Open Specs For ATI All-In-Wonder Cards?

One of the questions that has come up since we reported that AMD is preparing for another GPU documentation release and that R100/200 specifications will be made available, is whether internal information on the All-In-Wonder graphics cards will be published.

We have found out from AMD that publishing All-In-Wonder details are currently undecided and will be determined once they finish pumping out the rest of their GPU documentation. Their key reasons for this uncertainty comes down to the intellectual property on some of the parts belonging to other vendors and then video protection schemas. In order to release the All-In-Wonder documentation that impacts third-party ASICs, they must first attain the right to distribute this licensed information or have the vendor directly release the details. The ATI All-In-Wonders must also detect copy-protected video coming in and then restrict some functionality (such as being sent to an unprotected record-able output). At this point it's unknown from a legal point of view what their options are to circumvent this latter roadblock.

So right now the future of the specifications covering video-in/video-out functionality on ATI All-In-Wonder products is uncertain. If they do enter the public domain, they will trail behind the other documentation releases so don't expect anything in the near future. As always, once we hear anything else we'll be sure to pass it along.