Southern Islands AMDGPU Support Almost Ready To Roll

[Mystro256]

But this is all about AMDGPU, not about AMDGPU-PRO and not about "hybrid driver".

Then why are we talking about amdgpu being dropped? It's a part of the kernel, and once AMD gives up on it, the amdgpu driver will be continued on via the mesa community (i.e. radeonsi), just like the radeon module will be continued for r600.

[dungeon]

He has no fucking clue what he's talking about. Use the OSS driver.

Truth hurts i know, as soon as i say it people can't believe it

[duby229]

Truth hurts i know, as soon as i say it people can't believe it

It hurts because what you said is -not- true at all. That same hardware is -still- supported today by the open source driver.

[dungeon]

It hurts because what you said is -not- true at all.

I know it is hard to believe in truth, only blessed ones might go there

That same hardware is -still- supported today by the open source driver.

Couple years ago i fixed lighting in rotting r200 driver, it was dark there for about 3 years and no one notice it nor fixed it ... Can you imagine what that is, no you can't see anything, that was a state of a driver i basically supported myself there and turn on lights

[Mystro256]

Yeah, I think you raised an interesting point, even if you completely botched the terminology and confused people.

In the old model, ATI/AMD would drop blob support in a certain version of Catalyst (Linux and Windows). On Linux, you could continue to use the last version of Catalyst to support your card, but it killed your ability to move to a newer kernel/X/distro. On Windows, you could continue using the last version of Catalyst to support your card a lot longer because you didn't have to worry so much about frequent kernel/X updates breaking compatibility with older drivers.

So what can we expect with the new hybrid model in terms of being able to use an older blob version now that kernel updates are not an issue? Will AMD update their older userspace blob drivers to support newer X versions (and is that even necessary)? If they do that (or if it's unnecessary), then blob support will be very similar to Nvidia's model where they branch off older cards but continue to update the drivers just enough to allow you to use them on newer systems.

It is indeed unnecessary; the older blob should work with newer Xorg versions and newer kernels without recompiling. The kernel module and xorg driver should handle this (both open source), while the userspace just provides opengl, opencl and vulkan acceleration, if I understand correctly.

The difference with Nvidia's module though is they actually have to update the non-free driver, while AMD's should just work regardless. Nvidia still has a non-free kernel and xorg package, thus would need to be updated every time there's an major xorg or kernel version, while the distro should handle AMD's driver when it needs to be recompiled.

[dungeon]

And it was very hard to find the switch, cos of ingorant overhaul during development of something else

[duby229]

I know it is hard to believe in truth, only blessed ones might go there



Couple years ago i fixed lighting in rotting r200 driver, it was dark there for about 3 years and no one notice it nor fixed it ... Can you imagine what that is, no you can't see anything, that was a state of a driver i basically supported myself there and turn on lights

Congratulations and good work. That's the whole point. You couldn't have done that if it wasn't open source. You'd still be in the dark if you hadn't had the ability to fix it yourself. Be proud of yourself and stop pretending that fixing problems is somehow bad.

[duby229]

And it was very hard to find the switch, cos of ingorant overhaul during development of something else

Sure, and all those people that didn't run into that problem can thank -you- for it. That's a great thing. A fantastic thing.

[drSeehas]

Then why are we talking about amdgpu being dropped? ...

Only very few people are talking about AMDGPU being dropped. These very few people mistake AMDGPU for AMDGPU-PRO and refuse to admit their error.
The whole rest knows that AMDGPU is open source and won't be dropped for a long, long time.

[starshipeleven]

Hey, for those in the "know". Will the development of new hardware support for the Radeon-driver end now that AMDGPU driver is open source? I'm sure AMDGPU will drop driver support for gpu's older than 3 years, like they have in the past, so could Radeon-driver be a forked AMDGPU whose goal is too maintain the older gpu's after AMD moves on?

The design of AMDGPU is different.
The closed part in it is a userspace thingy that replaces Mesa/Gallium (for AMD cards) and provides their features, while the hardware support is still handled by the open part, shared with the fully-open driver that offloads to Mesa/gallium instead.

This design allows it to keep running older cards with the same blob that runs the newer ones, because now the blob isn't also providing hardware support, but just features.