AMD Publishes AMDGPU UVD Firmware For Southern Islands

[RussianNeuroMancer]

complaining about it.

Direct quote and link to message with complain.

You've been moaning for years

Direct quote and link to messages (over years) so we can have something to discuss here.

even a few posts ago

Again, direct quote and link to message.

because of this suddenly super-great support.

I been saying that for nine years in case you missed it. You know, since "Tear Free Desktop" checkbox in fglrx settings (years before Nvidia fixed V-Sync for KWin and Compiz) and since official CrossFireX support in fglrx (eight years before Nvidia official Optimus support).

At this point I starting to think that you confusing me with someone else.

Nice try, but I can see right trough your lame attempt at trying to pretend like you were arguing for something entirely different

Dude, it's you who reading "something entirely different" in my messages. All I said was a). supporting old GPUs is good PR and it's working; b). "1%" argument is bullshit because you can prove anything with it, even not supporting Linux at all, which doesn't makes sense*; c). last time I argued with you I stated my preference for support by mainline instead of BSP/SDK/etc. several times. That it. Again, that it. Really. You come up with everything else on your own, like complains, moaning, demand, and other stuff I never mentioned. Maybe it's language barrier or maybe you confusing me with someone else. Or maybe you don't like our last last conversation and simply assume worse where it was never intended to looks like this. Chill out.

* For example due to existence of other markets besides gaming.

[L_A_G]

1% vs 90% - you know what is reasonable to expect for 1% userbase? Nothing. It's reasonable to not expect any support. So, again, with 1% you can prove any bullshit, including no support for Linux at all. Because, it's reasonable to not support 1% userbase. Here the situation is so simple you don't even have to dig out a calculator to conclude that it just isn't worth the investment. Expect any support for a platform that only has about 1% of the market is simply entitled. There is just even nothing to discuss, 90% vs 1%, plain and simple

Yet you've been moaning about how they should put even more effort into supporting a niche of a nice market... They're already being very generous, but you've still got the gall to be complaining about it. Ever heard of the expression about looking a gift horse in the mouth?

How did you missed for 100500 the time that AMD in fact do support GPUs from 2+ years. On both of Windows and Linux. I don't "moan" or "demanding" because there is nothing to demand or moan about - they already support it, like it or not. Ah and you don't forget about friend's kid with Navi, but missed friend with R9 290 who will buy new AMD GPU exactly because his old AMD GPU was well supported over all these years. For some reason you choose to ignore that AMD in fact already support their old GPUs for 1% userbase much better than you want it to be from your own "business perspective" that somehow turns out to be very different from AMD managers "business perspective".

You've been moaning for years about how 1st and 2nd gen GCN aren't officially and fully supported under AMGPU and thus doesn't get support for Vulkan API (both released 2 years after the last 2nd gen GCN hardware was discontinued), even a few posts ago, but now their support is somehow suddenly really great? As soon as I got trough to you that demanding top-tier support for long since discontinued hardware on a niche platform is plain unreasonable you immediately flip-flop to say that it's really great that my business-based arguments are bogus because of this suddenly super-great support.

Once again, so you don't miss it:

Nice try, but I can see right trough your lame attempt at trying to pretend like you were arguing for something entirely different after I proved how absurd your argument was.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

1% vs 90% - you know what is reasonable to expect for 1% userbase? Nothing. It's reasonable to not expect any support. So, again, with 1% you can prove any bullshit, including no support for Linux at all. Because, it's reasonable to not support 1% userbase. Here the situation is so simple you don't even have to dig out a calculator to conclude that it just isn't worth the investment. Expect any support for a platform that only has about 1% of the market is simply entitled. There is just even nothing to discuss, 90% vs 1%, plain and simple

Yet here you still are, constantly moaning about how AMD doesn't support their GPUs from 2+ years before AMDGPU was released to the public well enough under it.

How did you missed for 100500 the time that AMD in fact do support GPUs from 2+ years. On both of Windows and Linux. I don't "moan" or "demanding" because there is nothing to demand or moan about - they already support it, like it or not. Ah and you don't forget about friend's kid with Navi, but missed friend with R9 290 who will buy new AMD GPU exactly because his old AMD GPU was well supported over all these years. For some reason you choose to ignore that AMD in fact already support their old GPUs for 1% userbase much better than you want it to be from your own "business perspective" that somehow turns out to be very different from AMD managers "business perspective".

Once again, so you don't miss it:
I don't need to demand or ask for anything. They already support support their old GPU for Linux userbase well enough, including their move described in the article. If you don't like what they already do - it's your problem. They already doing this anyway, regardless of what we post here, or how "business perspective" looks like from your point of view.

[L_A_G]

Yet they support such hardware for years. This is the very reason my latest GPU is from AMD, my next GPU will be from AMD, and GPU I recommends to people around me will be from AMD. Oh, and by the way, my friend noticed yesterday that he been using R9 290 for six years, and it's still very well supported. So guess which one GPU he will buy now?

