Radeon DRM Finally Has HD 6000 Series HDMI Audio

[V10lator]

I've compiled table above using RadeonFeature wiki page. According to that Aruba is still Northern Islands, but it is newer DCE6 or DCE6.1. We support HDMI up to DCE5 only, so Aruba is not supported.

Aruba = Trinity.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTA3NDE

Aruba seems to be a mix between HD 6900 (VLIW4) and HD 7000 (so basically a 69XX core with extensions from the 7000 series) used only for Trinity APUs, as far as I understand (did some research with your new info, thx. ). These Aruba units are still called HD 7XXX (examples: A10-4600M uses a HD 7660G, A10-4655M uses a HD 7620G) even if they are NI cores with SI extensions.

So Michaels statement that HD 69XX is not supported by this new HDMI patch is simply wrong. This would be right:

All HD 6XXX GPUs have working HDMI sound now! Still waiting for HD 7XXX to catch up.

But I think AMDs internal/external GPU, GPU Familiy, ... names have confused Michael.

But I think I got it (slap me if I'm wrong xD):
Version jump (from 6XXX to 7XXX, for example) means completely reworked GPU core (VLIW -> SIMD).
Family jump (Nothern Island to Southern Island, for example) means reworked extensions (like UVD2 -> UVD3) ... but wait, that doesn't reflect DCE5 -> DCE6 ... so, well, I give up. Only AMD may know the truth about the naming shemes.

P.S. @Zajec according to RadeonFeature HD7450 - HD7670 are NI, too, also HD7350 is a Evergreen...?

[Zajec]

Aruba seems to be a mix between HD 6900 (VLIW4) and HD 7000 (so basically a 69XX core with extensions from the 7000 series) used only for Trinity APUs, as far as I understand (did some research with your new info, thx. ). These Aruba units are still called HD 7XXX (examples: A10-4600M uses a HD 7660G, A10-4655M uses a HD 7620G) even if they are NI cores with SI extensions.

So Michaels statement that HD 69XX is not supported by this new HDMI patch is simply wrong. This would be right:

All HD 6XXX GPUs have working HDMI sound now! Still waiting for HD 7XXX to catch up.

But I think AMDs internal/external GPU, GPU Familiy, ... names have confused Michael.

But I think I got it (slap me if I'm wrong xD):
Version jump (from 6XXX to 7XXX, for example) means completely reworked GPU core (VLIW -> SIMD).
Family jump (Nothern Island to Southern Island, for example) means reworked extensions (like UVD2 -> UVD3) ... but wait, that doesn't reflect DCE5 -> DCE6 ... so, well, I give up. Only AMD may know the truth about the naming shemes.

P.S. @Zajec according to RadeonFeature HD7450 - HD7670 are NI, too, also HD7350 is a Evergreen...?

I've already gave up some time ago in understanding AMD models.

HD7350 seems to be Evergreen according to the RadeonFeature. Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...ocessing_units says 7350 is Cedar, which also matches our theory that this is Evergreen (Cedar is Evergreen). Don't get confused by wiki headers. They put one "Cedar" in Evergreen, another one in NI and just one another in SI...

I don't even try to understand that :P

[agd5f]

There are different hw blocks that can be combined depending on market requirements. Most people think of the 3D engine as the part that defines the family, but that's not entirely true. There are display controller engines (DCE4.x, DCE5.x, etc.), 3D engines (R7xx, R8xx, R9xx, etc.), UVD (UVD2.x, UVD3.x, etc.), and so on. A couple of examples:

Cayman: DCE5, R9xx 3D, UVD3.x
Trinity: DCE6.1, R9xx 3D, UVD3.x
Barts: DCE5, R8xx 3D, UVD3.x

See:

http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

Marketing names are supposed to give a sort of relative guide to performance, they've never really tracked families exactly since there are so many blocks that make up a chip.

[V10lator]

Marketing names are supposed to give a sort of relative guide to performance, they've never really tracked families exactly since there are so many blocks that make up a chip.

Thanks for clarification.

But I really wished Micheal would post a new article which clarifies that with this patch HDMI works with HD 69XX cards. It seems that everybody with those cards blindly believes this without testing. I see that all the time, even at Rafał Miłeckis block people reply things like "I wish you success in hacking the hd6900".

I think we proved that it works with HD69XX and for all that still trust in Michaels article (why doesn't he fix it?) look at this:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/dri-devel/msg23886.html

03:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Cayman/Antilles HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6900 Series]
	Subsystem: PC Partner Limited Device aa80
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 50
	Memory at fe9bc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [58] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [a0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=010 <?>
	Capabilities: [150] Advanced Error Reporting
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel

[Yfrwlf]

HTPC?

So from what I understand, there still is no 2+ audio channel support for HDMI or DP on Linux? That's not a very friendly situation to be in for HTPC systems. I hope this gets implemented soon!

It's really nice every time I can eliminate more cables from my home theater setup, but I guess right now I'm stuck with having an extra spdif cable. I can't wait for TCP/IP support over HDMI (and I assume eventually DP too) to eliminate yet more cables.

[bridgman]

So from what I understand, there still is no 2+ audio channel support for HDMI or DP on Linux? That's not a very friendly situation to be in for HTPC systems. I hope this gets implemented soon!

AFAIK that's the audio driver not the GPU driver. Pretty sure we released info for blending >2 channel onto the HDMI output.

[Yfrwlf]

AFAIK that's the audio driver not the GPU driver. Pretty sure we released info for blending >2 channel onto the HDMI output.

Thanks, but apparently no one has implemented it yet then for AMD, at least not on the 6000 chipset I have, as it only shows 2 channel HDMI available. Maybe in the near future hopefully, but for right now does anyone know of any video chipsets which SUPPORT >2 HDMI/DP audio channels for HTPCs? Intel? nVidia? Other?

Thanks ^^

[bridgman]

It should be programmable as generic hardware, ie not AMD-specific. I'll try to confirm that.

[Ex-Cyber]

Thanks, but apparently no one has implemented it yet then for AMD, at least not on the 6000 chipset I have, as it only shows 2 channel HDMI available.

Are you sure it's not your receiver/TV that's limiting it? Some will only do > 2 channels for Dolby Digital/DTS bitstreams, not raw PCM, and I think that gets advertised somehow via EDID.

[Veerappan]

Are you sure it's not your receiver/TV that's limiting it? Some will only do > 2 channels for Dolby Digital/DTS bitstreams, not raw PCM, and I think that gets advertised somehow via EDID.

Yeah, color me confused.

I've got my Llano HTPC running via HDMI to my 7.1 channel receiver, and the receiver is set to direct output mode (output exactly what is input without any channel-expanding algorithms), and I've got audio from MythTV on all 5 of the speakers I've got hooked up for recently recorded TV. This is running over pulse audio on MythBuntu 12.04 to an Onkyo receiver.

Or are we talking only PCM output over HDMI, in which case I can't say for sure what is and isn't working.