AMD Loses Its Linux Core Engineering Manager, Matthew Tippett

AMD's Catalyst Linux driver has improved substantially over the past few years. Years ago the Catalyst Linux driver was in shambles with its performance being utterly poor, it lacked enthusiast-oriented features like CrossFire and OverDrive, and ATI customers had to wait months -- sometimes in excess of a year -- for any driver support in Linux. All of this though has changed with AMD now providing same-day Linux support, a near feature parity to the Windows Catalyst driver, and first-rate performance. Playing a critical role in improving the ATI Linux support has been Matthew Tippett, serving as the engineering manager for Linux Core Engineering since joining ATI Technologies in 2003. To put it in perspective, when Matthew started work at ATI, only the FireGL graphics cards were supported under Linux. However, today will be his last day serving ATI / Advanced Micro Devices.

Of course, most of the high and low points of ATI/AMD's Linux history can be found right here at Phoronix from the introduction of their new driver back in 2007 to Dell and others calling for better ATI Linux drivers, to their same-day Linux support, the critical moment when he and John Bridgman announced NDA-free ATI GPU specifications, their whole XvBA debacle, and dozens of other significant events over the years. Worth reading is also The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux, which had gone over some of the process changes to the ATI Linux driver brought in part by Matthew Tippett. Matthew though would especially like to thank everyone on his software team for their hard work over the years.

Aspiring for a new set of challenges, Matthew felt it was time to leave AMD after six years of work on completely overhauling their Linux graphics support. So what is Matthew going to next? This Australian native will be moving from Toronto to Sunnyvale, California where he is joining Palm and additionally will be working with us on the Phoronix Test Suite. At Palm, Matthew Tippett will be serving as the head of Linux kernel development with their Linux-based webOS smart-phone platform. With the Phoronix Test Suite, Matthew is working with us at Phoronix Media to help make this premiere Linux-based testing software an indispensable commercial tool for ISVs, IHVs, and upstream parties. As Phoronix Media launches a new commercial venture around the Phoronix Test Suite, Matthew will continue to help grow the Phoronix Test Suite with new ideas and white-papers thanks to his tenured experience and coming from one of the companies that uses the Phoronix Test Suite to complement their in-house testing software. A new web property will also be launched in the coming months.

Aside from his involvement with the Phoronix Test Suite, Matthew will also be contributing some articles to Phoronix. Of course, this content will be about Linux graphics with regard to RandR, DRI2, and other pressing matters. One of his first articles at Phoronix is going to be "Xinerama, RandR, Eyefinity. Oh My!" Matthew (also known on the web as mtippett) has already been active in our forums with providing his interesting insight and invaluable expertise on different Linux graphics topics.

Matthew's successor at Advanced Micro Devices to lead their Catalyst Linux driver into the next decade is not yet known. Any comments, wishes, or thanks can be sent to Matthew in our forums or via email now at matthew [at] phoronix.com.

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