Nouveau Developers Remain Frustrated By NVIDIA's Firmware Practices

[artivision]

Nothing wrong with that... it's probably gibberish to >99% of Linux users... basically anyone not actively involved in developing or testing/troubleshooting gfx drivers. What I don't understand is how to reconcile that with confident statements like the following:



We started the open source driver effort (restarted, strictly speaking) because being acquired by AMD brought two things - a (server CPU) customer base that placed a high value on open source drivers, and (b) a second stream of (CPU) product revenue large enough that if something went very wrong as a consequence of supporting open source driver development and we lost the ability to sell GPUs into key markets for a while it would not mean the end of the company.

Remember that ATI had already been actively supporting open source driver work from 1998 or earlier, and didn't stop until ~2003 after acquiring FireGL and adapting the binary fglrx workstation driver to run on ATI GPUs.

Is your company thinking like that? That you may lose because you supported openness? There is really something serious happening with people manage much money, seriously! The reason that you lose in GPU market is that you had advanced - more flops hardware combined with inferior API (DX11). If you had an open and async low level API back then, things would have been different, MS suckers. Also if you had heavily single threaded CPUs instead of emulating a job that a GPU does better, that would be success. You also never used you big card: strong APUs like consoles and beyond. But as i said before: it was impossible for you, with those minds you all carry. I bought an RX470 and i wish to you, best luck for the future.

[chithanh]

Yeah, I am very sad that AMD doesn't sell APUs that have octa-cores and close to the graphical prowess of the PS4, nevermind the PS4 Pro.

I'm still waiting to buy something that replaces my ageing AM3 system, but FM1/FM2/FM2+ dropped ECC support which is non-negotiable for me. Hopefully AM4 mainboards will come with ECC support and APUs that perform at least at RX 460 level.

[bridgman]

Is your company thinking like that? That you may lose because you supported openness? There is really something serious happening with people manage much money, seriously!

Are you saying that there is no risk (which is incorrect given the reality of robust DRM requirements as a precondition for selling in >90% of our markets), or that upper management should ignore the risk (which is illegal when managing a publicly traded company) ?

[starshipeleven]

Are you saying that there is no risk (which is incorrect given the reality of robust DRM requirements as a precondition for selling in >90% of our markets), or that upper management should ignore the risk (which is illegal when managing a publicly traded company) ?

Yeah I'm with him, linux market alone is enough to support AMD, if they make all open (firmwares too) they are going to sell more in linux, now I'm posting a laundry list of nonsense things I want from you too.

/sarcasm

[artivision]

Are you saying that there is no risk (which is incorrect given the reality of robust DRM requirements as a precondition for selling in >90% of our markets), or that upper management should ignore the risk (which is illegal when managing a publicly traded company) ?

I can analyse Verilog but obviously I'm not as smart as you are. So can you explain with simple words that a 15 years old can understand (I'm 32), what are you talking about? What is the relation of your free software contribution with the >90% of your markets. Did someone threaten you not to contribute to Mesa and with what basis? My opinion is to just pay a third party for a D3D11/12 state tracker - front driver, no one will know and Linux will be yours.

[smitty3268]

I can analyse Verilog but obviously I'm not as smart as you are. So can you explain with simple words that a 15 years old can understand (I'm 32), what are you talking about? What is the relation of your free software contribution with the >90% of your markets. Did someone threaten you not to contribute to Mesa and with what basis? My opinion is to just pay a third party for a D3D11/12 state tracker - front driver, no one will know and Linux will be yours.

If a free software contribution exposes DRM keys, then it would allow DRM to be bypassed on Windows as well.

Then MS would block their hardware from running, as part of their agreement with Hollywood, and AMD would lose 90% of their customers.

I don't think the concept is that difficult to understand.