Radeon R500/600 Support Goes Mainline

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon R500/600 Support Goes Mainline

Following the release of xf86-video-ati 6.7.197 just moments ago, David Airlie has merged the AtomBIOS support branch back to the xf86-video-ati master branch. What this means is that the Radeon X1000 (R500) and HD 2000 (R600) support (even with the Radeon HD 2900XT) is now in the mainline Radeon driver and when using git you no longer need to switch to this separate branch and will be included in the ATI 6.7.198 driver release and later.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjI1Nw

[Kano]

That's an interesting step. However it seems to make radeonhd driver sooner or later obsolete.

[rbmorse]

I have the same question...in relation to my little R580+ universe, what does/will the new ati driver give me that radeonhd does not (in the short term)?

Will this announcement make the radeonhd guys jump out of a high-story window?

What relationship, if any, do the ati driver devs have with the Novell people closest to AMD?

[bridgman]

All the OSS developers talk to each other pretty much every day on IRC, so I don't think there are any surprises here and certainly no jumping out of buildings.

Radeonhd is a smaller, newer code base with the SuSE guys working full time supporting end users and polishing the details. The radeon code base has been around for a long time (although substantially re-written for randr1.2) so already has 2d and 3d acceleration code for earlier generations of ASICs -- and the 2d acceleration has been ported to run on 5xx.

We will probably use the radeon code base as the basis for releasing sample 3d code simply because the rest of the 3d framework is already in place, but at the same time we are continuing to partner with the radeonhd developers to continue developing the radeonhd code.

I know it's fun to look at these things as competitions with winners and losers, but I don't think it's going to work out that way. Changes and ideas are already moving back and forth between the code bases and I expect that will continue for a while. There are some different design philosophies between the groups, and I expect it will take a while for everyone to agree on a common ground (and, hence, a common code base). My prediction is that it will take...

... two open source conferences, two more RandR revisions, and 57 liters of beer.

Any other bets ?

[yoshi314]

the way i see it is :

radeonhd is dedicated to >=r5xx chips and thus is more tuned to this hardware. separate driver for >=r500 cards only might turn out to be better, performance-wise in the future. (usually less generic driver is more optimized for targeted hardware). it's developers turned out to be fairly competent folks, who know what they're doing.

on the other hand, radeon driver is more generic, supporting a wider range of cards and it's fairly easy to add support for new cards (as shown by atombios merge). however constantly extending the driver by supporting more and more hardware might make the codebase too complex and discourage people who would like to join the development.

radeonhd developers have pretty good grip on r5xx/r6xx hardware by now, while radeon devs have good knowledge of older chips, backed by their experience and knowledge of various quirks (something that specs might not cover). since there are similarities between these cards, both teams will benefit from each other's experiences.

it's better to have two projects. maybe there'll be a merge between them in the end, maybe not. it's a win-win situation anyway, as nobody is losing here.

[rbmorse]

Thank you both. This really helps.

[rbmorse]

I do have a question. I'd like to give this a try so I pulled the latest from git, the files are on the local machine and autogen, make and make install ran with no unexpected errors. Easy as cake.

I have an R580+ on Ubuntu 7.10. What driver should I specify in xorg.conf, "ati" or "radeon"?

I think I remember seeing somewhere that "ati" is the correct string and that the driver will figure out the components required to support the hardware, but I can't find it to verify and I'm at a stage where I don't trust my memory so much.

As usual, TIA.

[agd5f]

I have an R580+ on Ubuntu 7.10. What driver should I specify in xorg.conf, "ati" or "radeon"?



It doesn't matter. Either will work. ati is just a wrapper for the 3 real drivers: ati_misc, r128, and radeon.

[rbmorse]

...and it works wonderfully. Thank you.

[CrystalCowboy]

This sounds great. is XVideo supported on R500 yet?

And how long do you think it will take the Fedora folks to get this into an update for Fedora 8?

Thanks,

[Michael]

This sounds great. is XVideo supported on R500 yet?

Nope, not yet.

And how long do you think it will take the Fedora folks to get this into an update for Fedora 8?

I believe it's in Fedora Rawhide right now but should be in time for Fedora 9. When ATI 6.8.0 is released, I imagine it would be a Fedora 8 update but would be up to David Airlie.

[CrystalCowboy]

I hates the wait!

[Kano]

Well I guess everybody told you how good ATI cards are supported before you bought it *g* I personally use ATI only for testing and not for daily use.

[airlied]

This sounds great. is XVideo supported on R500 yet?

And how long do you think it will take the Fedora folks to get this into an update for Fedora 8?

Thanks,

It should be in F8 updates-testing already... the drm kernel patch should also be in the latest F8 kernel.

I'll keep pushing testing packages when I get back to the office.. the tv-out pal fix would be nice to ship..

Dave.

[CrystalCowboy]

Thanks, I installed xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.7.196-5.fc8 from updates-testing and I can now run the radeon driver on a X1650Pro.

[CrystalCowboy]

I have some machines for which XVideo support is absolutely necessary. What cards are still available for which XVideo is supported under the radeon driver?

[agd5f]

I have some machines for which XVideo support is absolutely necessary. What cards are still available for which XVideo is supported under the radeon driver?

All radeons up through the x850 (r4xx) have working Xv.

[bridgman]

How about the X1050 ? I"m pretty sure that has a supported core.

[agd5f]

How about the X1050 ? I"m pretty sure that has a supported core.

Yes. That will work too.

[Kano]

I had a X1050 for short time, that card is extra slow and switching from ati to fglrx usually locked the system...

[bridgman]

Yeah, you definitely need to think of the X1050 as "slower than an X1300" not "faster than an X850" ;)