Tear-Free Acceleration For ATI EXA, Xv

[bridgman]

So what your saying is that ATi wants to prevent better implementations? That sure is what it sounds like... OK, so now motives and allegiances have been revealed. As they say the truth will out.

News Flash !! AMD wants to benefit from its R&D investment to be better than it`s competitors !! Customers are shocked !!

Seriously, companies don`t want to give away all their secrets and let competitors combine them with their technology (which they don`t share) to beat them in the marketplace. There are some business models where being fully open source works, of course, typically where a big chunk of your revenue comes from support and services.

In our case we are opening up programming information wherever possible but don`t plan to open source the entire proprietary driver, although we have opened some bits like the atom bios parser and will probably continue to do so in the future).

I hope this is not a surprise. If it is, I`m sorry I didn`t make it clear in the past. Protecting competitive technology is one of a number of reasons why proprietary drivers still have a place in some industries.

[duby229]

That sure sounds like a nice way of being a demagogue. Here, I'll fix it for you:



It's taking some time, but I'm sure we'll manage to unveil AMD and reveal to the world that they actually are not a charity.

Tell me how the GPL does that? Go ahead. I dare you.

[duby229]

News Flash !! AMD wants to benefit from its R&D investment to be better than it`s competitors !! Customers are shocked !!

Seriously, companies don`t want to give away all their secrets and let competitors combine them with theirtechnology (which they don`t share) to beat them in the marketplace. There are some business models where being fully open source works, of course, typically where a big chunk of your revenue comes from support and services.

In our case we are opening up programming information wherever possible but don`t plan to open source the entire proprietary driver, although we have opened some bits like the atom bios parser and will probably continue to do so in the future).

I hope this is not a surprise. If it is, I`m sorry I didn`t make it clear in the past. Protecting competitive technology is one of a number of reasons why proprietary drivers still have a place in some industries.

News Flash!! Standards bodies and tech consortiums exist!! Standardized coherency and communications protocols already defined and working!! AMD customers shocked that they arent utilizing this wealth of open knowledge!!

Can you again try to tell me why AMD "requires" a closed driver? Is it artificial limitations imposed by ATi? Why cant they use standardized technologies that already exist? And where existing technologies arent adequate why cant they work within these standards bodies and consortiums to create something that is?

[bridgman]

I don't think I'm getting your point here. Standards bodies cover the external stuff, eg. programming APIs (OpenGL), wire protocols (X), etc, not the internal implementations.

To the best of my knowledge there are no standards committees covering the internals of a graphics driver, just the externals and APIs (OpenGL, OpenCL etc.). Standards committees do not cover the internal implementation and that's what a proprietary driver can (somewhat) protect.

[duby229]

I don't think I'm getting your point here. Standards bodies cover the external stuff, eg. programming APIs (OpenGL), wire protocols (X), etc, not the internal implementations.

To the best of my knowledge there are no standards committees covering the internals of a graphics driver, just the externals and APIs (OpenGL, OpenCL etc.). Standards committees do not cover the internal implementation and that's what a proprietary driver can (somewhat) protect.

I think you know exactly what I'm talking about... In the end the goal is to provide compatibility with that external stuff. You can design your hardware however you want to design it, and patent that hardware to protect your intellectual property. You can then put a firmware layer over the hardware to obfuscate it, and to make programming easier. From there what else is there to protect?

And dont give that "firmware isnt open enough" crap. We have a Walmart in my town, and right out in front by the big sliding doors there exists three concrete "stoppers" They are about 4 feet tall, and about 8 inches wide in diameter. Tell Novell to find one and sit on it, then once it's tightly entrenched in there ass, have them spin around on it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over.......

