Valve Developer Posts New AMD GPU Debugging Tool, Part Of Improving Linux Driver

[tomtomme]

Why should other people have to do AMD's job for them ? With Nvidia I buy the hardware and it's supported on all platforms for 10 years. Man up AMD and sort your act out.

do you know the difference between open source and closed / proprietary software? Cause you sound as if you do not have a clue.
NVIDIA has to do everything on their own because their driver is closed. They have no other choice.
AMD gets help from the community / volunteers because their driver is open - this is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. Sharing knowledge and workfore is good! Don´t you think? Or... you must have been that kind of kid, that never wanted to share its toys.
Its like selfish (nvidia) vs. selfless (AMD).

[tomtomme]

If I source from Phoronix I will get all Michael's forum storage full!

prove it!

[agd5f]

There are also existing radeon register dumping tools. E.g.,

https://cgit.freedesktop.org/~airlied/radeontool/

[bridgman]

ALL PLATFORMS ! I don't just use Linux you know.

Ahh, Windows then (BSD & others are covered by the open drivers now that graphics work has ramped back up for the BSDs).

I'm not involved much with Windows drivers these days but AFAIK our approach is to support for a shorter period but do a better job of support, eg substantial ongoing performance improvements which you don't get from NVidia.

On reddit they seem to be calling this "AMD FineWine".

[dungeon]

On reddit they seem to be calling this "AMD FineWine".

That is AMD FineDevelopment Technology , which is sort of same as on Linux... That tech is some kind of promise that for example if you buy some GCN which does not really perform fine *now* it will actually improve over time

That is how AMD does thing, basically you buy crap and it goes better and better by the time and once things finnaly became fine - they drop it

Which means that what they drop is the best driver and i can confirm that fglrx is still the best

[Slartifartblast]

do you know the difference between open source and closed / proprietary software? Cause you sound as if you do not have a clue.
NVIDIA has to do everything on their own because their driver is closed. They have no other choice.
AMD gets help from the community / volunteers because their driver is open - this is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. Sharing knowledge and workfore is good! Don´t you think? Or... you must have been that kind of kid, that never wanted to share its toys.
Its like selfish (nvidia) vs. selfless (AMD).

Yes I do know the difference, do you know what closed source binary firmware blobs are as well ? Those are required for some AMD cards to work with the FLOSS driver, AMD's so called open-source driver is only semi-opensource. I'm happy to share my daughter's toys with you as mine are a bit too grown up for you, here you can use the fisher price ones they should amuse you for hours, assuming you don't have ADHD. Here in the adult world where time is money people just want a card that works and is supported for a decent period on all platforms, frankly I couldn't give a shit if it's open or closed so long as it does what it says is does on the tin.

[bridgman]

That is AMD FineDevelopment Technology , which is sort of same as on Linux... That tech is some kind of promise that for example if you buy some GCN which does not really perform fine *now* it will actually improve over time

Nope, that's not what they are talking about. The cards are competitive at launch and keep improving. Not a promise from us, just observation from customers.

Linux is a totally different situation in the sense that the open source drivers had a lot of catching up to do.

[bridgman]

Yes I do know the difference, do you know what closed source binary firmware blobs are as well ? Those are required for some AMD cards to work with the FLOSS driver, AMD's so called open-source driver is only semi-opensource.

Nope, totally wrong.

The hardware uses microcode (as does everyone else's GPU hardware), we just happen to run it from RAM rather than burning it into ROM.

The driver is totally open source.

[dungeon]

Nope, that's not what they are talking about. The cards are competitive at launch and keep improving. Not a promise from us, just observation from customers.

Linux is a totally different situation in the sense that the open source drivers had a lot of catching up to do.

It is the same tech per me... other than you claim competetive launch and improvment over time... it is the same thing, under the knees it just does improve over time which means AMD FineDevelopment again, as something you might improve and something you can break

Of course someone can name that AMD FineWine only if they are exclusively optimistic, but to me neither optimisitc nor pesimistic people are real... becase with any development of course good thing might happen, but also it can go worse for some cases we somehow just like to ignore Progressions always has its regressions...

And because of that model dropped drivers on average has best quality And on date when you drop that the best driver, people just can't believe it - and starts to cry even more

Maybe we can name all that ATi SocialFenomenon

[chithanh]

Intel, considered as evil here, has on its side did the job themselves...

who considers intel as evil? sources...

When it comes to Linux drivers, only AMD is committed to supporting all hardware with open source drivers (although with proprietary firmware).
Intel is not interested in Linux/open source support for a number of chips, PowerVR and Mali based Atoms mostly.

But this is not what makes Intel evil. Their business practices are.