Open-Source Radeon UVD1 Code Is Pending Review

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source Radeon UVD1 Code Is Pending Review

One of several wonderful milestones for the open-source Radeon driver in 2013 was AMD open-sourcing the UVD video acceleration code to provide video hardware decoding for modern formats with their open-source Linux GPU driver. That code though didn't support the original UVD engine but now new code is pending review for public release that provides that early hardware support...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU4NjE

[agd5f]

Lest everyone ask the same questions again this was discussed last week:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?79727-Radeon-UVD-Support-Merged-Into-Mesa/page7

[zman0900]

Damn. Looks like still no support coming for RV770, which happens to be the chip I have. I wonder what's special about that chip?

[smitty3268]

Is UVD4 fully supported?

And are there any plans to bring VCE, or whatever the encoding side is called, to linux?

[Aeder]

Uh, I don't get how releasing the code would change anything regarding copyright infringement, given that it presently occurs even without the code.

[Vim_User]

It just doesn't has a high priority for the reviewer because we don't really sell that old hardware any more.

The RS880 was popular back in the day and there's still many Radeon HD 3000 series GPUs out in the wild.

Anyone stating that has either no clue or is intentionally misinfoming. Newegg alone lists 18 different mainboards featuring the 760G/785G/880G chipsets that are still sold. Many smaller OEMs use masses of boards with these chipsets for their cheaper AM3 systems. AMD is still making money with these chipsets.

[mrugiero]

Anyone stating that has either no clue or is intentionally misinfoming. Newegg alone lists 18 different mainboards featuring the 760G/785G/880G chipsets that are still sold. Many smaller OEMs use masses of boards with these chipsets for their cheaper AM3 systems. AMD is still making money with these chipsets.

Not necessarily. AMD makes money when they keep production, if those are just old, already bought, lots, it doesn't make the slightest difference to them: they stopped selling them. I don't know if this is actually the case, but it's one possibility you seem to be overlooking.
Anyway, I hope they release it and they make it ASAP, as I have two laptops that will see benefitted from it

[tomtomme]

Anyone stating that has either no clue or is intentionally misinfoming. Newegg alone lists 18 different mainboards featuring the 760G/785G/880G chipsets that are still sold. Many smaller OEMs use masses of boards with these chipsets for their cheaper AM3 systems. AMD is still making money with these chipsets.

No. I don?t think so.
AMD is presumably not making money with it, because they sold those boards to the resellers already some months/years ago. AMD can only make money of this, IF they still PRODUCE those boards/chips and still sell them to the retailers. I can also buy a "new" nvidia riva TNT graphics card at some store, but that does not earn nvidia money.

and by the way the 7xx/8xxG feature UVD 2.0 and were launched 2007/2010...

[aphirst]

I can also buy a "new" nvidia riva TNT graphics card at some store, but that does not earn nvidia money.

Well... that's not quite true. The fact that you're willing to purchase older hardware means that others buying newer hardware are more comfortable doing so, and at slightly higher prices (because they can put more trust into the idea that a few years down the line it will still have some resale value).

[tomtomme]

Well... that's not quite true. The fact that you're willing to purchase older hardware means that others buying newer hardware are more comfortable doing so, and at slightly higher prices (because they can put more trust into the idea that a few years down the line it will still have some resale value).

true - so AMD earns at least some money indirectly.
good point.

and for UVD 1 vs UVD 2 the chipsets-table that support those is a bit wired
see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series

not all 7xx series mainboard chips included UVD 2. But at least those 785G/880G and some more have UVD 2 and all those that were based on HD4000 series desktop cards