[grantek]

OK, now you've lost even me...
- AMD has AtomBIOS, and are commissioning open drivers to suit. They're not ready yet, so if that's what you're annoyed about, I've no problem with you venting
- AMD have released/are releasing register-level specs for GPUs, which to me is as low-level an "API" as you can get before documenting sub-instruction algorithms
- AMD may have fancy sub-instruction algorithm stuff that they know how to optimise, but isn't apparent from register-level specs. This is one gap I hope will close in the future, because obfuscation is not ideal but may sorta work in the real world. This is also an area where I'd pick an open driver over a few more FPS, but to some it's a critical difference worth millions.
- AMD has bowed to market forces demanding proprietary crap like Blu-ray DRM, which also keeps the proprietary driver around, and I (like many other Linux users) don't care as long as there's an open API to offload video decoding tasks to hardware designed for it.

[TechMage89]

duby, you have descended into the realm of highly obnoxious.

ATI is providing everything needed to make fully OpenGL complaint open source drivers. They are holding nothing back from us in terms of making fully working, standards compliant drivers.

However, ATI is a company, and they need to make money. In the high-performance graphics industry, special algorithms that give you a slight performance advantage are worth millions. ATI has such algorithms in their closed-source driver so they can be competitive with NVIDIA. However, you wouldn't expect them to just give out those algorithms, worth millions due to the performance advantage they give, so anyone could use them, would you?

Like it or not, proprietary software/algorithms/techniques/whatever exist, and the R&D needed to produce them needs to be recouped, in this case, by giving ATI cards a performance advantage.

If you truly believe that open-source software is superior, duby, you have to believe that the open-source community can come up with even better algorithms to make the open-source driver performance-competitive with the proprietary driver. If that happens, you can be sure there will be a shift in thinking.

Edit: duby your last post totally lost me. What in the world are you talking about?

[NaterGator]

This thread needs to be bifurcated into it's original context and all the squabbling about drivers can go elsewhere.

[oblidor]

News Flash !! AMD wants to benefit from its R&D investment to be better than it`s competitors !! Customers are shocked !!

Seriously, companies don`t want to give away all their secrets and let competitors combine them with their technology (which they don`t share) to beat them in the marketplace. There are some business models where being fully open source works, of course, typically where a big chunk of your revenue comes from support and services.

In our case we are opening up programming information wherever possible but don`t plan to open source the entire proprietary driver, although we have opened some bits like the atom bios parser and will probably continue to do so in the future).

I hope this is not a surprise. If it is, I`m sorry I didn`t make it clear in the past. Protecting competitive technology is one of a number of reasons why proprietary drivers still have a place in some industries.

Fine, just make workable closed source drivers as good as or better than NVIDIA. I have ordered for the 3rd time a ATI card as it seemed we would get good open source drivers. I guess it was a mistake as I have never gotten fglrx to work on my cards. I'll see, if fglrx doesn't work with the 4870 either, I'll return the card and go NVIDIA...

I'm not a charity either handing out money to ATI for useless hardware!

[oblidor]

However, ATI is a company, and they need to make money. In the high-performance graphics industry, special algorithms that give you a slight performance advantage are worth millions. ATI has such algorithms in their closed-source driver so they can be competitive with NVIDIA. However, you wouldn't expect them to just give out those algorithms, worth millions due to the performance advantage they give, so anyone could use them, would you?

Like it or not, proprietary software/algorithms/techniques/whatever exist, and the R&D needed to produce them needs to be recouped, in this case, by giving ATI cards a performance advantage.

Yes, it is a company depending primarily on that people buy their hardware. For this to happen they need 1) to have working drivers that are as good or better than the competition 2) have better hardware/price than the competition.

However, these algorithms do they also cover tearfree display, 2D
acceleration and proper video playback?

I don't care about +/- 10 fps in some game as long as the card can work properly for what people use them mostly for (gamers not included )

I have no problem with closed source drivers as long as they work. I have a x1650 pro card in my old PC. This card would have been paperweight, had it not been for the open source ati driver. The fglrx driver (I have tested every release) hangs my computer as soon as the driver is used.

So, when they now say they will support linux and also open source is it real? Or just a gimmick to sell more cards to the linux crowd?