The Great Work In DRM-Next: More Icelake, Vega 20, xGMI & Other Additions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Great Work In DRM-Next: More Icelake, Vega 20, xGMI & Other Additions

Whether it's called Linux 4.20 or Linux 5.0, the next kernel cycle is bringing a heck of a lot of improvements for the open-source graphics/display drivers on the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) front...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DRM-Next-Vega-20-Icelake-Plus

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Here's the problem with the FOSS model when it comes to driver development. You oversell and under deliver for years. Years. Not months, but literally years. So much so that you get fatigued out as an owner waiting for the hardware you bought two to three years ago to actually have a driver to fully utilize its capabilities.

The irony is these are large publicly traded corporations and for some reason they can manage a far more engaging opener of a driver for Windows than they can for the FOSS community at large. Partly, it's the abhorrence towards the DRM team and their ``way of development'' and partly it's because this is an afterthought due to the pissant amount of revenue the FOSS community contributes to their revenue streams.

There is a reason Apple can use AMD or Intel hardware and over deliver--they write their own drivers, and with over 43 years of doing so have a clue on how to do it. The teams have decades of leading industry expertise and it shows.

Let's hope this AMD ``merger'' of Compute and Graphics Primitives to displays are now behind us and moving foward we don't have anymore ``well we're restarting from scratch because GCN is now the past and the future really needs a lot of time to get it right.''

AMD got CPUs right. It's time they get GPUs right so that when I lay down $500 for card it has $500 in valuation from day one, not 3 years from now.

[pal666]

Here's the problem with the FOSS model when it comes to driver development. You oversell and under deliver for years. Years. Not months, but literally years.

bullshit. all kernel drivers are opensourced and linux has more/better drivers than competition for over decade. you are confusing "foss" with "immensely complex driver for 1% of customers"

There is a reason Apple can use AMD or Intel hardware and over deliver--they write their own drivers, and with over 43 years of doing so have a clue on how to do it. The teams have decades of leading industry expertise and it shows.

yes, it shows with their opengl drivers being pure shit

[wizard69]

Marc

Interesting comments but I prefer continuous improvement.

Beyond that, with bleeding edge hardware I’m finding that Linux is often close behind or sometimes leading when it comes to driver support and odd quality. I base this on my experience buying a Ryzen base laptop at the end of last year. Windows ten had significant issues right up until I deleted it in favor of Linux. It took the Linux worlds littlelonger to support this new hardware but what was supported actually worked well.

Contrast this to Windows 10 which at the time I deleted it still had significant issues. Now how much of that is drivers it is hard to telll. The point is I never saw similar issues under Linux. Now in an ideal world we would have 100% support on launch day for all new parts. Apparently that can’t happen at this point so I embrace slower incremental release schedules.

[grok]

bullshit. all kernel drivers are opensourced and linux has more/better drivers than competition for over decade. you are confusing "foss" with "immensely complex driver for 1% of customers"
yes, it shows with their opengl drivers being pure shit

He's not wrong, see how long it takes to get amdgpu on GCN 1.0. Is it even ready yet, not crashing?
It was a reason for me to not get a brand new R7 240. Had they released a GCN 1.2 replacement for it that would have been great since in that case newer hardware got better support.