There May Finally Be Better ATI Linux Video Playback

[Mr James]

If AMD opened up and supported Linux and Wine more, all those Linux users with nVidia cards or old ATI cards would be buying from which vendor next?
AMD would become THE video card vendor for Linux.

[miles]

Actually no, that's not what we are saying, but I'm sure you knew that

Of course you can't be heard saying that, but it's still the gist of it. If proprietary OS users of your proprietary drivers hack your DRM, there won't be much excuse not to release the API publicly, which would be benefit other OS. And to no cost to your open source efforts, since the harm would have been done by proprietary OS+driver proponents (those damn Windows pirates).

Not that I'd wish that of course, since somebody at AMD would have the sorry job of having to find another excuse why you're not allowed to document the API.
That, or we might finally hear the real reason you can't document it (if there really is one, not that irrational decisions don't happen all the time).

[AdrenalineJunky]

If AMD opened up and supported Linux and Wine more, all those Linux users with nVidia cards or old ATI cards would be buying from which vendor next?
AMD would become THE video card vendor for Linux.

but they may be working on things that you don't care about but other customers do (and, predictably, those customers are wondering why the heck we work on Linux).

sure, its a lovely thought, i mean, i for one would thoroughly applaud if AMD did decide it was going to start contributing code to a third party project to make up for that projects lack of development resources on thier hardware, and for me it would be really cool if they just reasign a bunch of those windows developers so thier linux driver could be the best ever.

it would also be really cool if they started giving all thier hardware away for free.

well.. at least until they went bankrupt.

[BlackStar]

sure, its a lovely thought, i mean, i for one would thoroughly applaud if AMD did decide it was going to start contributing code to a third party project to make up for that projects lack of development resources on thier hardware

They actually do contribute directly. AMD's demo team is dispersed to AAA gamedev companies around the globe: Valve (3 devs), Bungie (1), Firaxis (2), RockStar (1), Big Huge (1) and a few others.

Nvidia does the same thing.

[smitty3268]

so nobody pre-announces and that's just the way it is. When we had OpenCL and other vendors didn't, nobody pre-announced, same for EyeFinity etc...

Hasn't Intel already announced that they do plan to support OpenCL? I thought the only question there was how much of it would actually be accelerated vs how much was running on the CPU. And I thought NVidia had support around the same time that you guys did, although perhaps that's wrong. Eyefinity simply doesn't strike me as an important feature. I've never used more than 2 monitors at once, and the same is true for the vast majority of users. I really don't care if you announce something like that or not. Same with stuff like 3D Vision, or whatever AMD calls it.

[bridgman]

Hasn't Intel already announced that they do plan to support OpenCL?

I believe Intel announced the same day they released the alpha OpenCL support, ie they did not pre-announce either.

Eyefinity simply doesn't strike me as an important feature. I've never used more than 2 monitors at once, and the same is true for the vast majority of users. I really don't care if you announce something like that or not. Same with stuff like 3D Vision, or whatever AMD calls it.

This is the curse of the PC market (and probably every other market as well). Features you might think of as useless are considered very important by other customers, and those same customers may not give a rat's a** about the features *you* think are important. The challenge is finding the right balance across all of those different customers, and that balance is constantly evolving.

[smitty3268]

This is the curse of the PC market (and probably every other market as well). Features you might think of as useless are considered very important by other customers, and those same customers may not give a rat's a** about the features *you* think are important. The challenge is finding the right balance across all of those different customers, and that balance is constantly evolving.

I know that's generally true, but come on. What percentage of the consumer base watches video? 90%? Compared to how many have > 2 monitors. .1%? Maybe less? I think it's a stretch to try to even compare those features in terms of usefulness.

I guess maybe i'm falling into the trap of considering fglrx a desktop driver. I suppose if you only consider the workstation market then maybe driving a ton of monitors is closer to being as useful. It's just that normally you'd consider the workstation market the niche, not the other way around.

[deanjo]

And I thought NVidia had support around the same time that you guys did, although perhaps that's wrong.

AMD and Nvidia first demonstrated openCL back in 2008. AMD only had a CPU implementation where as Nvidia had theirs going on the GPU. Nvidia released their implementation to their development channel on April 20, 2009. AMD didn't release their GPU implementation outside of OS X until October 13, 2009.

wikipedia has a good timeline on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

[madbiologist]

I guess maybe i'm falling into the trap of considering fglrx a desktop driver. I suppose if you only consider the workstation market then maybe driving a ton of monitors is closer to being as useful. It's just that normally you'd consider the workstation market the niche, not the other way around.

In terms of numbers of cards/boards, you're probably right. In term's of dollars, I think it's the other way around.

[devius]

I know that's generally true, but come on. What percentage of the consumer base watches video? 90%? Compared to how many have > 2 monitors. .1%? Maybe less? I think it's a stretch to try to even compare those features in terms of usefulness.

This is your personal view. Remember the graphics survey results? http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._results&num=3

I know these numbers don't represent the majority of linux users, but there at least 50% of those who entered the survey that are using more than one display. I'm not saying that video playback isn't important, because it is, but something like eyefinity is also important. Have you seen those videos showing games running on eyefinity setups? I have to say it's pretty impressive. I wouldn't do any serious gaming on that setup, but in terms of workspace it would also be a very good feature to have.