lack of hardware specs for graphics chipsets. Intel is to be commended in the way they have approached this area and are rightly reaping the benefits of their openness. Even though AMD/ATI may only be responding to Intel's moves out of fear the end result is that the consumer wins. We are now in a situation where 2 out of 3 of the largest graphics chipset vendors are (or very soon will be) working in a manner compatible with our ethos. Every step in the right direction must be applauded. We must be vocal in our support of those that help us. Let's reserve our cynicism for the future, today let us praise AMD for their foresight.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 5, 2007 21:14 UTC (Wed) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] Actually, "we will supply specs" is all I ask for. In some ways it's even better than getting a driver. If we write a driver to the specs, and it works, then we know the specs are good. We'll know everything we need to maintain that driver. By contrast, a driver from the vendor will have been based partly on undocumented in-house knowledge.I don't think hardware vendors should feel pressured to supply a Linux driver. That's a lot of hassle and it will discourage them from supporting Linux at all. Just the specs, please.
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 6, 2007 10:31 UTC (Thu) by ljt (subscriber, #33337) [Link] What I hear instead is "from now on, we release early and often" along with "code _and_ spec".It's even better than Intel if it really is the way it turns out.
Kudos to AMD/ATI: 'We will actively screw you' and 'You're on your own' is the message sent to Nvidia :-)
AMD to open up graphics specs Posted Sep 14, 2007 16:31 UTC (Fri) by yknott (guest, #47407) [Link] sorry erwan but it seems not everyone is able to read your post correctly
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