AMD Seeking Comments On DC/DAL Code, Wants To Land It Soon For Future GPU Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Seeking Comments On DC/DAL Code, Wants To Land It Soon For Future GPU Support

AMD developers sent out a "request for comments" of their Display Core (DC, formerly known as DAL) code-base that they are hoping to merge soon as it's needed for the bring-up of future GPU support. It looks like they will initially merge the code just for the yet-to-be-released GPUs and will then gradually switch it on for currently supported Radeon GPUs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-DAL-DC-RFC-Patches

[mazumoto]

Maybe they'll try to push, but the first reply makes me quite sceptical that this might work out: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archiv...er/126440.html
So the core of the problem wasn't adressed in all those months it seems - that'd be the hardware abstraction layer (or more accurately the linux-drm abstraction layer I guess) to be able to use the same driver code on every OS they support.
It seems like they'll need to change their fundamental strategy here ... and I have some doubts that they'll be willing to do that or able to do that fast.

Just renamig DAL to DC didn't fool people it seems - I'm glad about that even though I'd really like to see DC (the features it enables) being a success soon.

[FireBurn]

The follow up looks better, who knows maybe they're pushing for 4.10

[darkbasic]

Linus will give a great show if somehow they manage to convince the drm maintainers to push DC, you can bet it.

[pal666]

It seems like they'll need to change their fundamental strategy here

you mean increase linux userbase by 100 times? why is it their job?

[oooverclocker]

Then we had 230% desktop marketshare...

[pal666]

Then we had 230% desktop marketshare...

marketshare is irrelevant. to have same money as windows driver you have to have same userbase. and usebase means not you, but amd card buyers.

[oooverclocker]

That's not really how it works. When AMD and Nvidia would have dropped Linux completely we wouldn't be 2.3%. So the customers go where their satisfaction is greater.
When AMD sees the chances to improve their customer satisfaction by providing drivers that work without any further effort just like the free drivers usually work on Linux they can of course put similar efforts in both drivers. Especially because they share more and more code on both platforms. And they do especially have a big interest in working Linux drivers because of the massive gaming- APU market there will be when they release the HBM2 APU (e.g. for SteamOS).

According to netmarketshare.com our community grew about 24% last year and 40% this year. If it continues this way we might even hit 50% desktop marketshare until 2022. That can even be possible because of group effects and buzz marketing. And massive amounts of people have stuck with Windows only because there was no (serious) gaming on linux at all and issues with GPU drivers.
When you can install the OS and everything within 5 Minutes, and even the GPU works without any further efforts I don't see a reason for the development to stagnate... And that's pretty much how it already is or will be in few months.

[LeJimster]

That's not really how it works. When AMD and Nvidia would have dropped Linux completely we wouldn't be 2.3%. So the customers go where their satisfaction is greater.
When AMD sees the chances to improve their customer satisfaction by providing drivers that work without any further effort just like the free drivers usually work on Linux they can of course put similar efforts in both drivers. Especially because they share more and more code on both platforms. And they do especially have a big interest in working Linux drivers because of the massive gaming- APU market there will be when they release the HBM2 APU (e.g. for SteamOS).

According to netmarketshare.com our community grew about 24% last year and 40% this year. If it continues this way we might even hit 50% desktop marketshare until 2022. That can even be possible because of group effects and buzz marketing. And massive amounts of people have stuck with Windows only because there was no (serious) gaming on linux at all and issues with GPU drivers.
When you can install the OS and everything within 5 Minutes, and even the GPU works without any further efforts I don't see a reason for the development to stagnate... And that's pretty much how it already is or will be in few months.

I like this positivity! =)

It's funny, in the past I couldn't imagine being able to leave Windows because Linux had so many issues/quirks. Now I can't imagine ever wanting to install Windows again. Most windows games i just use Wine and it's usually acceptable > very good. The only thing that saddens me is when DRM is used I'm looking at you Bethesda, DOOM :'(

[edolnx]

I'm conflicted about this. It really looks like AMD is trying to extend a olive branch and try to balance their internal requirements (deadlines and other platforms) with trying to be good Linux citizens. There seems to be a lot of pushback from the kernel teams and not a lot of help. I get it, the AMD developers have limited resources because at the end of the day one specific platform makes most of the bottom line and that platform is not Linux. I also get that the kernel developers don't want snowflakes in their tree. I can see and understand both sides of the debate: the kernel wants code for the kernel, and AMD wants one codebase which works everywhere. I recall nvidia did the same thing a number of years ago, but I give a lot of props to AMD for taking the extra step of making that code base open. It's a lot of hard, thankless work, and I hope AMD and the kernel find common ground, because reading that thread it doesn't look very good right now. Maybe the right answer is an out-of-tree open source driver. Maybe not. I guess we'll see, and I wish I had the time/expertise to help solve some of these problems instead of just cheering from the sidelines.