AMD To Release GPU Specifications Without NDA!

[gnumdk]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA0Ng

Bye Bye Nvidia!

[MUYA]

Why would that be bye bye?

Erm something I am missing?

[Tygerwoody]

Why would that be bye bye?

Erm something I am missing?
because he's an idiot troll who is too foolish to understand what this news really means.

/laughs at AMD/ATI's ability to make a proper driver themselves, so they ask the general public to do it for them. :rofl

[LostinSpacetime]

I'm not exactly sure who's the fool. But I'm certanly happy (and surprised) about this turn of AMD/ATI. I think we're gonna have a pretty fast development on the ATI driver in the next months.. and HEY!!.. it's gonna be OPEN SOURCE (nana2)

All we need now, is that nVIDIA will do something similar soon.

[Mr.A]

I'm not exactly sure who's the fool. But I'm certanly happy (and surprised) about this turn of AMD/ATI. I think we're gonna have a pretty fast development on the ATI driver in the next months.. and HEY!!.. it's gonna be OPEN SOURCE (nana2)

All we need now, is that nVIDIA will do something similar soon.

Yes, I also hope that we will get open source drivers from nVIDIA with full 3D-Acceleration.
It would be better for NVIDIA and the users, if there cards would just work (out of the box).

I mean this is what we all want, a system were you don't have to think about the drivers. It just should work.

best wishes
Mr. A

[blk]

i'm wondering how much faster/better these currently closed drivers will get once the community gets to improve them. if nvidia sees gain from this they might be encouraged to release, too (_if_ the technology's largely the same anyway)

i'm also sure nvidia users will get advantages from this, as the nouveau driver will probably be able to profit from the knowledge gained (even if the implementation isn't perfect. i'm kinda sure most of the internals work similarly)

open source drivers are really good but it's still better to have driver support for linux than none at all! so thanks nvidia for your long-existing, good linux drivers!

[conholster]

so thanks nvidia for your long-existing, good linux drivers!
Agreed! Nvidia was there when Ati wasnt, I aint switching that easily. Also dont forget AMD/Ati stuff is still just talk, dont get overhyped until their money is where their mouth is. Yes, I know I sound like a fanboy. ;)

[redarrow]

Erm something I am missing?
Apparantly yes.. :p

This is good news!

If I had a choice between two OpenGL 3D accelerated graphic cards for my Linux system one with OSS drivers and one with closed source I would go for the OSS one anyday - even if the hardware was 50% more expensive and only had 50% of the performance of the propriety one. - Maybe that's just me :) - but I always pick the OSS equivalent over propriety stuff.

Think of the impact this could have: Once a set of OSS drivers are written it'll mean that "out of the box" installations of just about any Linux distro will immediately support full 3D acceleration on ATI's cards.. :) - Which ultimately means that when a Linux newcomer asks advice on what hardware he should purchase for his Linux system - he'll almost always be advised to get an ATI card rather than an Nvidia one... (unless Nvidia follows this course as well).

It's also a good way to "score points" with OSS fans. (Note specifically "OSS" fans.. not necessarily all Linux fans - although they tend to be the same thing).

[obra]

i could care less for 3d. all i want is a free driver with functional tvout. I just hope ATI wont forget tvout in their specs.

[Rakeesh]

It is very well possible that you'll see no benefit at all from this. Remember that this will depend on developers doing this on their free time. Just wait and see.

[kriko]

At least those developers get job done properly. On third computer, I installed latest pre-release of Xorg 7.3 and tried again my radeon 9250, which was a catastrophe under linux (before). It works like a charm now!
Video playback, 3d accel, supend2ram or suspend2disk (didn't work with gf2mx64 with binary driver), even Unreal tournament keeps fps steady at 85. Yes, on gf2mx was also playable, but on messy scenes was a bit... choppy.
Also using linux all these years and watching development of free software, I can say that issues gets fixed fast. What was not working a week ago, it is mostly probable that it does in new release. This I cannot say for proprietary software, take a look at nvidia drivers. They are "ok", but black window bug is almost one year old (or more?). Suspend still doesn't work for me...
I'm sure that opening specs would increase drivers quality. And at the end, why it would all depend on free developers? As I'm aware companies like AMD, Intel... are contributing to drivers themselves too.

[macemoneta]

The first 900+ pages of specifications have been delivered!

From: Phoronix (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA1Mw):


Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off ATI's GPU specifications to David Airlie on a CD (as reported by Daniel Stone). However, the specifications are also now available on the Internet! At http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ is the location of the documentation where you can freely download the files. Right now there is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide. The RV630 Reference Guide is 434 pages long while the M56 Guide is 460 pages. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next week. More information to come soon.

[macemoneta]

The AMD/ATI open source driver has been released as promised (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=842&num=1).

[Ironi]

The AMD/ATI open source driver has been released as promised (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=842&num=1).
Indeed, but the 3D specifications are still not available. Hopefully AMD will release reasonably-complete 3D specs. Even then, it's going to take a while for a decent driver to be written, and its performance might always lag behind that of fglrx. Especially if there are any patent issues, e.g. with S3 Texture Compression... That was one deficiency of the old R200 open source driver built from partial, non-public specs; the DRI devs knew how to implement S3TC, but legally they couldn't.

I'll give AMD a year. By that time, I'll probably be considering a new system to build. If the open source graphics driver looks appealing, then I may give ATi technology another chance.

I'm not going to hold my breath, though.

[uOpt]

It looks promising but it's not there yet.

Even just full 2D specs to implement the base including multihead, TV, XV would be a step forward.

I wouldn't bet on "free time". So far a lot of Xorg gruntwork has been payed for by a variety of companies. This is a big issue and people are willing to steamroller into it, including monetary contributions.

[macemoneta]

AMD partnered with Novell to develop and release (http://news.opensuse.org/?p=265) the initial open source driver. Many vendors that would like to sell Linux (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus) on machines with the option of using ATI video cards will undoubtedly be supporting with development resources or money.

The 2D specs are already out, and the 3D specs are being sanitized. This is moving much faster than expected. Apparently, AMD was working this behind the scenes for months before the announcement.