Radeon 3D Driver Rewrite Merged To Master

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon 3D Driver Rewrite Merged To Master

It has been several months coming, but the "radeon-rewrite" driver has been merged into the mainline Mesa code-base in the past hour. Red Hat's David Airlie had been working on the Radeon driver rewrite (a March '09 update) that adds buffer manager to all of the ATI Mesa 3D drivers (going back to the R100/200 series) along with working on support for DRI2 and OpenGL FBOs (Frame Buffer Objects) and other fundamental enhancements...

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

[Melcar]

Excellent news.

[bulletxt]

I'de like to know when the game FooBillard will display correctly with ATI drivers, both closed and open source ones. Funny thing is that it works correctly under Windows, but not under Linux. You can install foobillard from synaptic on debian/ubuntu systems. You will notice a bad shading.... it's at least 3 years it's like that and still nothing changed.... it works correctly with INTEL and NVIDIA drivers......and I'de also like to know what's causing that bug..

[Melcar]

Fglrx:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/6616/16565023.png (http://img132.imageshack.us/i/16565023.png/)


Radeon:

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/8840/snapshot2q.png (http://img142.imageshack.us/i/snapshot2q.png/)

[bridgman]

I didn't see any mention of FooBilliard in either the fglrx or xorg bug trackers. Looks like nobody has filed a bug report so probably none of the devs are aware of a problem.

[bulletxt]

Yea Melcar, that's exactly the nasty bug I have from years only with AMD cards and only under Linux :(

And as you can see the bug is both with FGLRX and open source driver :S

[bridgman]

So that's a "bad" image ? What is the error -- the vertical line ? Or are the shadows wrong maybe ?

[bulletxt]

So that's a "bad" image ? What is the error -- the vertical line ? Or are the shadows wrong maybe ?

The shadows.. on a correct display it shouldn't show shadows at all. An example:
http://asb.studentibicocca.it/conferenze/opensource_2005/immagini/prg/foobillard_snapshot01.png

or


http://taufanlubis.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/linux-game-foobillard.png

[bridgman]

It's really odd that two completely different drivers, written by independent groups, put up the same result. I wonder if there are ATI-specific code paths in the app ?

There are shadows on your "good" image as well, if you look closely, but they're a lot smaller.

[Ex-Cyber]

Will this have any immediate benefits to R600+ users, or do we have to wait for another merge of the R600/700-specific work?

[Melcar]

These are with what appears to be the highest detail settings for the game:

Fglrx

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9193/55626500.png (http://img259.imageshack.us/i/55626500.png/)


Radeon (rendered reflections is murder on my small 200M)
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/5863/snapshot3c.png (http://img523.imageshack.us/i/snapshot3c.png/)



In both cases, I really don't see what the "rendering error" is.

[bridgman]

Will this have any immediate benefits to R600+ users, or do we have to wait for another merge of the R600/700-specific work?

No immediate benefits for 6xx-7xx users, but this is an important pre-requisite for merging 6xx-7xx code into mesa master.

Melcar; my phone line and I thank you for shrinking the pics :D

[Mazur]

Yay \o/, good work dev's. I hope to see 3d and KMS soon =)).

[Perry3D]

Jeah, awesome work. You're doing a great job. :)

I hope KMS and 3D for r600/r700 is coming soon.

[bugmenot]

Thank you, all developers :)

I'm also hoping for r600/700 3D :)

[Ant P.]

IIRC, missing FBOs caused a big performance hit in UT2004. I might have to reinstall it and give it another look...

[mendieta]

It's a happy day! I hope I can stay with ATI and buy a dedicated graphics card working with OS drivers by the end of this year :D

[osos]

Thank you for NOT forgetting old r100/r200 models.

My T42 with Radeon 7500 greatly appreciate every optimization you make.

Thank you. :)

[.CME.]

to the graphic glitches in foobillard: i can confirm this also on r128 + after 5secs it deadlocks the complete system :x (yeah, the r128 xorg driver is the worst driver i have ever seen.... with years old bugs,.. but that's an other topic...)

[SolidSteel144]

Things are going to get pretty interesting in the next quarter. :)

[susikala]

Digressing a bit, but I have to say it, since I have just noticed Airlie works for Red Hat.

One can hardly appreciate the effort this company puts and how much it invests into Linux, both the kernel and around it. Sure, they're out to make money like every company -- but there are so many areas (core kernel, kvm, PA just to mention a few) where Red Hat gives back so much to the community, I consider this kind of work amazing.

Not to mention Fedora, which is really personally becoming for me a real competitor to deb-based distros (obviously, Ubuntu, but also Debian).

I could throw in that it's a bit aggravating to see how popular Ubuntu is and little they give back kernelwise, but they're (1) relatively new to the game and (2) I hear they contribute a lot desktop-wise. And they're getting a lot more new people exposed to Linux in general, which is a _very important_ thing. No use for all those wonderful features if there's no wide userbase to test and enjoy them.

So, end of my rant: kudos to Red Hat and continue the great work.

[Veerappan]

*does a happy dance*

Combine the TTM and KMS proposed merges, and this, and I'm definitely happy. I'll be updating my Mesa install (radeon-rewrite -> master) when I get home tonight and doing what I can to test/break it.

