Rich Geldreich: A Bad Catalyst GL Driver Is Bad For Everyone

[DMJC]

Wrong

Err... WRONG.

Nouveau. Seriously guys, stop talking without researching. Nouveau has implemented 99% of features that the NVIDIA binary driver has. The last thing needed is power management. And if you goto nouveau.freedekstop.org and bother to actually read the status matrix. You very quickly realise that they are on the verge of cracking this thing right open. I am willing to bet. and you can now quote me on this I would happily bet $50.00 AU that by July 2015. There is a high performance open source NVIDIA driver that supports OpenGL 4.2 if not 4.4. With power management support for all current generation (7XX series) graphics cards. NVIDIA's closed source binary driver is an engineering masterpiece sure. But they've had the thing ported to Solaris, BSD, Mac OSX, and Linux for the last decade. AMD/ATi haven't bothered to support all those platforms, and haven't bothered to maintain OpenGL at all. They are just reaping what they've sown. Intel is to be commended for starting from nothing, and in a short time developing a stable, feature-rich driver.

ATI/AMD do not get a free pass on this.

Apple didn't get a free pass when they made crap products, they bled out. Under Steve they started making good products and they picked up market share. There's a lesson there for ATi/AMD. Make good products. Don't make excuses. Don't make up bullshit. Just cut your past off, and focus on the future and making your product work.

[chinoto]

read my post again:

Read it again yourself.

Opengl: Open, works on almost everything (Operating systems and hardware from desktop to mobile devices) is as fast as Mantle on Nvidia cards but too slow on Intel and AMD hardware.

It might not be what you meant, but it sounds a lot like you're comparing OpenGL to Mantle on nVidia, which shouldn't be possible to do yet.

[DMJC]

Running the numbers

So I just ran the numbers on the Nouveau development efforts and here's my stats:

The first set of numbers is everything listed on their status matrices, the numbers are broken down by chipset.

Chipset NV03 NV04/05 NV10 NV20 NV30 NV40 NV50 NVC0 NVE0 NV110
TOTAL TASKS 20 30 30 30 29 29 29 29 29 29
REMAINING TO COMPLETE 2 5 8 5 8 8 9 9 9 16
PERCENT REMAINING 10.00% 16.67% 26.67% 16.67% 27.59% 27.59% 31.03% 31.03% 31.03% 55.17%

Chipset NV03 NV04/05 NV10 NV20 NV30 NV40 NV50 NVC0 NVE0 NV110
PERCENT COMPLETED 90.00% 83.33% 73.33% 83.33% 72.41% 72.41% 68.97% 68.97% 68.97% 44.83%

The second set of numbers are for things I use. I don't care about TV Out or TV Input as HDMI and DVI work correctly. OpenCL, or SLI on my home rig:

Chipset NV03 NV04/05 NV10 NV20 NV30 NV40 NV50 NVC0 NVE0 NV110
TOTAL TASKS 17 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27
REMAINING TO COMPLETE 2 4 7 4 7 7 8 8 8 15
PERCENT REMAINING 11.76% 14.81% 25.93% 14.81% 25.93% 25.93% 29.63% 29.63% 29.63% 55.56%

Chipset NV03 NV04/05 NV10 NV20 NV30 NV40 NV50 NVC0 NVE0 NV110
PERCENT COMPLETED 88.24% 85.19% 74.07% 85.19% 74.07% 74.07% 70.37% 70.37% 70.37% 44.44%

As you can see the percentages are quite high, the interesting thing is the percentages are all consistently over 70% completed, except for the absolutely bleeding edge 750GTX series.
even the 770GTX/Titan cards are 68-70% supported. (the bulk of outstanding tasks are power management related)
I have subtracted off all tasks that are considered N/A, EXTFW, or BIOS, as the driver can support these features.

[haplo602]

Err... WRONG.

Nouveau. Seriously guys, stop talking without researching. Nouveau has implemented 99% of features that the NVIDIA binary driver has. The last thing needed is power management. And if you goto nouveau.freedekstop.org and bother to actually read the status matrix. You very quickly realise that they are on the verge of cracking this thing right open. I am willing to bet. and you can now quote me on this I would happily bet $50.00 AU that by July 2015. There is a high performance open source NVIDIA driver that supports OpenGL 4.2 if not 4.4. With power management support for all current generation (7XX series) graphics cards. NVIDIA's closed source binary driver is an engineering masterpiece sure. But they've had the thing ported to Solaris, BSD, Mac OSX, and Linux for the last decade. AMD/ATi haven't bothered to support all those platforms, and haven't bothered to maintain OpenGL at all. They are just reaping what they've sown. Intel is to be commended for starting from nothing, and in a short time developing a stable, feature-rich driver.

ATI/AMD do not get a free pass on this.

Apple didn't get a free pass when they made crap products, they bled out. Under Steve they started making good products and they picked up market share. There's a lesson there for ATi/AMD. Make good products. Don't make excuses. Don't make up bullshit. Just cut your past off, and focus on the future and making your product work.

