Originally posted by airlied
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Almost A Decade Later, RadeonHD Stories Still Coming To Light
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My understanding is that the -radeonhd code is used in AmigaOS development now. I'm glad that work hasn't gone completely to waste, especially as was a truly Free Software solution...of course, that benefit is lost in the proprietary environment, but perhaps AROS can use it?
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Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostWell, I succumbed to curiosity and read it all. I don't think there's really much there.
Basically it boils down to:
1. Bridgman called the Suse guys and started bugging them to use AtomBIOS.
2. They said no, and complained a bunch about it.
3. Bridgman started working more closely with RedHat instead.
Well, duh, of course he did, because they were going the direction he wanted to go in while you guys were fighting him every step of the way. That's just human nature.
1. Bridgman sees that there are two projects separately working on OSS Radeon drivers, one using AtomBIOS, one not. Hooray, diversity!
2. AtomBIOS saves a lot of trouble for driver developers. Hence it's obvious to Bridgman that radeon will evolve faster than radeonhd. Hence he prioritises it. Too bad the radeonhd guys are so adamant about not using it, else the teams could be merged.
3. At some point libv bugs him about some technical details, which time permitting he resolves, but it is not critical. When the docs are released, he sends them to both projects.
4. libv and friends reverse-engineer stuff that is not very important for AMD. Hooray, no need to ask for docs on those specific cases, then, since both drivers benefit from the work. Open source software at its best.
5. There's a conference coming up, have to prepare something interesting to say. More familar with radeon, and they recently worked on something that will impress people, might as well present that.
6. Oh man, the latest docs have been cleared for release! Awesome. Will have to give them to the radeon team.
7. Ah shoot, I forgot about those radeonhd guys. Eh, no big deal, I'll just tell them to talk to the radeon guys.
8. Yay, we got clearance to hire a developer! Amazing. Now talking to them will be so much faster. The radeon project is making great progress, must hire someone from there.
9. libv is asking whether the person we just hired is working full-time on radeon. Well, no, not at the moment. Quite a pity, really; I should probably ask the higher-ups to actually pay Alex for that work, just think about how much faster the work would go!
10. What, the radeonhd project is folding? Aww man. I was hoping there would be more out of that, but I guess they just couldn't catch up. Nothing I can do now...
In other words, never attribute to malice what you can sufficiently explain by poor communication and lack of time.
The biggest news from this is that we got another confirmation that fglrx is a terrible driver. Surprise surprise.
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Originally posted by libvSoon it will be a decade since we started the RadeonHD driver, where we pushed ATI to a point of no return, got a proper C coded graphics driver and freely accessible documentation out. We all know just what happened to this in the endLast edited by GreatEmerald; 13 February 2017, 06:22 PM.
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Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post
Something like that. From what I saw, it was more of:
1. Bridgman sees that there are two projects separately working on OSS Radeon drivers, one using AtomBIOS, one not. Hooray, diversity!
2. AtomBIOS saves a lot of trouble for driver developers. Hence it's obvious to Bridgman that radeon will evolve faster than radeonhd. Hence he prioritises it. Too bad the radeonhd guys are so adamant about not using it, else the teams could be merged.
3. At some point libv bugs him about some technical details, which time permitting he resolves, but it is not critical. When the docs are released, he sends them to both projects.
4. libv and friends reverse-engineer stuff that is not very important for AMD. Hooray, no need to ask for docs on those specific cases, then, since both drivers benefit from the work. Open source software at its best.
5. There's a conference coming up, have to prepare something interesting to say. More familar with radeon, and they recently worked on something that will impress people, might as well present that.
6. Oh man, the latest docs have been cleared for release! Awesome. Will have to give them to the radeon team.
7. Ah shoot, I forgot about those radeonhd guys. Eh, no big deal, I'll just tell them to talk to the radeon guys.
8. Yay, we got clearance to hire a developer! Amazing. Now talking to them will be so much faster. The radeon project is making great progress, must hire someone from there.
9. libv is asking whether the person we just hired is working full-time on radeon. Well, no, not at the moment. Quite a pity, really; I should probably ask the higher-ups to actually pay Alex for that work, just think about how much faster the work would go!
10. What, the radeonhd project is folding? Aww man. I was hoping there would be more out of that, but I guess they just couldn't catch up. Nothing I can do now...
In other words, never attribute to malice what you can sufficiently explain by poor communication and lack of time.
The biggest news from this is that we got another confirmation that fglrx is a terrible driver. Surprise surprise.
Also:
Yeap! In the end we have AMDGPU, and it's fantastic!
Amd should drop AtomBios and PSP from at least a 3% of Linux processors, ASAP.
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Originally posted by artivision View PostSince you are really that smart, can I ask you to prove why the other guys couldn't be able to continue their project in parallel and they had to drop it?
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Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
That's a very charged way of putting it. It's not like anyone forced them to shut down, they just stopped getting paid. Why should someone be forced to subsidize their driver when another one is already out and working better?
The actual question is: If someone today wanted documentation to replace AtomBios, would AMD give at least everything that obviously some others have? And they have them probably without signs of restriction. If not, at least is there a man somewhere inside AMD to say the truth? Because when you hear that "we will be by you side" only to find out that things are actually different, well.
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Originally posted by artivision View PostThe actual question is: If someone today wanted documentation to replace AtomBios, would AMD give at least everything that obviously some others have? And they have them probably without signs of restriction. If not, at least is there a man somewhere inside AMD to say the truth? Because when you hear that "we will be by you side" only to find out that things are actually different, well.
- header files describing data structures inside the AtomBIOS data tables
- header files enumerating the AtomBIOS command tables
- source code for the AtomBIOS interpreter that executes bytecodes in the AtomBIOS command tables
- source code for the wrapper functions which extract information from AtomBIOS data tables and execute AtomBIOS command tables
What else do you feel is required ?Test signature
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