RadeonHD useless?

[bridgman]

We typically start work on drivers for a new ASIC generation 1-2 years in advance. The HW and SW teams are co-located so they work out designs together, and so SW and HW can push back on each other to get the best overall product.

We try to have the driver work completed and tested on emulators before the first silicon tapes out -- but having real silicon sure makes the rest of the testing go a lot faster

[b15hop]

Wow so you get to see a glimpse of hardware, two years ahead of the final product! My guess is fully programmable gpu with physics acceleration and api. Mmm

I guess also that game designers have a huge say in what they want out of cards. Or is this finalized with future releases of DirectX and OpenGL ?

[bridgman]

More than two years