Sure, they support it on Windows with the much smaller additional workload due to not having to write and test a whole load of new code for a new driver along with a userbase over 90 times the size of the Linux one.

It's about having reasonable expectations. To expect this much lesser amount of work on a platform that has well over 90% of the market is perfectly reasonable. However to expect a considerably higher amount of work on a platform that only has about 1% of the market is simply entitled. Particularly when it's for hardware that has been out of production for years and is about adding support for things that didn't exist when the hardware was released.

Good, reliable support over years for old hardware sells new hardware, but it's seems like you don't understand it. Maybe because your field is engineering, but not management or sales?

I am an engineer by trade, but these days we do have to take mandatory business school classes and work with business school students on projects so we also understand the calculations behind the decisions if something is worth the investment in money and engineering resources. Here the situation is so simple you don't even have to dig out a calculator to conclude that it just isn't worth the investment. If engineers want to work on this in on their own time than that's fine, but from a business perspective this just isn't worth it.

We don't demand anything, instead we are just free to make any purchase decision - you don't like it? Well, that's your problem, not ours.

Yet here you still are, constantly moaning about how AMD doesn't support their GPUs from 2+ years before AMDGPU was released to the public well enough under it.

What if their new hardware doing just fine and they actually can afford improving GCN1 support? My other friend's kid got Navi few days ago, happily getting 60 fps in Metro Exodus on Ultra. Yeah, on Linux.

You know why your friend's kid is playing Metro Exodus happily at 60 FPS on their shiny new AMD graphics card? Because AMD put in huge amounts of effort to support the shiny new graphics card from even before it was launched and are still improving it. It's so well supported because they prioritized support for new hardware instead of wasting that limited time and engineering resources on adding new features for old hardware that's been out of production for years by now.

Can you guess where the focus of their engineering effort is right now? It's on supporting the next pieces of hardware coming down the pipeline just as well as that shiny Navi card at launch and beyond.

You either use "1%" as argument or you don't.
If you do - you can use it to "proof" pretty much any bullshit against gaming on Linux. Just like this:

I use that 1% figure, which is based on Steam statistics, to justify what's actually reasonable to expect of AMD. The amount of work that AMD puts into their Linux efforts is already more than generous and what you're demanding pushes the line towards plain absurdity from a business logic perspective. It's honestly like you're on the autistic spectrum or something when you keep talking about the business argument for extremely generous support and I keep pointing out that there isn't a business argument for that kind of extreme generosity and to demand it like you do is plain entitled.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

All engineer time put into supporting long since discontinued hardware is time away from supporting supported hardware used by many more people.

Yet they support such hardware for years. This is the very reason my latest GPU is from AMD, my next GPU will be from AMD, and GPU I recommends to people around me will be from AMD. Oh, and by the way, my friend noticed yesterday that he been using R9 290 for six years, and it's still very well supported. So guess which one GPU he will buy now?

Good, reliable support over years for old hardware sells new hardware, but it's seems like you don't understand it. Maybe because your field is engineering, but not management or sales?

We don't demand anything, instead we are just free to make any purchase decision - you don't like it? Well, that's your problem, not ours.

Well here you are moaning about how they should

No, I simply described what happened.

You're free to insist they should support hardware that's been out of production for years with all the latest features, but I'm still going to point out that this is inevitably done at the cost of support for more recent hardware

What if their new hardware doing just fine and they actually can afford improving GCN1 support? My other friend's kid got Navi few days ago, happily getting 60 fps in Metro Exodus on Ultra. Yeah, on Linux.

Now that's a pretty poor straw man right there... We're not talking about cancelling investment altogether by rather extending a new graphics driver to support hardware that was discontinued years before said driver was ever released to the public.

You either use "1%" as argument or you don't.
If you do - you can use it to "proof" pretty much any bullshit against gaming on Linux. Just like this:

Again, demanding AMD go over and beyond writing loads of unique code for long since discontinued hardware when you're only 1% of the PC gaming market is just plain entitled. That's the best way I can describe it all.

iit's a pretty wasteful effort as it only caters to a small minority of users in what's already a very niche platform with only 1% market penetration.

[L_A_G]

Then Linux gamers simply deserve nothing - that your point? Because, you know, if we take this "1%" into account every time - any investment into Linux desktop/gaming/etc should not happen. Ever.

Now that's a pretty poor straw man right there... We're not talking about cancelling investment altogether by rather extending a new graphics driver to support hardware that was discontinued years before said driver was ever released to the public.

Again, demanding AMD go over and beyond writing loads of unique code for long since discontinued hardware when you're only 1% of the PC gaming market is just plain entitled. That's the best way I can describe it all.

Yes, as I said from the beginning - it's more PR move:

Yes, a one that sucks up loads of engineer man hours that could be used to improve things for newer hardware used by many more people. All engineer time put into supporting long since discontinued hardware is time away from supporting supported hardware used by many more people.

My guess is that AMD managers know shit they are doing a bit, and somehow they decided return out of this PR move will cover driver improvement cost. So maybe, just maybe, AMD managers can do their job better than you can do their job? Is that possibility, in your opinion?

