Dissecting The ATI/AMD Linux Driver

Looking over the number of features and bug fixes in the past 19 driver releases, the number of issues resolved has remained fairly consistent throughout the evolution of the fglrx driver, but as you can see from the graph, recently there has been a slow-down in the number of reported fixes. This is another sign we are going through a slow-down as AMD is preparing for something huge. As far as the features go, in the past ten months we have seen 10 new features officially introduced in the change-log while in the nine months before that we had seen 21 features made public. These features range from new X.Org and kernel support to new product support and various driver features like the events daemon, dynamic display management, and much more.

While the release notes for the past few ATI/AMD Linux driver releases have been rather unexciting, it's evident based upon the fglrx history that there is new work going into the driver. For the record, the lack of recent features/bug-fixes is not attributed to ceasing Linux development or scaling back operations. Judging by the file statistics, there was a lot of work to going on between the 8.38.8 and 8.39.4 driver releases while what the public seen from the new driver was just Fedora 7 support along with watermark problems in many cases. History repeats itself -- this is true with the ATI/AMD Linux driver. The fglrx 8.40 series will likely repeat the 8.20 series when it comes to the number of features. This, of course, aligns with all of the information we have been reporting for months now that later this year should be the most interesting time yet for the ATI/AMD Linux driver as there should be an onslaught of new things to come.

Summer is almost over in Ontario, Canada, but it looks like Markham is heating up for what may be a very warm fall and winter. Other recommended (and related) reads include The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux, ATI R200 Linux Driver Redux, and The State of ATI Linux 2007. Discuss this in the Phoronix Forums.

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