It Looks Like AMDGPU DC (DAL) Will Not Be Accepted In The Linux Kernel

[ihatemichael]

he can't understand that, he is disoriented idiot

Idiot is the one who can't respond with nothing but ad hominem attacks. You're clearly the winner.

[ihatemichael]

Of course, but the whole "issue" is about people getting offended, nothing more.



Dave replied to Daniel's email rather than Harry's, and as a consequence thought we were delivering some kind of ultimatum about upstreaming current code. He got a bit PO'ed and responded more colourfully than usual... the people he offended vented back, total investment maybe 2 minutes, everyone felt better, and now they are all back to work.

The important part is not the venting itself but (a) the information that comes along with the venting and (b) the "hey this is really important and if you thought about it you might conclude that things aren't the way you believe" flag that speaking strongly about something brings to the discussion.

Normally this happens face-to-face at conferences but a lot of key people haven't been able to travel recently so instead of arguing these things out in a conference room or a pub it happened on email.



Changes are being made, but it's a big task that touches a lot of different OSes and driver teams so takes the most calendar time. The other changes were more self-contained and so could be worked on independently.


Pity because the comment is responding to something that didn't happen (which BTW is the root cause of all this drama). What Alex actually said about corporate culture was:



The reddit comment you referenced suggests that Alex was the one "going on about corporate culture", but that is not the reality. Dave's comments were treating AMD as a homogeneous whole; Alex was making the point that we had different teams with different levels of familiarity with upstream development (zero for most teams) and so like it or not there was going to be a learning curve while the new teams came up to speed... so being surprised and offended when a new team didn't get things exactly right the first time was maybe not the right way to operate.

Understandable. Things make more sense now, thanks. Glad to know things are moving forward too.

If you follow the full discussion you'll see some alignment of views resulting from Dave & Alex's initial emails.



As I said, this whole thing is a misunderstanding in the first place. We *have* been doing the right thing from the start, but Harry's RFC was misinterpreted as an ultimatum to take DC upstream in its current code or not get open source driver support for future chips.

No question that if everyone had taken time to validate what they thought was being said before resonding then none of this would have happened. Dave didn't realize that we were not trying to upstream current code or making any kind of ultimatum, and our folks didn't realize that Dave was venting because of a misunderstanding.

Makes sense. So the whole misunderstanding happened because Dave thought they wanted to merge the code as-is and it was a RFC?

But you are helping the drama to continue by drawing conclusions based on random internet posts & articles then posting rather than going back to the source material and basing your conclusions on that.

What I'm saying is (a) read the RFC, (b) read all the dri-devel emails rather than just the first one or two.

I will, and I'm not trying to help with the drama to continue, but more like to understand what happened and how things are progressing.

Sorry for any misunderstandings.

[bridgman]

so you have to do it anyway, the only difference is whether upstream kernel will have driver for vega in this decade on in next

I don't understand that comment at all. Can you explain it please ?

[bridgman]

Perhaps "keeps wasting time" is an exaggeration and not the right thing to say, sorry. I simply meant that from reading his email I get the feeling he got offended, that's simply it.

Of course, but the whole "issue" is about people getting offended, nothing more.

What I was going after is that perhaps he should have keep his feelings aside and just work with the other engineers to do whatever it's needed to do to get the support upstream, that is, remove the abstraction layer that is being questioned.

Dave replied to Daniel's email rather than Harry's, and as a consequence thought we were delivering some kind of ultimatum about upstreaming current code. He got a bit PO'ed and responded more colourfully than usual... the people he offended vented back, total investment maybe 2 minutes, everyone felt better, and now they are all back to work.

The important part is not the venting itself but (a) the information that comes along with the venting and (b) the "hey this is really important and if you thought about it you might conclude that things aren't the way you believe" flag that speaking strongly about something brings to the discussion.

Normally this happens face-to-face at conferences but a lot of key people haven't been able to travel recently so instead of arguing these things out in a conference room or a pub it happened on email.

It's good that the code was reduced, but has the HAL been removed?

Changes are being made, but it's a big task that touches a lot of different OSes and driver teams so takes the most calendar time. The other changes were more self-contained and so could be worked on independently.

I agree with this comment here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme...iners/db0e0hx/

Pity because the comment is responding to something that didn't happen (which BTW is the root cause of all this drama). What Alex actually said about corporate culture was:

I can respect your technical points and if you kept it to that, I'd be fine with it and we could have a technical discussion starting there. But attacking us or our corporate culture is not cool. I think perhaps you have been in the RH silo for too long. Our corporate culture is not like RH's. Like it or not, we have historically been a windows centric company. We have a few small Linux team that has been engaged with the community for a long time, but the rest of the company has not.

