AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code

[rbmorse]

I'm sure this sounds really bad, but you guys should be thanking the companies that are customers of AMD and pressured them into doing all this, because otherwise, AMD wouldn't give a rat's ass about you and me (= the Linux user) :P

When your market share is less than 1 percent (and after all this time, to boot) it's hard to get people very interested in you. Fact of life.

[_txf_]

You're both right

What I said was that we would spend some time to see if it was possible to open up the UVD hardware, but unless you hear me say otherwise you should assume that it's not going to happen.

Any chance that later uvd implementations will be more opensource friendly?

*dreams of os hardware bitstream decoding...then slaps himself for being so presumptuous*

[kraftman]

When your market share is less than 1 percent (and after all this time, to boot) it's hard to get people very interested in you. Fact of life.

Bullshit, stop repeating myths about this holly 1 percent. It was good few years ago. Only idiot can say it's just 1 percent and no matter if some company etc. said that. Do they have magical way to count every Linux machine? If someone buys computer with Windows and then he replaces that system to Linux only Windows is counted. Not only market share matters but quality.

[d2kx]

@News:


(Source, made by the girlfriend of a friend of mine)

[rbmorse]

Bullshit, stop repeating myths about this holly 1 percent. It was good few years ago. Only idiot can say it's just 1 percent and no matter if some company etc. said that. Do they have magical way to count every Linux machine? If someone buys computer with Windows and then he replaces that system to Linux only Windows is counted. Not only market share matters but quality.

How do you determine market share? Pull numbers that make you feel good out of your ass?

But...I'll make you feel better. When your market share is less than 2 percent (and after all this time, to boot) it's hard to get people very interested in you. Fact of life.

[bridgman]

Any chance that later uvd implementations will be more opensource friendly?

*dreams of os hardware bitstream decoding...then slaps himself for being so presumptuous*

We are trying to make future GPU hardware more open source friendly and we have made a bit of progress already but most of the "ideal solutions" from an open source POV, particularly those related to video processing, end up raising the build cost for all markets so those changes tend not to make it into the product. The design pipeline is pretty long though, so the chips we can influence today won't be shipping for 2-3 years.

Bullshit, stop repeating myths about this holly 1 percent. It was good few years ago. Only idiot can say it's just 1 percent and no matter if some company etc. said that. Do they have magical way to count every Linux machine? If someone buys computer with Windows and then he replaces that system to Linux only Windows is counted. Not only market share matters but quality.

So far the best numbers we have for PC market share come from analyzing web site hits, since that measures which OS is running on the machine "right now" rather than what it was sold with. Those numbers put Linux at just under 1% share and relatively constant, Windows at around 90% and dropping slowly, MacOS at around 8% and growing slowly. There are some quirks with web browser and OS reporting so our guess is that Linux is slightly under-reported as a result -- I use 2% for planning which I believe is higher than today's market share but I do expect to see some additional growth.

Using web site hits obviously leaves out embedded systems and PCs without internet connections but for consumer PC market analysis that is probably reasonable (since we have other channels for embedded support).

The server market is significantly different -- Linux is closer to 25% than 1% -- but servers tend to use stone-age graphics so again I think it's reasonable to exclude those numbers. The commercial workstation market also has a higher percentage of Linux users (mostly coming over from the proprietary Unix world) but workstation is pretty much entirely a closed-source business because of the extremely high performance expectations.

[DoDoENT]

The R500 is perfectly supported, full 3D and all!

I can't say that. I'm using a R500-based card (Mobility X1600), and I'm stick to fglrx, because open source radeon driver lacks PowerPlay support (which I really really need on my laptop), and the framerate on most of the games (nexuiz, open arena, scorched3d, counter strike over wine) is at least two times higher than with the radeon driver.

For that reason I can't use compiz effects, because I can't watch video while effects are on. I would really like to know how can tearless video work with radeon driver, but not with fglrx. Even 3D applications don't flicker with compiz turned on, and all that without DRI2. I'm not the driver developer, but my guess is that while using fglrx, compiz always redraws the whole screen, while while using radeon, it redraws parts of the screen where changes occurred. I can see that when I start a full screen 3D game with compiz turned on: with radeon, the only part of the screen that flickers is the one where is conky placed (or any other window that has to be redrawed often), and with fglrx, the whole screen flickers.

Btw., keep up with good work, AMD! Thank you very much for releasing the documentation for your graphics cards. Please, release the PowerPlay documentation ASAP - all ATI laptop users would be very grateful.

[bridgman]

Power management info for 5xx is mostly out there already (in the AtomBIOS header & tables) and is gradually being included into the open source drivers. Power management for 6xx and up is quite different; that's next on our list but is going to be both time-consuming to document and difficult to use.

Right now most of the open source power management work is being done in the userspace drivers, which limits the amount of power saving possible -- eventually power management is going to have to be done in the drm (kernel module) if we want to match what the proprietary drivers can do.

3D apps *should* flicker under Compiz even with the open source drivers, unless you have the "don't redirect fullscreen windows" option set in Compiz and are running a fullscreen app (that works with fglrx as well). The video code in fglrx is being upgraded so you should continue to see improvements there.

[kraftman]

How do you determine market share? Pull numbers that make you feel good out of your ass?

Let's say Linux usage on desktops. Like Bridgman said: market share come from analyzing web site hits. That's correct, but some people count it as I mentioned before. Many Linux users just keep as far as possible from some sites that are being used to count Linux market share. It's enough for me just to use highest quality system to feel good. How do you explain that few years ago people was repeating same myth about 1%? Linux is growing faster than before, so it's strange.

But...I'll make you feel better. When your market share is less than 2 percent (and after all this time, to boot) it's hard to get people very interested in you. Fact of life.

This way you made yourself feel out of your ass better?

EDIT:

What time to boot?

@bridgman

Btw. Now I'm sure that my next card will be AMD/Ati :> Thanks for that!

[sundown]

I can't say that. I'm using a R500-based card (Mobility X1600), and I'm stick to fglrx, because open source radeon driver lacks PowerPlay support (which I really really need on my laptop), and the framerate on most of the games (nexuiz, open arena, scorched3d, counter strike over wine) is at least two times higher than with the radeon driver.

Let me tell you, I'm a Mobility X1600 camper and so far I'm happy with the open-source driver.

PowerPlay is WIP, as John mentioned, don't worry.

I will happily play Nexuiz with the crappy OpenGL 1.3 implementation of this driver anyday over fglrx that hangs my computer upon exiting Nexuiz.

Compiz is waaaaaaaaaaaaay faster than what fglrx delivers. 2d is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay faster. Even probably OGL 1.3 is faster than OGL 1.3 in fglrx.

Tear-freaking-free video playback!
Flicker-freaking-free video playback with compiz!

So to me, why you use fglrx, is a bit unjustified when you have in mind all the goodies coming in 2009 like Gallium, KMS, DRI2.

I will not be using fglrx anytime soon, even if they decode video with the GPU, but that won't be possible on r500 anyway. Fglrx is just one long, boring drag. I've had enough of it.