AMD Navi Support Makes It Into DRM-Next For Linux 5.3, AMDGPU Hits Two Million Lines

[Guest]

I've been using AMD GPUs on Linux for about 10 years now so I know for a fact AMD takes quality very seriously! Which other company can fix a bug the next day when you report something?! Which is often the case!

Oh ha ha ha. If they fixed a bug the next day, a portal to hell would have opened up. I've reported several bugs, which either don't get responses or don't get fixed. Their driver is just very shitty compared to Intel's or NVIDIA's, and they sure love being defensive about it. I'm sick of dealing with their crap.

[pete910]

I'm hoping we can arrange for at least one board partner to start officially supporting Linux or at least testing their boards with Linux.

Sapphire preferably

[bridgman]

AMD licensed the RDNA architecture to Samsung for mobile gpu chips now my question is could AMD also licensed the RDNA architecture to IBM for a open-source-only chip without closed source firmware?

Not without major design changes. We would need to ensure that opening up microcode for whatever we license would not reveal information that would support RE'ing of consumer DRM, so probably not only different microcontroller/state machines (different toolchains) but different interface to the HW in places as well.

You basically need a product/tech that you don't ever plan to sell into environments requiring consumer-style content protection.

[bridgman]

This means for me: no more AMD products and this not only includes GPUs it also includes CPUs.

it's more than just "no more AMD products", isn't it ? No more Intel, no more NVidia, no more Loongson, no more Via, no more "any vendor constrained by selling into the consumer market or using closed source microcode for other reasons".

I am not disagreeing with your position (unless you say that closed microcode in ROM/flash is OK but I think you know better than that), just trying to make clear that nothing here is unique to AMD other than us maybe being the closest to what you want.

I will point out that you will be using closed source HW that may include microcode in ROM, but I don't want to stress you out too much

Given recent improvements in CPU power and software rendering I'm a bit surprised that some of the earlier open GPU efforts have not come back to life in the form of a dumb frame buffer display. Driving modern displays at high resolutions requires some non-trivial data rates, but there seem to be programmable logic chips out there which can drive DP/HDMI today:

https://www.xilinx.com/products/inte...splayport.html
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...534488941.html
https://hackaday.com/2015/09/23/disp...-with-an-fpga/

Because for me it is just Legal-criminality of strong corporatism monopolies against individuals and the weapon against the individual is the DRM and this means build in Government Trojan horse and this is clearly a abuse of illegitimate power.

For what it's worth I see DRM and "built in Government Trojan horse" as two different issues. They both involve the concept of your hardware not being truly your own, but the technologies are different and they serve different masters.

I am sure the first one exists (I occasionally help with audits to make sure it is sufficiently secure) but the second is in that grey area between circumstantial evidence and conspiracy theory. I always act as if a Supreme Being is watching (which I don't mind) and that my system is not secure (which I do mind) but I'm actually not a big believer in the "government back door" theories re: COTS PC components.

My paranoia is more decentralized:

https://xkcd.com/2166/

[josh_walrath]

As soon as possible I will buy a IBM power9 system and i will support RISC-V-GPU and other projects.

So will I, just as soon a fully open system like that is mainstream and practical so that I won't be living in some absurdist Stallman-LARP hell in the misguided belief that my individual suffering and purchasing power will materially affect the entire computing industry.

[bridgman]

So will I, just as soon a fully open system like that is mainstream and practical so that I won't be living in some absurdist Stallman-LARP hell in the misguided belief that my individual suffering and purchasing power will materially affect the entire computing industry.

It's probably worth mentioning that fully open mainstream systems will probably never happen unless there is enough support for (ie purchasing of) early steps in that direction like the Blackbird.

Agree that individual suffering and purchasing power will probably never materially affect the entire computing industry (unless you buy one for all of your friends) but when a bunch of people make similar decisions it does make a difference.

[josh_walrath]

It's probably worth mentioning that fully open mainstream systems will probably never happen unless there is enough support for (ie purchasing of) early steps in that direction like the Blackbird.

Well, it's kind of circular; they'll never happen unless they begin happening. Do you think they'll begin happening?

I'm optimistic; it seems like we're moving in good directions with open source. Mostly. People's hearts seem in the right place. Their wallets may still be in wrong places, but even the wrong places' wallets seem to be going into better places. Windows loves Linux. J.P. Morgan loves Linux! And hearts aside, immutable, game-theoretical primitives like "we need verifiably-secure systems" drive free and open software adoption. It's harder to make hardware free, but it being open might preclude things like Intel's vulnerabilities going forward.

I think the future looks pretty bright.

Agree that individual suffering and purchasing power will probably never materially affect the entire computing industry (unless you buy one for all of your friends) but when a bunch of people make similar decisions it does make a difference.

Yeah but... math and the tragedy of the coordination problem and incentives statistically guarantee that there won't be sufficient difference whether or not I personally opt to add to that difference. Counterintuitively, individual action is meaningless systemically and free will is an illusion.

Oh god, everything's pointless. We're all doomed.

[bridgman]

Well, it's kind of circular; they'll never happen unless they begin happening. Do you think they'll begin happening?

I think they have begun happening. The Raptor POWER systems are pretty clever, in the sense that they leverage a server CPU that nobody is trying to sell into the consumer PC market and hence does not have consumer DRM to protect.

Oh god, everything's pointless. We're all doomed.

Yeah, that's another valid interpretation. I try to stay optimistic and hope that my buying decisions do make a difference, even if it is very small in isolation.