R600g AMD Evergreen Geometry Shaders Proposed

[whitecat]

Unfortunaltely (bis), Unigine Valley also hangs the GPU

kernel: [ 363.533520] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup CP stall for more than 10000msec
kernel: [ 363.533534] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup (waiting for 0x0000000000001404)
kernel: [ 363.533538] radeon 0000:01:00.0: failed to get a new IB (-35)
kernel: [ 363.533540] [drm:radeon_cs_ib_chunk] *ERROR* Failed to get ib !
kernel: [ 364.033029] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup CP stall for more than 10500msec
kernel: [ 364.033032] radeon 0000:01:00.0: GPU lockup (waiting for 0x0000000000001404)
kernel: [ 364.033033] radeon 0000:01:00.0: failed to get a new IB (-35)
kernel: [ 364.033034] [drm:radeon_cs_ib_chunk] *ERROR* Failed to get ib !

[aphirst]

We didn't pay for the silicon. The silicon costs next to nothing. Packaging costs next to nothing. Shipping costs next to nothing. We paid for their engineering and for their DRIVERS.

I completely agree. Thankfully, I'm not quite so cynical about AMD's current position on this. They've come a long way in implementing what *actually* matters as far as long-term support is concerned: Free and Open Source drivers. If Nvidia go out of business (hypothetically speaking), their hardware will become next to useless within a version or two of X, however good their legacy binary driver support might have been when in business.

[bridgman]

re: "silicon costs next to nothing, packaging costs next to nothing, shipping costs next to nothing"...

If you look at the financials for 2013, those three together add up to 63% of our average selling price, ie 37% gross margin for the year. Agree that shipping probably isn't a big part of the cost structure, but silicon fabrication / testing / packaging are as significant as they are for any other manufacturing industry.

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1892414&highlight=

[Hamish Wilson]

I remember. Sticking with AGP based boards in upgrade cycles because by some miracle, ATI had released partial GPU specs for r100 and r200 class hardware. r200 was the only game in town as far as I was concerned - it had an open source driver and LOTS of support. My Radeon 8500 was like a bar of gold bullion. I had that card for a good 6-8 years for that reason, and you couldn't pry it from my cold dead hands.

I felt the exact same way about my old Radeon 9200 five years ago - I still remember all the fun I had when I switched over to Linux full-time and started gaming with it. The fact that I can now love my Radeon HD 4670 even more than I loved my old R200 card is more than indicative of the amount of progress that has been achieved in the mean time, due to people both inside and out of AMD.

And I was even saying this this time last year - well before either DPM or UVD were working on any cards with either R600g or RadeonSI. To be honest, not having DPM was not even a deal breaker for me, as the amount of heat produced by my card even when playing intense games like Trine 2 was reasonable with my card even then. The fact that it can now sometimes idle at 35 ?C with DPM enabled is more than most people can ask for even when using the binary drivers.

It is important to remember where we started from to truly grasp what we have gained. And we have indeed gained a lot over the past five years.

[Tyler_K]

If AMD wants to play games with driver support to force me to upgrade, i will pick Nvidia or Intel. They don't do that...

Nope, they don't things like that; wouldn't even consider doing that; completely impossi....

• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ3NDE
• http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...007#post361007

[curaga]

If you think you'll have time to work on it, i'd be glad to ship you an extra X1300 that I have
PM me if you're interested.

Sorry, I don't think I'd have much time for the old hw even with a card. The next two months are pretty booked just with the r700. Perhaps later it would be useful, but I would feel bad if I took it now and then didn't do anything with it.

[smitty3268]

Open source - where no good deed goes unpunished. (by the trolls)

A few years ago the same people were whining whenever some new support came out for something. It's a new day, with new complaints, but the complainers are still the same.

[zanny]

Nope, they don't things like that; wouldn't even consider doing that; completely impossi....

• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ3NDE
• http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...007#post361007

All these companies have reasons to just stop adding features to legacy drivers at some point, it gives people an extra reason to get new parts.

It is unlikely that an unmaintained r600g would ever see, say, full 4.3 support, if AMD stopped working on it in a year or so to focus entirely on SI, in the same way Catalyst dropped legacy cards for similar reasons, or how Intel doesn't go out of their way to hack geo shaders into pre-Ivy parts.

The difference, of course, between those two and Nvidia is freedom - I could implement features myself, pay someone to do it, or bless the soul that does it and releases the patches (maybe with a btc donation). When Nvidia drops features, well, guess you're screwed, unless you just never update the driver again, so no features or fixes either way. You do kinda have to buy hardware for what is already available, and not on the promise of feature features - I just bought a 7870 because radeonSI in 3.13 is finally up to snuff, so yeah, they get paid for that. I wouldn't have bought one last year hoping they would get version parity with Intel, though.

[asdfblah]

we have no fully working OpenCL, this sux.

Uhm, AFAIK, we already have OpenCL, for r600g and radeonsi. I tested bfgminer in my system (6520g + 6750m), and I got the same performance as with fglrx
It just hasn't been packaged yet by the distros, I suppose, but looks like oibaf added it to his repo: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...436#post393436 .
tstellar, the main radeon/opencl dev (AFAIK), usually likes to help people, and when someone reports a bug, he fixes things very fast.
So, yeah, one more feature for us!

[asdfblah]

Bah, forgot to add: a big thank you to all the radeon devs! Things are getting good FAST