OpenGL level is a mesa thing, so making power management work on NV OSS driver will not magicaly implement the missing extensions and shader features in mesa ... don't bet, it's lost money for you ....

[chinoto]

OpenGL level is a mesa thing, so making power management work on NV OSS driver will not magicaly implement the missing extensions and shader features in mesa ... don't bet, it's lost money for you ....

You have to have faith my child.

[blackiwid]

And now all your yadda yadda is WRONG!

MANTLE is the new "opensource Engine"!

Apple is switching from opengl to swift, I daubt that they will keep paralel the opengl support up to the level its good enough for highend games. Not to mention that Apple now is the worst Gaming-plattform (availibilty of games) of all.

So what do we have now:

D3D - Windows-ONLY
SWIFT - Apple-ONLY
OPENGL - bad implemations on windows on linux and on macosx best implementation I think windows, or is the opengl driver from catalyst worse than in windows? I also thought the Intel-opengl stack is faster in windows?

MANTLE - Windows and Linux support OPEN API better than opengl Plattform independend (who cares about macosx?) the api itself vendor-independend, aka open for other vendors. Not ot mention full Konsole Support.


I think Mantle is the winner!!!

And the "only support for newer gpus thing is also no real argument against mantle" it only slows down the migration till opengl gets irrelevant for gaming.



Maybe I am to optimistic but all developer hate opengl and all love Mantle they will desite too, if developers complain by nvidia or have less good support for their hardware at some point, nvidia will fast implement the open Mantle API I am shure.

The only real Problem I see is Intel, but they dont really have big advantage if they dont, yes u dont need so good cpus with mantle, but if opengl would win, that would happen in opengl too or in directx so that cpus gets less important for gaming is a thing coming no matter what intel does.


At least I hope Mantle cleans up the current opengl-mess.

[gamerk2]

And now all your yadda yadda is WRONG!

MANTLE is the new "opensource Engine"!

Apple is switching from opengl to swift, I daubt that they will keep paralel the opengl support up to the level its good enough for highend games. Not to mention that Apple now is the worst Gaming-plattform (availibilty of games) of all.

So what do we have now:

D3D - Windows-ONLY
SWIFT - Apple-ONLY
OPENGL - bad implemations on windows on linux and on macosx best implementation I think windows, or is the opengl driver from catalyst worse than in windows? I also thought the Intel-opengl stack is faster in windows?

MANTLE - Windows and Linux support OPEN API better than opengl Plattform independend (who cares about macosx?) the api itself vendor-independend, aka open for other vendors. Not ot mention full Konsole Support.


I think Mantle is the winner!!!

And the "only support for newer gpus thing is also no real argument against mantle" it only slows down the migration till opengl gets irrelevant for gaming.



Maybe I am to optimistic but all developer hate opengl and all love Mantle they will desite too, if developers complain by nvidia or have less good support for their hardware at some point, nvidia will fast implement the open Mantle API I am shure.

The only real Problem I see is Intel, but they dont really have big advantage if they dont, yes u dont need so good cpus with mantle, but if opengl would win, that would happen in opengl too or in directx so that cpus gets less important for gaming is a thing coming no matter what intel does.


At least I hope Mantle cleans up the current opengl-mess.

There is no way NVIDIA, Intel, PowerVR, or Qualcomm use Mantle, so no, Mantle looses. With the inevitable demise of OGL, we're going back to vendor specific API's, which is what i was afraid Mantle was going to cause.

[blackiwid]

There is no way NVIDIA, Intel, PowerVR, or Qualcomm use Mantle, so no, Mantle looses. With the inevitable demise of OGL, we're going back to vendor specific API's, which is what i was afraid Mantle was going to cause.

I dont care much about what happens but I am interested in which fault it is, if Nvidia will not use Mantle its their fault one reason more to not buy em.

And btw I find that not so impossible that Intel goes mantle, they support DX a windows only api, so why the hell would they not support a plattform-independend better api?

[chinoto]

[Mentions of swift]
MANTLE - Windows and Linux support OPEN API better than opengl Plattform independend (who cares about macosx?) the api itself vendor-independend, aka open for other vendors. Not ot mention full Konsole Support.

Swift is Apple's new programming language, I believe you meant Metal.
Konsole is KDE's windowed terminal, did you really mean to say that or perhaps "console"?

[sarmad]

MANTLE - Windows and Linux support OPEN API better than opengl Plattform independend (who cares about macosx?) the api itself vendor-independend, aka open for other vendors. Not ot mention full Konsole Support.

Too many assumptions in this statement. At this point, Mantle is still Windows only and vendor dependent. Even if Mantle becomes vendor independent it's still not an open standard, i.e. AMD develops newer versions of it behind closed doors in order to stay ahead of the curve. Other vendors will likely prefer to improve OpenGL rather than tailing AMD in terms of release dates.