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RadeonHD Driver Takes A Blow In Novell Layoffs

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  • #21
    Originally posted by deanjo View Post
    Question being why doesn't ATI just send out the hardware under NDA to such developers with a proven track record? They send tonnes of pre-release hardware to review sites why can't the same be done for the devels?
    also with Mr. Bridgman and Alex on staff, it's not like AMD doesn't have people who can TELL them who the good driver developers are, and who should be shipped some hardware.

    ***

    I will point out though that most of the pre-release hardware sent to review sights actually comes from 3rd parties, e.g. Sapphire.

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    • #22
      If only they had a budget for that kind of thing....

      Beancounter: "Let me get this straight...you want money to send some stuff to a guy who used to work for somebody else but got laid off, has no contract with us to do anything, in hope he might work for no salary on a low-visibility project that is costing us a great deal and has absolutely no chance of bringing in revenue in the future?"

      Bridgeman: "Yes, that's pretty much it."

      Beancounter: "I just came up with a brillinat idea of how we can save even more money. Clean out your desk."

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      • #23
        Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
        Beancounter: "Let me get this straight...you want money to [spend money] on a low-visibility project that is costing us a great deal and has absolutely no chance of bringing in revenue in the future?"
        The way you put it, there wouldn't be any reason to spend any money whatsoever. Obviously AMD is spending a lot of Bridgman and his team's time, lawyer time, executive time running things up and down the flag pole for release and so on. Compare that to say 10x $400+$100 for shipping and handling to the top 10 developers and it's a bargain. There might be a lot of other practical matters that means it's not possible but pure cost couldn't possibly be one of them.

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        • #24
          has absolutely no chance of bringing in revenue in the future?"
          Actually, this isn't correct. The potential revenue is actually huge. AMD / ATi makes money off of chips that are sold, not off of selling software. Their goal, as a company, is to get the most chips into the market that they can.

          An Open-Sourced driver means there are more platforms the chip could be supported.

          Take the R200, or Radeon 8500 series for example. Imagine for a second if somebody ordered a bunch of R200 chips from AMD for a series of netbooks, low-end laptops, or so on. On today's manufacturing process's, the chip could be a lot smaller, and cheaper. TechArp notes that the Radeon 8500 was built on a .15 micron process with around 60million transistors. Today's lowest end RadeonHD, the 4350, has around 242 million transistors on a 55nm process, so it's chip made almost 3 times smaller than the 8500, while being several times more complex.

          While AMD no longer supports this chipset internally with Fgrlx, that chip IS well supported under the X.org ATi, and is quite capable of driving tear-free video acceleration, 3D effects, and so on. An R200 built on a 55nm process would be astoundingly small, and could quite possibly run without any direct cooling.

          Okay, I'll admit this is an extreme case, but it's just one way AMD could use their existing product portfolio to turn a profit with an Open-Source development process on the driver side.

          Having an Open-Licensed driver also makes it easier to sell to OEM's, such as Dell. Remember the Dell Ubuntu systems launched with Nvidia due to Nvidia's reputation. However, after improvements to the ATi driver options, Dell started offering systems with ATi chips : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NjYwMQ

          which is AMD's goal... to sell more chips.

          In my view, any accountant who can't wrap their heads around the business model AMD works on, and can't see how open-source can benefit that model, doesn't need to be working for AMD.
          Last edited by Saist; 03 March 2009, 05:08 AM.

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          • #25
            Novell has enough money for many developers of duplicated non-functional crap called "Mono" but not for basic HW drivers?

            BTW: Anyone else surprised by Nouveau progressing at same pace as AMD open source drivers ? At least as far as I can tell.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by duby229 View Post
              And it is a fact that Novell is out to screw the open source community.
              Oh yes, Novell certainly are a crafty bunch of miscreants. They contribute to the kernel, actually, they're they second biggest contributor behind RedHat and they're ahead of IBM.

              What dastardly deeds could they be planning?

              They contribute to KDE and still have 2 developers working on RadeonHD.

              Pricks!

              They're sure out to screw the open source community!

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              • #27
                Originally posted by deanjo View Post
                Question being why doesn't ATI just send out the hardware under NDA to such developers with a proven track record? They send tonnes of pre-release hardware to review sites why can't the same be done for the devels?
                It's believable. And it's not unheard of to get such hardware out of them (I've done it before in the past trying to verify LGP stuff- it's still sitting in my antiquated G4 PowerMac.)

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by jonnycat26 View Post
                  They're sure out to screw the open source community!
                  Actually, I don't think they're out to screw the community, per se. But with the recent remarks they've made about Linux, the pact they signed with MS, and the risks they take doing things for "interoperability" with Windows stuff (i.e. Mono...) by doing stuff that is very likely to be patented (and while Bilski will eventually clean out most of the risks in question- the bulk of their portfolio is on protocols, and other similar software "patents" which CAN'T be patented per Bilski...) which means they're opening up anyone using it to the risk of something like TomTom is now facing...they're not quite sane either.

                  They're not our friend like you make them out to be.

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
                    Actually, I don't think they're out to screw the community, per se. But with the recent remarks they've made about Linux, the pact they signed with MS, and the risks they take doing things for "interoperability" with Windows stuff (i.e. Mono...) by doing stuff that is very likely to be patented (and while Bilski will eventually clean out most of the risks in question- the bulk of their portfolio is on protocols, and other similar software "patents" which CAN'T be patented per Bilski...) which means they're opening up anyone using it to the risk of something like TomTom is now facing...they're not quite sane either.

                    They're not our friend like you make them out to be.
                    They're not our enemy like you make them out to be.

                    Mono is the pet project of Miguel, and I really don't get his reasoning behind it. Then again, I don't get gnome either.

                    Didn't redhat sign a similar deal with Microsoft? Are they the enemy too?

                    Fact is, Novell has been very good to Linux. I know, for a fact, that they've pushed Linux into places/companies where RedHat has failed.


                    Edit: BTW -- If you don't like Novell, you could always, ya know, just remove all of the Novell contributed code from the Kernel/QT/KDE.
                    Last edited by jonnycat26; 03 March 2009, 10:02 AM.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by mirza View Post
                      BTW: Anyone else surprised by Nouveau progressing at same pace as AMD open source drivers ? At least as far as I can tell.
                      wtf? They are nowhere near to any usuable 3d acceleration and you call their progress comparable to that of radeon/hd?
                      They don't have reliable VT switching either... they're basically same as nv but with 2D acceleration. Apart from the general fact that the driver code for radeon/hd is probably /much/ cleaner.

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