AMD Releases UVD Video Decode Support For R600 GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Releases UVD Video Decode Support For R600 GPUs

AMD has finally managed to publish open-source Unified Video Decoder (UVD) support for the original R600 graphics processors...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc3MTc

[Nille]

The last makes me really really angry.

The open-source AMD team is committing to just "best effort" support to this older hardware.

What? First there is no longer a fglrx Support and we have to use the foss-radeon driver and now this uncompleate foss driver is legacy too now?

[libv]

rv6xx is everything but the r600: the HD2900, which upon announcement supposedly had uvd, but two days later this was correct. Apparently that block was broken on r600. So you're talking hd2400, hd2600 (if synapses serve, as this 7y old info is purely off the top of my head) and such as well.

[libv]

The last makes me really really angry.



What? First there is no longer a fglrx Support and we have to use the foss-radeon driver and now this uncompleate foss driver is legacy too now?

Our primary goal with the radeonhd driver was to provide enterprise level support: maybe not all the features enabled, but solid (read: you get a working display every time), long term support. This was a pretty lofty goal in 2007. Given the political games played around this driver, be very glad that you have a working display today already (even if the means to achieve it are not as solid as they could be today, but that's what happens when politics get in the way of code).

Bridgman from day one ruled out UVD, plus he didn't provide us with any info about such things like HDMI audio support either, and the amount of excuses about power management... Pfff... Christian provided HDMI audio support to radeonhd, out of the blue, and i am really glad that he continues down that path 7 years on! Docs will probably never happen for UVD, especially for the older generations, and especially since few, if any?, non shader docs ever made it out of ATI since the radeonhd project died. But be glad that some code is there, that code can be maintained.

[Ericg]

The last makes me really really angry.



What? First there is no longer a fglrx Support and we have to use the foss-radeon driver and now this uncompleate foss driver is legacy too now?

You mean... "Damn it! My company of choice isn't supporting my 7+yr hardware!" ? There is NOTHING that says they HAD TO put out this support. They did it purely out of the goodness of their heart (even profit isnt an issue since anyone working on this couldve been working on other stuff, NEW cards that AMD is still making money on). No card is supported forever, and no driver is perfect.

[R00KIE]

You mean... "Damn it! My company of choice isn't supporting my 7+yr hardware!" ? There is NOTHING that says they HAD TO put out this support. They did it purely out of the goodness of their heart (even profit isnt an issue since anyone working on this couldve been working on other stuff, NEW cards that AMD is still making money on). No card is supported forever, and no driver is perfect.

The problem is that AMD said to use the free and open source driver when they discontinued support in their fglrx driver. Everyone might have understood incorrectly, implicitly everyone expected that feature wise the free driver would catch up in time, this includes video decoding. Not to mention that nVidia is still somewhat supporting cards that are older than the radeons HD2xxx.

That said, even if things keep coming as a best effort it's still better than nothing. I'm sure owners of laptops with radeon hd2xxx like me would gladly accept anything in the way of hardware accelerated video decoding, even if it comes with limitations due to buggy hardware.

[GreatEmerald]

Well, I never thought I'd see the day. Maybe now my HTPC will be more quiet... though it probably won't be very noticeable.

[whitecat]

When they said "best effort", I think that means "We provide these patches, it may be work in 95 % of the time but if there is bugs, don't expect us to fix them because we don't have time to work on this. Regards".

Anyway, this is a good news because many people still have these GPU and don't need to change them.

[DanL]

I appreciate the progress made here. There was no sign that the legal team would ever approve or even take the time to review the code.
I'm not sure what all of the complaining is about, other than people misinterpreting the "best effort" statement (and some rehashed radeonhd sour grapes).

[chrisr]

Sounds good to me! (Apart from the "Wait for Linux 3.18" bit...)

According to the original email:

A small Mesa patch is needed as well, cause the older hardware doesn't support field based output of video frames. So unfortunately VDPAU/OpenGL interop won't work either.

So this absence of "VDPAU/OpenGL interop" sounds like a hardware limitation.

What exactly would "VDPAU/OpenGL interop" provide? All I'm really looking for is accelerated video decode for MPEG4 / H.264, so that I can watch HD-TV more easily with my HD4890.