HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD

[billyswong]

Can you be more specific? I never noticed any different behavior between HDMI and DP.

I am talking about issue such as

https://superuser.com/questions/1823512/monitors-swapping-and-windows-moving-on-pc-wakeup

and

https://superuser.com/questions/1640338/application-windows-all-move-to-main-display-after-screens-turn-back-on

[chithanh]

I wonder what is better a Passive Cable that sends the data as is or an active one that does dithering, upscaling, frequency scaling and other things.

The active adapter does nothing of that sort. It just translates between DP and HDMI signaling and protocol.
DP++ based passive adapters are more simple but otherwise there are only disadvantages of this approach. Complexity on host side increases, not supported via USB-C and/or MST hubs, etc.

AMD can't legally do it. They have access to the spec and proprietary implementations of it. They are tainted already. The developers of a clean room implementation would have to be able to prove to a court that they've never had any contact or influence or any kind of relationship with it. AMD already does.

This is not accurate. Only the people who contribute to the implementation must lack access to proprietary documentation, not every employee at AMD.

This is why an Intel employee (Alan Cox) was able to write large parts of the gma500 driver, and presumably one of the reasons why Intel didn't want Poulsbo code in i915, despite considerable amounts of code duplication between the drivers.

per their page VRR/Freesync is not supported.

i got this cable from them and same story, everything works except VRR/Freesync.

https://www.cablematters.com/pc-1398-154-displayport-to-8k-hdmi-cable.aspx

Blurbusters investigated this a while back. Most DP to HDMI 2.x adapters support FreeSync in hardware, just the firmware does not translate the EDID properly.

In some cases you could use firmware intended for another adapter to get it working properly. Alternatively, pass a custom EDID (generated with CRU or similar) and FreeSync may work.

Some reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gamin...cable_matters/ (user report about working VRR with the CableMatters adapter)
https://twitter.com/BlurBusters/stat...26715474665473 (about Club3D CAC-1080/1085)

[Anux]

I am talking about issue such as

https://superuser.com/questions/1823512/monitors-swapping-and-windows-moving-on-pc-wakeup

and

https://superuser.com/questions/1640338/application-windows-all-move-to-main-display-after-screens-turn-back-on

Since I have 3 Monitors at work on an Win 10 machine and all are connected via DP and one over daisy chain, I can tell you that isn't a problem. Those issues might come from a buggy implementation on the monitor or driver side or monitors not waking up fast enough so Win thinks you woke up with less monitors.
The only time windows get screwed up is when I connect via rdp and then switch back to local usage.

[guglovich]

I have the HDMI code even in my phone, for video output via type-C. Bad news, of course.

[billyswong]

Since I have 3 Monitors at work on an Win 10 machine and all are connected via DP and one over daisy chain, I can tell you that isn't a problem. Those issues might come from a buggy implementation on the monitor or driver side or monitors not waking up fast enough so Win thinks you woke up with less monitors.
The only time windows get screwed up is when I connect via rdp and then switch back to local usage.

So do the windows get moved if you switch off some of your monitors?

[duby229]

It depends on how you setup you clean room. Clean room can be contracting out independent company that really does not know anything about what they are doing. Simultaneous invention roughly the same time has been stretched in different USA court cases out to 19 years apart or basically the complete distance of 20 year patent lifespan. Key point of "simultaneous invention" is that the two or more parties who invent the same thing must not know of the other parties invention in detail. Patent body without court case will resolve it if they are close in time frame with each other but if it more than 5 years apart its a court case to declare "simultaneous invention".

F.Ulra the clean room may not know they are attempting to re-implement something that patented they may have been just given a list of requirements this is where "simultaneous invention" comes into play.

Remember clean room setup. You have a dirty room and a clean room. The dirty room can know about the patented/copy-protected item. The clean room only has the censored information from the dirty room to work with. Yes clean room and dirty room can be different companies.



