ATI dropping support for Linux?!

[NeoBrain]

nivida sounds in german like niwida -->niewieder nie wieder translate to english = never again !! LOL

When did nvidia change their name to nivida...?

[aphirst]

Our "vision" is to work with the community, not to do our own thing. I know it sounds radical, but that's what we are doing.

And that is why the sane among us love you dearly. <3

[Qaridarium]

When did nvidia change their name to nivida...?

thats the German joke

[droidhacker]

OK, this thread is getting really wierd.
We sold the handheld GPU business to Qualcomm a year or so ago

Ok, so from what I gather then (please bear with me if I'm completely out to lunch on this), AMD sold Qualcomm something that amounts to hardware implementation details for a set of GPUs that contain some striking similarities to R600 series desktop GPUs.

Now there are no doubt a big long list of NDA's on that data to keep Qualcomm from making a big legal mess for AMD, but these NDA's would naturally not be relevant to any of the IP that AMD has released for the R600 open source driver project...

How big of a stretch would it be to adapt the current R600 drivers over to one of these Qualcomm-using-AMD-IP devices?

In other words, wouldn't it be cool if... you could run debian/gentoo/etc. straight on hardware on a GN1 (i.e. dual boot) with a full and proper install with X, Gnome, etc. The bootloader we already know is dual-boot (main + recovery)... and then adapt the android stuff into a layer on TOP of that, i.e. Canonical's Android Execution Environment. The RIL libraries, etc. should be able to be worked in without too much trouble to provide full phone functionality.

Would that be the ultimate phone, or what?

[rbmorse]

Qualcomm is not enabled for that kind of thinking.

[Silverthorn]

Our "vision" is to work with the community, not to do our own thing. I know it sounds radical, but that's what we are doing.

If only that kind of commitment would carry over to other parts of AMD.

To realise my dream of an open source friendly computer...

I would like AMD to introduce a new "open source platform" to "force" motherboard manufacturers to select only open source friendly chipset.

Ideally this new platform should use coreboot instead of BIOS. Since that probably would be an impossible request it would be enough if manufacturers where forced to include a replaceable BIOS chipset along the motherboard. Preferably along with a separate tool to flash the chip.

Also the platform should only incorporate open source friendly chipset for network, sound etc.

While I'm still dreaming, this NEW platform should never incorporate old legacy stuff like IDE, ISA, PS/2, D-SUB, AGP, PCI etc. Separate adapters might be acceptable under some circumstances.



Edit: Short version. I know AMD/ATI is very open source friendly, but motherboard makers are not. They need a small push in the right direction.

[droidhacker]

Qualcomm is not enabled for that kind of thinking.

So?
What does that have to do with evaluating similarity/compatibility with existing R600 drivers?

[Pfanne]

Edit: Short version. I know AMD/ATI is very open source friendly, but motherboard makers are not. They need a small push in the right direction.

i think we need something like apple, for opensource software.
a company thats trying to make hardware and software work together as good as possible. but without all the drm and patentcrap apple is trying to pull