Well here you are moaning about how they should spend less time and money on supporting current hardware and more on supporting hardware that was discontinued years ago because that's somehow "a good PR move". AMD doesn't have an infinite number of engineers to work on their Linux drivers and have to prioritize what they do have. All effort put into supporting legacy devices is effort that would otherwise be spend on supporting more current hardware. It's as simple as that.

You're free to insist they should support hardware that's been out of production for years with all the latest features, but I'm still going to point out that this is inevitably done at the cost of support for more recent hardware and it's a pretty wasteful effort as it only caters to a small minority of users in what's already a very niche platform with only 1% market penetration.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

and the fact that the Linux market is something like 1% of the total PC gaming market

Then Linux gamers simply deserve nothing - that your point? Because, you know, if we take this "1%" into account every time - any investment into Linux desktop/gaming/etc should not happen. Ever.

with no clear return on investment

Yes, as I said from the beginning - it's more PR move:

Sane customers still take vendor commitment to prolonged hardware support and promises fulfillment into account during shopping for new hardware. Remember how to long it took for AMD to shake off reputation of vendor who frequently drop GPU support?

So getting GCN1 support into good shape in open source driver is good PR and good advertisement for both of new customers who move from Nvidia to AMD and for current customers who run previous generations of AMD hardware. Both groups will see this as good move and buy/recommend new hardware by AMD with much higher probability.

My guess is that AMD managers know shit they are doing a bit, and somehow they decided return out of this PR move will cover driver improvement cost. So maybe, just maybe, AMD managers can do their job better than you can do their job? Is that possibility, in your opinion?

[L_A_G]

All people expect is at least same level of support AMD provide to Windows users. And, you know, both of Vulkan and DXVA works on GCN1 with AMD drivers for Windows. So I not sure why you insist that Linux drivers should be less feature complete than Windows drivers, as if Linux customers paid less.

Considering the amount of work necessary and the fact that the Linux market is something like 1% of the total PC gaming market, demanding to get the same level of support as the platform that holds over 90% of the PC gaming market is simply entitled!

Also I want to remind there is competitors and customers is always free to shop elsewhere next time. So move on from comparing AMD Linux drivers with engines to comparing it AMD Linux drivers with Intel Linux drivers, Nvidia Linux drivers and finally AMD Windows drivers. No need for making up false analogies with cars and engines, as you see.

You do know that Nvidia has a single unified driver codebase they've had for over a decade and are thus able to support their hardware much easier on loads of different platforms? To support GCN1 and GCN2 hardware on Linux AMD has to go back and write loads of code and test loads of unique code for their much newer AMDGPU drivers. All Nvidia has to do to support their own older hardware is to just not throw out pre-existing code.

This large amount of extra work to support hardware what went out of production years before the AMDGPU driver was even released is exactly why I used the car analogy. You don't seem to understand how graphics drivers work, that AMDGPU isn't the same codebase as the old fglrx and/or that AMD isn't a non-profit.

The simple truth of the matter is that the transition to the new AMDGPU codebase for cards from years before this codebase was released to the public is going to require a lot of extra work with no clear return on investment. AMD is a company, not a charity, an academic institution or other form of non-profit. You can see Intel taking a similar approach to their new ANV codebase and I'm pretty sure Nvidia would do something very similar if they moved to a new more modern codebase.

[chithanh]

my statement of "haven't sold any for a while" is still correct but the "while" is a few months shorter than I had previously thought.

Actually, I just remembered that strange AMD "Cato" APU, which appeared around April 2019 and according to some reports, uses the same silicon as the Xbox One APU (GFX7 / 2nd gen GCN). The only product that contains Cato and that normal consumers can buy is the Chuwi AeroBox mini with A9-9820 which has first been sighted in March 2020.

So unless Chuwi based their product on something which AMD already stopped taking orders for, I would expect that AMD has very recently been selling those.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Umm... You claim that you're not talking about dropping support, yet you quote yourself talking about not supporting hardware like they should. Do you not see this?

You're talking "feature completeness" with an API that came out a year after the last GCN2 hardware was discontinued and an application that uses it which came out two years after that. This is exactly why I compared your demands for full AMDGPU support on long since discontinued hardware is like demanding that carmakers retrofit parts made for newer models onto older models for free. You got what what you paid for back then and you haven't lost anything, but you're demanding a whole bunch more for free.

All people expect is at least same level of support AMD provide to Windows users. And, you know, both of Vulkan and DXVA works on GCN1 with AMD drivers for Windows. So I not sure why you insist that Linux drivers should be less feature complete than Windows drivers, as if Linux customers paid less.

Also I want to remind there is competitors and customers is always free to shop elsewhere next time. So move on from comparing AMD Linux drivers with engines to comparing it AMD Linux drivers with Intel Linux drivers, Nvidia Linux drivers and finally AMD Windows drivers. No need for making up false analogies with cars and engines, as you see.