xf86-video-ati 6.9.0 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: xf86-video-ati 6.9.0 Released

The xf86-video-ati 6.8.0 driver was released back in February, and today version 6.9.0 has been released, which is coming just a day after its 6.9.0-rc2 release. Version 6.9.0 of this ATI driver adds improved EXA render support for R100/200 graphics cards, EXA render support for R300/400/500 graphics processors, and Textured Video support through X-Video for R100-500 graphics processors...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjU0OQ

[diverse_izzue]

That is great, especially the Xv support.

Help as to how to install this in Ubuntu Hardy would be most welcome!

[colo]

Does r2xx's EXA-performance now catch up with the old XAA way of doing things?

[d2kx]

I can only speak for R500, but there, EXA is way faster than XA with xf86-video-ati.

[Vighy]

Does r2xx's EXA-performance now catch up with the old XAA way of doing things?

Let me test, and I will tell you :-D

an xorg-server-1.4.2 is enough, to take advantage of the exa improvements? or I should use one from git?

[yoshi314]

it's pretty cool that the releases are happening more often. that's probably due to ati's documentation, which allows to achieve more in shorter time.

an xorg-server-1.4.2 is enough, to take advantage of the exa improvements? or I should use one from git?

i use stable xorg-server and git version of driver and it works with exa all the time, so there should be no problems.

[Vighy]

it's pretty cool that the releases are happening more often. that's probably due to ati's documentation, which allows to achieve more in shorter time.

Or maybe because now Alex works for ATi and can use ALL their documentation, if I'm not wrong, even the docs not released yet. but this is my supposition.

i use stable xorg-server and git version of driver and it works with exa all the time, so there should be no problems.

Ok! thanks for the info

[bridgman]

I think "Alex working for ATI and not having to do all this in his spare time" probably makes a difference too

That said, I think he is still using quite a bit of his spare time as well...

Having Dave work for Red Hat rather than doing all this in his spare time doesn't hurt either.

[yoshi314]

still the documentation team feels pretty under-staffed, judging by documentation release frequency.

can you say exactly how many people are working on docs?

[bridgman]

Right now it's Alex and myself writing the docs that get released publicly. Alex focuses on "what info is needed to write a driver", I focus on "what is safe to release", and we work it out. With each generation of GPU we get more help from the HW/SW devs though... for 5xx the docs had to be pretty much written from scratch; for 6xx Alex was able to pick up some larger, more useful chunks of docco, and for 7xx and future it should get even easier.

For 7xx I'm hoping we can just prepare a "delta doc" since 7xx doesn't have the wrenching architectural changes we saw with 6xx.

The problem with tossing a lot of staff onto documentation is that you really need some specialized skill combinations to make it work effectively; unless everyone involved has a good sense of IP issues you end up just writing a lot of stuff that then has to get ripped out or rewritten by someone else. Anyways, we're nearly cuaght up now (basically had to document the last 5 years of chip development in <1 year); keeping up with development going forward will be *much* easier.