AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

[Posted January 26, 2016 by corbet]

AMD has launched "gpuopen.com" to support open graphics development (on AMD GPUs, naturally). "The second is a commitment to open source software. The game and graphics development community is an active hub of enthusiastic individuals who believe in the value of sharing knowledge. 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."

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 26, 2016 18:10 UTC (Tue) by tshow (subscriber, #6411) [Link] (8 responses)

How open is open, here? Are we talking complete register-level docs, or something akin to GLIDE? What parts of the hardware will remain black-boxed? I'm assuming the "rights management" parts are going to stay undocumented.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 26, 2016 19:58 UTC (Tue) by brunowolff (guest, #71160) [Link] (1 responses)

It would be nice if they worked with coreboot/libreboot to allow for open firmware for thei GPUs, even if it couldn't do everything their proprietary firmware can do. However considering the way their CPUs are going, I doubt that is going to happen.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 5:46 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

However considering the way their CPUs are going, I doubt that is going to happen.

That libreboot faq as a whole is depressing reading. Seems it is impossible to control what code modern Intel and AMD systems run, even if you write your OS from scratch. I wonder if these companies are setting themselves up for a fall: the code signing keys for the "system management engines" are now very profitable secrets to steal for any intelligence agency or sophisticated criminal organization, because they would allow the creation of totally undetectable and unremovable trojans.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 26, 2016 23:24 UTC (Tue) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link] (1 responses)

This is higher level stuff than that, it's more about opening up libraries and utilities for people using the GPUs not for people writing drivers.

or at least that was the impression I was getting from it.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 3:47 UTC (Wed) by rhekman (guest, #102114) [Link]

Much of GPUOpen is in response to the "black box" comments leveled at Nvidia Gameworks -- libraries for various physics and effects -- hair, particles, lighting, etc.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 14:14 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (3 responses)

The choice of "open" as opposed to "libre" seems deliberate, unfortunately.

AMD remains the only one of the big three GPU vendors whose entire hardware range is completely non-functional on a deblobbed kernel.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 14:46 UTC (Wed) by brunowolff (guest, #71160) [Link] (2 responses)

Recent Intel GPUs require blobs. For older nVidia GPUs someone has reverse engineered enough to replace the blobs, but for new GPUs the blobs need to be signed by nVidia. I don't think AMD is worse than the others here.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 15:29 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

You seem to be violently agreeing with what I said; that's why I specified entire hardware range.

(Somewhat depressingly, AMD's penchant for binary blobs extends *beyond* the scope of their own hardware — I bought an AGP Radeon a dozen years ago which mysteriously sprouted a firmware dependency only after ATI ceased to be...)

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Feb 12, 2016 1:05 UTC (Fri) by bridgman (guest, #50408) [Link]

>>(Somewhat depressingly, AMD's penchant for binary blobs extends *beyond* the scope of their own hardware — I bought an AGP Radeon a dozen years ago which mysteriously sprouted a firmware dependency only after ATI ceased to be...)

IIRC the early drivers managed the acceleration hardware by writing directly to registers then waiting for completion, but later versions used PM4 packets (processed by the microcoded CP block) which allowed the driver to run ahead of the hardware for higher performance.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 13:51 UTC (Wed) by gidoca (subscriber, #62438) [Link] (1 responses)

I find it unfortunate that there is no mention of the license of the various pieces of code on gpuopen.com. The only way to find out is looking at the repo on Github. Some of it seems BSD licensed, while other parts are under custom non-free licenses.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Feb 12, 2016 1:02 UTC (Fri) by bridgman (guest, #50408) [Link]

All of the newly released code is supposed to be covered by the X11/MIT license - I didn't check them all but the first half-dozen or so looked OK.
It's possible that some already-published code with a different license was also linked from the main page, but the ones I recognized (eg DirectGMA) had new licenses as well.

Anyways, if you see any that seem wrong let us know (my username # amd.com) and I'll get them checked. Thanks.

AMD: It's time to open up the GPU

Posted Jan 27, 2016 21:01 UTC (Wed) by Brane2 (guest, #106610) [Link]

Rubbish. Look at that site. What do you think, where did most of the effort go- towards nice graphics or to collecting, structuring and offering data in optimal, easy to reach way ?

Every time they need some media attention, they make somesuch noise.

I tried to do my own board with Kabini SoC and requested access to additional info needed ( datasheet etc). I would sign an NDA if needed, but after initial response to clarify my needs all I've got from them is basically no response - "don't call us, we'll call you"...

They seem to view data disclosure about THEIR FRIGGIN PRODUCT as some insane privilege that is available only to a chosen few.

They are about as open as scientology bunch, freemasons, Illiminates and similar crowds.