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Will ATI Give The FOSS Community A X-Mas Present?

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  • Will ATI Give The FOSS Community A X-Mas Present?

    It's been mentioned before at Phoronix that AMD officially won't be releasing more specs until Q1'08, but do you think that they will release some more in time for Christmas or the new year (it's been mentioned as a possibility)? Or any other holiday surprises for the FOSS community?
    Michael Larabel
    https://www.michaellarabel.com/

  • #2
    I'd say 7.12 is a safe bet, but whether it's candy or coal remains to be seen.

    As for the release of additional specs...Lawyers and accountants work in mysterious ways. I'm sure there are tax implications to all of this, too. The cash value of proprietary information is carried as an asset on a company's balance sheet. Releasing such material to the open devalues that asset (for tax puproses, let's forget the philosophical for a moment). If they can take a write down for tax purposes that will get factored into the timing of the release (i.e., this quarter/next quarter or this FY/naxt FY).

    The holiday surprise I fear most is the announcement that AMD is selling ATI in order to raise capital to fund core (i.e., CPU) operations. AMD continues to loose money at a ferocious rate. The Dubai Group isn't stupid and I'm sure their buy-in comes with a plan to get the company in better financial shape, and the most likely scenario is to sell off some assets.

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    • #3
      Michael may have some "inside info" that he cannot talk about openly.

      So I think his post about X-mas present and in open source board may be in fact a hint about that there will be sth good coming up from AMD/ATI ...

      So it's :

      - AMD gets the rest of the specs released for X-Mas, and we get the 2d acceleration from Radeonhd drivers since devs got the specs way earlier under NDA.

      - just the specs release.

      - nothing happens or just another cathalyst release ...

      I would like it to be the first one

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      • #4
        Yeah...me too, but I have to say that even without hardware acceleration the 2D part of radeonHD works better for me that either vesa or fglrx (R580+)

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        • #5
          Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
          Yeah...me too, but I have to say that even without hardware acceleration the 2D part of radeonHD works better for me that either vesa or fglrx (R580+)

          True, even my glxgears is faster without acceleration by RadeonHD than it ever was with acceleration with fglrx (Mobility X1600) .

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          • #6
            You ask and use that smiley.

            Your real question is: "What will...".

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            • #7
              Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
              The holiday surprise I fear most is the announcement that AMD is selling ATI in order to raise capital to fund core (i.e., CPU) operations. AMD continues to loose money at a ferocious rate. The Dubai Group isn't stupid and I'm sure their buy-in comes with a plan to get the company in better financial shape, and the most likely scenario is to sell off some assets.
              In this case, I doubt that they would be selling ATI off. ATI has very real core competencies in stream processing engines that AMD does not have. In this situation, it was buy AMD or NVidia. I expect them to slash a few of their less viable embedded offerings (Alchemy's not seeming to be used...) and forging forward with that piece.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by robin1979 View Post
                True, even my glxgears is faster without acceleration by RadeonHD than it ever was with acceleration with fglrx (Mobility X1600) .
                Telling, isn't it? The thing that fglrx brings to the table, though, is fragment shader acceleration. So as you pile on fancier stuff, it'll be faster than software Mesa 3D. Not that this is saying all that much.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
                  In this case, I doubt that they would be selling ATI off. ATI has very real core competencies in stream processing engines that AMD does not have. In this situation, it was buy AMD or NVidia. I expect them to slash a few of their less viable embedded offerings (Alchemy's not seeming to be used...) and forging forward with that piece.
                  No. What you describe is exactly the problem. If you're going to restructure by selling off assets, what you sell has to have value for a potential buyer. ATI has value, but that's not something a lot of the rest of AMD can say.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
                    No. What you describe is exactly the problem. If you're going to restructure by selling off assets, what you sell has to have value for a potential buyer. ATI has value, but that's not something a lot of the rest of AMD can say.
                    The future seems to be a CPU integrated with graphic unit... I don't think AMD will be able to that without ATI so selling it of is not an option.

                    Technical details of AMD's forthcoming Fusion product are sparse, but here's a …


                    In other words IMHO you have nothing to fear.

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