Yes hard costly and painful. Clean room does come into this process as a method to attempt to prove obvious. Yes proving the "possibility simultaneous invention" by have a documented clean room party generate the same thing proves the case of obvious. It comes down to the court of the work of the clean room is declared to be just "possible simultaneous invention" or is "simultaneous invention" really the court ruling on this normal makes bugger all difference because either ruling the patent is obvious so the patent is invalid.

The worst part about this you prove that a patent is obvious you normally don't have rights to recover the costs of proving it. Yes of course patent trolls being shell companies even if the court rules you can recover costs there is normally no assets their to recover costs..



S2TC is like where clean room can land you. Think you have not given your clean room the exact details of the patent so the clean room returns you like S2TC form list of instructions based off what S3TC is in broad terms. Now you try to send new instructions to the clean room to make them return S3TC instead of S2TC you are going to find yourself in legal hell because you can end up handing over too much information to clean room so end up in willful infringement..

Clean room test with a patent not giving you back the very close to the same thing that some what works with issues can suggest that the patent is not in fact obvious. This is also what makes using clean room with patents to attempt to get around a patent a fairly much one and done. The clean room process either proves that the patent is highly obvious or it proves that its not highly obvious. Something found not to be highly obvious by clean room method still can be called obvious by a legal ruling.

Lot of the patent troll issues would be killed of both parties at the start of the patent case were required to put up bond to cover costs of the other party if they lose. Yes this would see a lot more patent cases because a party who is sure a patent is obvious or is prior art would be willing to challenge because they would know by winning they would not be out of pocket.

The biggest problem with the patent system is that is possible to go around enforcing and if someone challenges you the result is that you keep all the profits and the party who challenged loses because they cannot get the cost back of challenging. Patent system has it more cost effective to settle on patents then challenge them no matter how stupid the patents are.

That's not how patents work though. Patents have to be sufficient to prove it would work in reality exactly as described. If your implementation isn't exactly as the patent describes them it isn't a patent infringement. Usually an original work is enough all by itself.

EDIT: It's why I can patent something that accomplishes the exact same end result as what your patent accomplishes. Even if the end result is identical so long as the implementation to achieve it is different then it's legal. Implementations of a patent have to be exactly as the patent describes. If it's not then it's not an implementation of the patent.

EDIT: I think some of you guys have a misunderstanding that patents can be vague or obvious, but that's not how patents work either, they have to be sufficient and exact.

[F.Ultra]

It depends on how you setup you clean room. Clean room can be contracting out independent company that really does not know anything about what they are doing. Simultaneous invention roughly the same time has been stretched in different USA court cases out to 19 years apart or basically the complete distance of 20 year patent lifespan. Key point of "simultaneous invention" is that the two or more parties who invent the same thing must not know of the other parties invention in detail. Patent body without court case will resolve it if they are close in time frame with each other but if it more than 5 years apart its a court case to declare "simultaneous invention".

F.Ulra the clean room may not know they are attempting to re-implement something that patented they may have been just given a list of requirements this is where "simultaneous invention" comes into play.

Remember clean room setup. You have a dirty room and a clean room. The dirty room can know about the patented/copy-protected item. The clean room only has the censored information from the dirty room to work with. Yes clean room and dirty room can be different companies.



Yes hard costly and painful. Clean room does come into this process as a method to attempt to prove obvious. Yes proving the "possibility simultaneous invention" by have a documented clean room party generate the same thing proves the case of obvious. It comes down to the court of the work of the clean room is declared to be just "possible simultaneous invention" or is "simultaneous invention" really the court ruling on this normal makes bugger all difference because either ruling the patent is obvious so the patent is invalid.

The worst part about this you prove that a patent is obvious you normally don't have rights to recover the costs of proving it. Yes of course patent trolls being shell companies even if the court rules you can recover costs there is normally no assets their to recover costs..



S2TC is like where clean room can land you. Think you have not given your clean room the exact details of the patent so the clean room returns you like S2TC form list of instructions based off what S3TC is in broad terms. Now you try to send new instructions to the clean room to make them return S3TC instead of S2TC you are going to find yourself in legal hell because you can end up handing over too much information to clean room so end up in willful infringement..