[mendieta]

One can hardly appreciate the effort this company puts and how much it invests into Linux, both the kernel and around it. Sure, they're out to make money like every company -- but there are so many areas (core kernel, kvm, PA just to mention a few) where Red Hat gives back so much to the community, I consider this kind of work amazing.


And networkManager and the list goes. I was going to post exactly the same when I read the article. Thank you Red Hat. Ubuntu has become to a large extent synonym of Linux among home users (hell, I run Kubuntu). But in corporate use, essentially Red Hat == Linux. They deserve the glory.

[Louise]

Digressing a bit, but I have to say it, since I have just noticed Airlie works for Red Hat.

One can hardly appreciate the effort this company puts and how much it invests into Linux, both the kernel and around it. Sure, they're out to make money like every company -- but there are so many areas (core kernel, kvm, PA just to mention a few) where Red Hat gives back so much to the community, I consider this kind of work amazing.

Not to mention Fedora, which is really personally becoming for me a real competitor to deb-based distros (obviously, Ubuntu, but also Debian).

I could throw in that it's a bit aggravating to see how popular Ubuntu is and little they give back kernelwise, but they're (1) relatively new to the game and (2) I hear they contribute a lot desktop-wise. And they're getting a lot more new people exposed to Linux in general, which is a _very important_ thing. No use for all those wonderful features if there's no wide userbase to test and enjoy them.

So, end of my rant: kudos to Red Hat and continue the great work.

Surely Red Hat is amazing, but all this is only possible because AMD made it possible in the first place.

It is truly impressive that one of the two leading GPU companies decides to go open source. Things that have been kept a secret in fear of what the competitor could do with this info, is now completely open.

I wouldn't want to hear the meetings when it was proposed for the first time. I think it would be safe to say that, that most have required some amazing arguments and tolerance for those that would just go in BSoD when they hear the words "open source".

I think it was a smart move by AMD, but I still think it was very brave at this point, and not waiting for the next generation of GPU's, where they could have separated the Digital Restrictions Management completely from the 3D stuff. That's impressive and really shows how much weight and money they put behind it.

And then we have to thank all the people that have contributed with are not on AMD's pay role. MustAwesomeDude springs to mind.

And see where we are now. Intel got scared and followed AMD's move. It's a bit strange to think about, that we have to thank AMD for Intel going open source on their GPU's :)

Let's see when nVidia joins in. At some point AMD/ATi will be the defacto standard for Linux, unless nVidia follows AMD's lead.

[chaos386]

^Intel's drivers have been open source since well before AMD's recent OSS push.

[Louise]

^Intel's drivers have been open source since well before AMD's recent OSS push.

In that case, subtract 1 from still infinity awesome :)

[mendieta]

Not surprisingly, all my recent purchases in terms of graphics have been intel and amd/ati. It's in my best interest, but also I like to vote with my wallet :D

[drag]

Not surprisingly, all my recent purchases in terms of graphics have been intel and amd/ati. It's in my best interest, but also I like to vote with my wallet :D

Yes. Everybody wins. No more fighting, no more licensing BS, no more struggling to install half-assed drivers, etc etc. Everything is open, everybody benefits, (well once the drivers stabilize!) and they still get to sell their hardware.

Very nice. Everybody wins, everybody profits. This is the way things should be.

[dungeon]

I'de like to know when the game FooBillard will display correctly with ATI drivers, both closed and open source ones. Funny thing is that it works correctly under Windows, but not under Linux. You can install foobillard from synaptic on debian/ubuntu systems. You will notice a bad shading.... it's at least 3 years it's like that and still nothing changed.... it works correctly with INTEL and NVIDIA drivers......and I'de also like to know what's causing that bug..

http://i263.photobucket.com/albums/ii149/smokidungeon/foobillard.jpg

If that is a picture you like, try some debs from https://launchpad.net/~smoki00790/+archive/ppa ;).

[dungeon]

...and I'de also like to know what's causing that bug..

I forgot to explain this issue... Intel's hardware do not support GL_CLAMP and because of that they just translate it to GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE in drivers, but ATi Radeons hardware have support and thus they support both in drivers also, not sure about nVidia propertiary drivers but they seems to translate it also like Intel, again nouveau have both... Who knows, i think it's better to change that in game, because that will works for everybody, another reason is because it is changed in same way for win32 port.

[bulletxt]

I forgot to explain this issue... Intel's hardware do not support GL_CLAMP and because of that they just translate it to GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE in drivers, but ATi Radeons hardware have support and thus they support both in drivers also, not sure about nVidia propertiary drivers but they seems to translate it also like Intel, again nouveau have both... Who knows, i think it's better to change that in game, because that will works for everybody, another reason is because it is changed in same way for win32 port.

If that is the case, I suggest that your foobillard package gets into Ubuntu Karmic and replaces the current one!

[smitty3268]

If that is the case, I suggest that your foobillard package gets into Ubuntu Karmic and replaces the current one!

http://www.mail-archive.com/dri-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg31579.html

Keith Packard seems to confirm it's a bug in the game, and that some Intel hardware was having the same type of problems with it.