Open ATI Driver To Receive PowerPlay Push?

[sylware]

So what you want is to rip out the close source drivers from MacOSX and install the open source drivers?

Doesn't the 3D work very well out of the box with Mac?

AFAIK, it does not.

"Ripping closed source" means reverse engineering the closed source driver. That's what the people of the nouveau project are doing on the nvidia Linux driver. All that because nvidia refuse to publish the hardware programming manual of their GPUs. This is a gigantic loss of time. I would not be surprised if some companies with an interest of slowing down GNU/Linux on the desktop are behind all this.

Remember: the target is to have by default open source OS installed on systems with optimal code driving your hardware.

[Louise]

Many do: MacOS.

The big issue here is that MacOS is a proprietary and closed fork of Darwin which is a BSD. MacOS has many improvements that Dawin has not...
This is a part of the root of the BSD/GNU GPL flamewar.
"Thanks" to the BSD license, apple can improve and close the code witout publishing it. MacOS is closed and proprietary. With the GNU GPL, fairness (open source) is protected, enforced: you cannot close the code. It allows us to go after optimal code.
Most of GNU GPL coders are looking to have an *optimal* open source OS installed on systems. The GNU GPL helps towards that goal, but is not a silver bullet.
Regarding the GPUs drivers, since they are BSD, apple can rip that code, share secrets with nvidia/AMD/intel... in order to keep the optimal code for MacOS crippling the open source version (they did it for NTFS support for instance).
I do remenber BSD advocates saying that no company will be able to have a better proprietary fork of a BSD OS. They were wrong.

So what you want is to rip out the close source drivers from MacOSX and install the open source drivers?

Doesn't the 3D work very well out of the box with Mac?

[sylware]

I seriously don't mean to start a flame war, but why are desktop users using BSD?

Many do: MacOS.

The big issue here is that MacOS is a proprietary and closed fork of Darwin which is a BSD. MacOS has many improvements that Dawin has not...
This is a part of the root of the BSD/GNU GPL flamewar.
"Thanks" to the BSD license, apple can improve and close the code witout publishing it. MacOS is closed and proprietary. With the GNU GPL, fairness (open source) is protected, enforced: you cannot close the code. It allows us to go after optimal code.
Most of GNU GPL coders are looking to have an *optimal* open source OS installed on systems. The GNU GPL helps towards that goal, but is not a silver bullet.
Regarding the GPUs drivers, since they are BSD, apple can rip that code, share secrets with nvidia/AMD/intel... in order to keep the optimal code for MacOS crippling the open source version (they did it for NTFS support for instance).
I do remenber BSD advocates saying that no company will be able to have a better proprietary fork of a BSD OS. They were wrong.

[Louise]

I seriously don't mean to start a flame war, but why are desktop users using BSD?

Don't people use BSD for its firewall?

[sylware]

cross kernel madness

There's no power management infrastructure to hook into and no one's written the code to do it.

I bet that the cross kernel madness is one of the main reason. To follow kernel abstraction, the DRM would have to include a power management abstraction which works on Linux and BSD. That abstraction will be easy to design with firmware loading but with power management, design is brought to a whole new level...

The cross-kernel thing is turning to a kludge. Better drop kernel abstraction, switch to GNU GPLv2 (I would go GNU Affero GPLv3 for GPU drivers), and code directly on Linux APIs and internal structures. BSD coders are smart enough to code drivers that will fit cleanely their kernel, since all the knowledge will already be available in Linux.

[netkas]

There's no power management infrastructure to hook into and no one's written the code to do it.

isn't it possible to create some interface, based on sysfs, to control clocks/fan speed?

[stikonas]

WOW! This is incredible!

Were you saving this for Christmas on purpose?

I've say it is worth it though.

Didn't we get glxgears for R600 for Christmas last year?

Last year we got first hardware accelerated triangles.

[Louise]

WOW! This is incredible!

Were you saving this for Christmas on purpose?

I've say it is worth it though.

Didn't we get glxgears for R600 for Christmas last year?

[agd5f]

So why can't we overclock and/or change fan speeds on the older (r300-r500) harware then? Is it the ttm not being optimized, gpu acceleration not being optimized or powerplay code not being complete?

There's no power management infrastructure to hook into and no one's written the code to do it.

[barbarbaron]

Just to clarify this information has been available for r1xx-r5xx/rs6xx/rs740 for years now (since atombios.h was released). This adds the table definitions for r6xx/r7xx/rs780/rs880.

So why can't we overclock and/or change fan speeds on the older (r300-r500) harware then? Is it the ttm not being optimized, gpu acceleration not being optimized or powerplay code not being complete?