Clean room test with a patent not giving you back the very close to the same thing that some what works with issues can suggest that the patent is not in fact obvious. This is also what makes using clean room with patents to attempt to get around a patent a fairly much one and done. The clean room process either proves that the patent is highly obvious or it proves that its not highly obvious. Something found not to be highly obvious by clean room method still can be called obvious by a legal ruling.

Lot of the patent troll issues would be killed of both parties at the start of the patent case were required to put up bond to cover costs of the other party if they lose. Yes this would see a lot more patent cases because a party who is sure a patent is obvious or is prior art would be willing to challenge because they would know by winning they would not be out of pocket.

The biggest problem with the patent system is that is possible to go around enforcing and if someone challenges you the result is that you keep all the profits and the party who challenged loses because they cannot get the cost back of challenging. Patent system has it more cost effective to settle on patents then challenge them no matter how stupid the patents are.

Honestly I believe that you are stretching the definition of clean room here. S2TC as already described is not a clean room, it's a deliberately design to avoid the patent, aka the people who designed S2TC looked at the S3TC patent and created a new design that would create a close as possible end result as possible but using a different algorithm not covered by the S3TC patent. It's basically as dirty room as you can get, but this is ofc not a problem with patents (that is only a problem for copyright) since they aren't trying to reverse engineer a design (the S3TC algo is already public so there is nothing to reverse engineer).

Let's quote Wikipedia on clean room and patents:

Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. Clean-room design is useful as a defense against copyright infringement because it relies on independent creation. However, because independent invention is not a defense against patents, clean-room designs typically cannot be used to circumvent patent restrictions.

So clean room does not typically work against patents.

We can also compare with a hardware patent, e.g the Asetek one where they have a patent to have the pump inside the cooling plate, every single competitor to them that tried to go the "independent invention" route was sued out of oblivion which is why the existing competition all have their pumps at different locations. Proving obviousness is not as simply as you make it out to be.

Nor is the money/bond thing the issue with the trolls, the trolls are extorting millions of USD from companies. Not being forced to pay millions of dollars should be incentive enough to prove prior art or obviousness, and not just the potential to get some money back if you win. The simple reason is that proving prior art and obviousness is hard, especially when it comes to software since you also have to convince a court of people that have zero knowledge of how software works (so to many of them when you the expert makes the claim that it is obvious they think that "well that is only because you are some super genius so for every one else it is not obvious").

Do you have any court case for the 19-20 year claim? With the 2013 new patent legislation in the US the law set the terms to be 1year so 19-20 sounds extreme and AFAIK that 1 year doesn't mean that the patent is invalid, it only means that the other inventor has the right to continue using his own invention without having to license the patent.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

I'd love to see AMD just make a GPU that does not have HDMI at all and only has Display Port and maybe USB-C or do something like make the inclusion of HDMI by there board partners optional. Thus not having the cost of HDMI tacked onto every sku and let customers say I don't need HDMI i am buying a expensive GPU to use with a expensive monitor that has Display Port

[BesiegedAce]

This is unfortunate news, but some of the posts here are truly detached from reality.
Sue the HDMI Forum? For what exactly?

AMD should drop HDMI support on its products over this? It only affects the open source Linux drivers. AFAIK, Windows is unaffected, what reason does AMD have to drop HDMI?

I'd like some solution to be found but some people here really need to step back.

[smitty3268]

EDIT: I think some of you guys have a misunderstanding that patents can be vague or obvious, but that's not how patents work either, they have to be sufficient and exact.

That's true in theory, but often false in practice. Patent lawyers get paid a lot of money to try and make their patents as broadly applicable as possible, and patent offices are incredibly overworked and often approve things they shouldn't.

Of course, if something isn't exact enough that's a good defense if you want to get involved in a patent lawsuit. You can claim that the patent isn't valid and should be thrown out. But I suspect AMD, Red Hat, and others have no desire to spend millions fighting a patent lawsuit over this. Often the threat of a patent lawsuit is the goal more than actual lawsuits.