The reddit comment you referenced suggests that Alex was the one "going on about corporate culture", but that is not the reality. Dave's comments were treating AMD as a homogeneous whole; Alex was making the point that we had different teams with different levels of familiarity with upstream development (zero for most teams) and so like it or not there was going to be a learning curve while the new teams came up to speed... so being surprised and offended when a new team didn't get things exactly right the first time was maybe not the right way to operate.

If you follow the full discussion you'll see some alignment of views resulting from Dave & Alex's initial emails.

As I said, "keeps wasting time" was an exaggeration, but at the same time I feel he was expressing some level of frustration, maybe this could have been avoided somehow and do the right thing from the start?

As I said, this whole thing is a misunderstanding in the first place. We *have* been doing the right thing from the start, but Harry's RFC was misinterpreted as an ultimatum to take DC upstream in its current code or not get open source driver support for future chips.

No question that if everyone had taken time to validate what they thought was being said before resonding then none of this would have happened. Dave didn't realize that we were not trying to upstream current code or making any kind of ultimatum, and our folks didn't realize that Dave was venting because of a misunderstanding.

And no, I'm not trying to start any drama, the drama has already started with these discussions as you can see on reddit, hacker news and this forum.

But you are helping the drama to continue by drawing conclusions based on random internet posts & articles then posting rather than going back to the source material and basing your conclusions on that.

What I'm saying is (a) read the RFC, (b) read all the dri-devel emails rather than just the first one or two.

[ihatemichael]

Not sure what you mean by "keeps wasting time" - believe you are talking about one email, perhaps 45-60 seconds total, in a year ? Is that what you mean ?

Perhaps "keeps wasting time" is an exaggeration and not the right thing to say, sorry. I simply meant that from reading his email I get the feeling he got offended, that's simply it.

What I was going after is that perhaps he should have keep his feelings aside and just work with the other engineers to do whatever it's needed to do to get the support upstream, that is, remove the abstraction layer that is being questioned.

Don't understand your question. All the issues Dave mentioned in that post have been addressed, including reducing code size to ~66K which is only a bit larger than the display portion of current upstream drivers. The topic being discussed now is something different, not mentioned in the email you referenced.

It's good that the code was reduced, but has the HAL been removed?

You do understand that Alex is not part of the DAL team, right ?

You keep saying "keeps wasting time" but AFAIK we are talking about one email taking less than a minute to write. Is there a long history of dramatic emails I have somehow managed to miss or are you perhaps injecting the drama yourself ?

I didn't know that.

As I said, "keeps wasting time" was an exaggeration, but at the same time I feel he was expressing some level of frustration, maybe this could have been avoided somehow and do the right thing from the start?

I agree with this comment here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme...iners/db0e0hx/

And no, I'm not trying to start any drama, the drama has already started with these discussions as you can see on reddit, hacker news and this forum.

[pal666]

Not really. If your hypothetical open source champion works closely with our driver teams for all the other platforms that share the code to come up with a solution that fits the Linux kernel *and* works for all the other platforms then it is strictly beneficial. That's what we have to do.

so you have to do it anyway, the only difference is whether upstream kernel will have driver for vega in this decade on in next

[bridgman]

Michael, I think you 'forgot' 'yet' in articles heading.

The headline should be "AMD sends RFC to help with DC/DAL planning, gets strongly worded answer to question they didn't ask".

The article is based on the assumption that we will never change the DC interface, while Harry's RFC already talked about continuing to clean up and reduce abstractions in DC prior to upstreaming.

[bridgman]

well, you still have to do it without imaginary help, so if someone will do part of your work for you, it is strictly beneficial

Not really. If your hypothetical open source champion works closely with our driver teams for all the other platforms that will share the code to come up with a solution that fits the Linux kernel *and* can be made work for the other platforms then it is strictly beneficial. That's what we have to do.

If they just start ripping parts out of the Linux copy and ignoring all the other platforms that just makes even more work for everyone because the code will no longer be shareable across platforms and so support for every new chip we introduce will have to go through the same transmogrification process - additional work which would not be required if the changes had been worked out cross-platform in the first place.

[pal666]

So, I'm not quite sure what you're arguing about (especially with the "opensource champion" remark).

i am not surprised
remark was regarding dave's question in mail mentioned in article

[veritas]

Michael, I think you 'forgot' 'yet' in articles heading.