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Open-Source AMD Linux Developers Already Thinking About API Improvements

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  • Open-Source AMD Linux Developers Already Thinking About API Improvements

    Phoronix: Open-Source AMD Linux Developers Already Thinking About API Improvements

    Given yesterday's big update about AMD's unified Linux driver approach and creating a new "AMDGPU" kernel driver, open-source driver developers independent of AMD who have worked on the current Radeon code are already proposing API improvements...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    While I understand most of the reasons why, it's seems kinda stupid to me to force the "mainline" stuff to maintain API compatibility... forever. That's just asking for complicated, nasty code (X.org, anybody?).

    I've always personally been a fan of the "2 major version rule". As in, any feature introduced in, say, version 3.0, must remain in the code for compatibility reasons until at least version 5.0. Hopefully, by that time, anybody depending on the feature/API/whatever you wish to remove will have removed the dependency and most likely moved to a newer/better thing that you offer. That doesn't mean you should break your code or rewrite everything every two major versions, but it allows for some flexibility when it comes to features and other things you wish to remove.

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    • #3
      Am I the only one - especially as a "pretty-expensive-290" owner - a bit afraid that the radeonsi will be forgotten between two major drivers? The original radeon driver is more or less "done", except perhaps better OpenGL support. The performance is pretty good, and the tweaks that can be made to it are not that huge.
      But the RadeonSI is still in need of pretty much development and stabilizing, especially the Hawaii family of ASICS. I am a bit afraid that most AMD developers will now jump on the amdgpu bandwagon, abandoning radeonsi.

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      • #4
        I hope they could get some input from Intel too.
        Maybe from developer of Mali graphics driver too.

        Maybe even some Nouvoue developer could provide some input?

        It would be nice if Intel and Nvidia device drivers would all use the same interfaces.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Azpegath View Post
          Am I the only one - especially as a "pretty-expensive-290" owner - a bit afraid that the radeonsi will be forgotten between two major drivers? The original radeon driver is more or less "done", except perhaps better OpenGL support. The performance is pretty good, and the tweaks that can be made to it are not that huge.
          But the RadeonSI is still in need of pretty much development and stabilizing, especially the Hawaii family of ASICS. I am a bit afraid that most AMD developers will now jump on the amdgpu bandwagon, abandoning radeonsi.
          Nope your not, most of the stuf I've seen, read for me like: blablabla your fucked with older architectures blablablabla...

          Although the blabla is extremely interesting... also it really feels good I'm not the only one wrestling with nasty deadlocks prevention versus performance >:/

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Daktyl198 View Post
            While I understand most of the reasons why, it's seems kinda stupid to me to force the "mainline" stuff to maintain API compatibility... forever. That's just asking for complicated, nasty code (X.org, anybody?).
            Whilst I don't pretend to fully understand all this, I think they're looking at this from mostly a futuristic perspective.
            Most people won't be using this for many months or years, and in a hopefully x.org free modern desktop, that's always connected, I'd be more than happy for the odd little thing to possibly break and get access to better functionality.
            Distro maintainers would ensure that at least the core desktop experience won't be compromised, and I really doubt AMD would consider implementing this if any old graphical thing could break with every driver revision.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by uid313 View Post
              It would be nice if Intel and Nvidia device drivers would all use the same interfaces.
              I hope thats not going to happen, interface talks are very time consuming especially if not everyone has the same agenda... not saying ofcourse that intel, nvidia and AMD have different agenda's

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              • #8

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Azpegath View Post
                  Am I the only one - especially as a "pretty-expensive-290" owner - a bit afraid that the radeonsi will be forgotten between two major drivers? The original radeon driver is more or less "done", except perhaps better OpenGL support. The performance is pretty good, and the tweaks that can be made to it are not that huge.
                  But the RadeonSI is still in need of pretty much development and stabilizing, especially the Hawaii family of ASICS. I am a bit afraid that most AMD developers will now jump on the amdgpu bandwagon, abandoning radeonsi.
                  I think all the userspace code (including radeonsi) would still be used. The backend plumbing to kernel driver (mostly in winsys) would need to change to route calls through amdgpu rather than radeon kernel drivers, but the pipe driver & shader compiler (the parts you care about the most, I think) would be shared between existing and future hardware AFAIK. It's only the kernel driver that's changing AFAIK, not the userspace.
                  Test signature

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Azpegath View Post
                    Am I the only one - especially as a "pretty-expensive-290" owner - a bit afraid that the radeonsi will be forgotten between two major drivers? The original radeon driver is more or less "done", except perhaps better OpenGL support. The performance is pretty good, and the tweaks that can be made to it are not that huge.
                    But the RadeonSI is still in need of pretty much development and stabilizing, especially the Hawaii family of ASICS. I am a bit afraid that most AMD developers will now jump on the amdgpu bandwagon, abandoning radeonsi.
                    More or less yes abandoning r600/radeonsi that means because it is pretty much finished, it may sound (not) funny because most users use that right now but that is how developing is done , when you finish building one house you start build another .

                    The best thing i expect from devs will be, to not broke previous houses while bulding new

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