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AMD Is Exploring A Very Interesting, More-Open Linux Driver Strategy

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  • #61
    Nice but i'd rather see the FOSS driver become CAD/workstation/whatever suitable. More payed devs hacking on it would be nicer.

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    • #62
      Originally posted by bridgman View Post
      It's not opening *your* source that lets you detect patent violations, it's opening the *other* guy's source, and we don't control that
      I don't follow... Who is the other guy?

      Originally posted by bridgman View Post
      IIRC the Intel binary shader compiler module had already been abandoned by the time we re-started open source gfx driver work in 2007.
      Was the reason for that stated as "it was reverse-engineered too much"?

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      • #63
        Originally posted by 89c51 View Post
        More payed devs hacking on it would be nicer.
        From AMD's point of view, they have released far more documentation than nvidia has ever done, and yet, most people on linux use intel CPUs + nvidia video cards.
        So, they haven't had a good reason to hire more people to work on these things.

        If you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk, then, AMD would be selling more, and thus, be able to convince the "suits" that linux is a worthy target to be able to hire more people.

        I know that AMD's current CPUs are way, way behind what intel offers, the same isn't true for their dedicated GPU cards. Those are usually feature and performance parity with Nvidia, yet, people rather use nvidia gear.

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        • #64
          Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
          I don't follow... Who is the other guy?
          Competitors. Having a patent on something doesn't do any good if you can't detect when someone else uses it.

          Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
          Was the reason for that stated as "it was reverse-engineered too much"?
          More that it didn't offer enough protection to be worth bothering with, IIRC.
          Test signature

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          • #65
            Originally posted by 89c51 View Post
            Nice but i'd rather see the FOSS driver become CAD/workstation/whatever suitable. More payed devs hacking on it would be nicer.
            Convince Linus to require and demand a stable ABI/API for drivers.

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            • #66
              Originally posted by Marc Driftmeyer View Post
              Convince Linus to require and demand a stable ABI/API for drivers.

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              • #67
                A little late, maybe?

                This would have been vaguely interesting five years ago, but frankly if you look at GL3.txt the Intel guys are a fair chunk of the way to OpenGL 4.2 already. Is this additional Catalyst work really worth the effort for a couple of year's stop-gap for Mesa to catch up?

                Sure, AMD has customers who "need Catalyst" (Really? Says who? The same clueless people at AMD who thought that the FOSS driver had already reached OpenGL 4.3?), but those can equally well be considered "legacy driver" customers soon enough.

                I see FOSS graphics being behind closed source as a temporary anomaly, mostly caused by the demise of SGI. In future, Mesa will not be implementing Khronos OpenGL specs - Khronos will be writing OpenGL specs based on prototype work in Mesa.

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                • #68
                  You are wrong. They Talk about the API/ABI to the Userspace and they is stable.

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                  • #69
                    Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                    Competitors. Having a patent on something doesn't do any good if you can't detect when someone else uses it.
                    Oh. Well, that's true. Still, if someone is using it, closed source or not, then they are infringing, and, well, that's very mean of them.

                    Originally posted by OneTimeShot View Post
                    This would have been vaguely interesting five years ago, but frankly if you look at GL3.txt the Intel guys are a fair chunk of the way to OpenGL 4.2 already. Is this additional Catalyst work really worth the effort for a couple of year's stop-gap for Mesa to catch up?

                    Sure, AMD has customers who "need Catalyst" (Really? Says who? The same clueless people at AMD who thought that the FOSS driver had already reached OpenGL 4.3?), but those can equally well be considered "legacy driver" customers soon enough.

                    I see FOSS graphics being behind closed source as a temporary anomaly, mostly caused by the demise of SGI. In future, Mesa will not be implementing Khronos OpenGL specs - Khronos will be writing OpenGL specs based on prototype work in Mesa.
                    Well, the whole DRightsM thing can't by definition be in radeon (not that I have a clue why it's needed on Linux to begin with, since there are no DRM-compatible video players).

                    But yea, the performance difference isn't that big, considering it's done without the secret sauce. And probably a lot of the latter is application-specific anyway. So this idea isn't quite as exciting as it would be if it was from NVIDIA.

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                    • #70
                      Originally posted by OneTimeShot View Post
                      Sure, AMD has customers who "need Catalyst" (Really? Says who? The same clueless people at AMD who thought that the FOSS driver had already reached OpenGL 4.3?), but those can equally well be considered "legacy driver" customers soon enough.
                      For example [xyz]coin mining farms need binary driver that as fast as possible here and now.
                      I mostly sure this extremely large piece of AMD Linux drivers market.

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