AMD Stoney APUs Bring ETC2 Open-Source Driver Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Stoney APUs Bring ETC2 Open-Source Driver Support

AMD's upcoming "Stoney" APUs has support for ETC2 texture compression...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Stoney-Has-ETC2

[Adarion]

Good work. This ETC2 currently seems to be used more in embedded devices, but good if it find its way to the desktop side. Supporting it will help to spread this unpatented algorithm.
So it seems future GPUs/APUs will support this (>=STONEY). Always good to have some alternatives. The S3TC situation was unpleasant enough in the past years. I'm just a bit undecided about lossy compression algorithms. You can save a lot of space / bandwidth with lossy compression, but, it's lossy. Does anybody know if this has some parameters of how strong the compression is to be? As long as it is optical lossless I wouldn't mind some "lost" bytes.

[smitty3268]

Good work. This ETC2 currently seems to be used more in embedded devices, but good if it find its way to the desktop side.

I actually think Stoney might be for tablets/embedded use. I'm fairly certain you'll never see it in a desktop.

[drSeehas]

... Stoney ... I'm fairly certain you'll never see it in a desktop.

The desktop version is named Bristol Ridge.

[bridgman]

Actually Bristol Ridge is Carrizo-sized, while Stoney Ridge is smaller.

[drSeehas]

Actually Bristol Ridge is Carrizo-sized, while Stoney Ridge is smaller.

???
With "sized" you mean the area (square mm) of the die?
What is left out in Stoney Ridge compared to Bristol Ridge?
Or is it the 28 nm <> 14 nm thing?

[Twysock]

???
With "sized" you mean the area (square mm) of the die?
What is left out in Stoney Ridge compared to Bristol Ridge?
Or is it the 28 nm <> 14 nm thing?

From what I gather (beware, talking out of my hat past this point), Bristol Ridge is a follow up to Carrizo, with at least DD4 added on. 2 modules, 4 cores, likely 512 GPU stream processors. Stoney Ridge is a 'Cat APU' replacement : 1 module, 2 cores, and 192 GPU stream processors. Please take that with a huge heaping grain of salt. Both should be 28nm.