AMD Releases Cayman Documentation, Open Driver Is Close

[89c51]

OpenGL3/4 is an absolute no go for opensource drivers...

in the same way .mp3 h.246 etc is

[yesterday]

Do you see Red Hat and Xorg developing mp3 and h264? Didn't think so

[89c51]

Do you see Red Hat and Xorg developing mp3 and h264? Didn't think so

what i am trying to say is that the patent isn't what stops the OS drivers from having these features

[crazycheese]

Wow. Now at this speed - this is definately an IMPROVEMENT over past.

If we could push video accel and maybe multimonitor (without features exposed to nvidia copypasters) this would be serious support from company!

Thank you AMD!

I hope you pick your documentation well, so nvidia does not profit!
In the end if opensource driver will be not perfect, but very good - it will be very serious threat against nvidia.

[yesterday]

what i am trying to say is that the patent isn't what stops the OS drivers from having these features

What I'm trying to say is that the patent will stop the drivers from having these features, because no company or well-known open source organization is going to work on implementing patented software.

[crazycheese]

OpenGL3/4 is an absolute no go for opensource drivers...

Originally they named it ClosedGL.

[crazycheese]

What I'm trying to say is that the patent will stop the drivers from having these features, because no company or well-known open source organization is going to work on implementing patented software.

Unless someone will reverse the patent itself the way GPL reverses copyright. Prohibiting usage of algorithm belonging to them within closed source environment via their EULA.

GNU Public Patent (GPP)

Im going to patent that abbreviation tomorrow =).


No seriously, it would be SO much better.

[blackshard]

From my perspective it's not entirely that black and white.

Granted, in the last two decades I've never owned any Nvidia GPU exactly because they refuse to support open source drivers. But this doesn't mean that Nvidia wouldn't support open source in other areas.

Why is it that using ATI/AMD cards and Linux I have to use Nvidia's texture tools to compress S3TC textures? Because these texture tools are MIT-licensed open source, while ATI/AMD's ATI_Compress library and Compressonator are closed source, and worse, they're Windows only.

Well, a tool is a tool. A driver and its documentation are a bit different.

[Drago]

Well AMD, I am pleased for the speed for this new chunk of documentation. I can say I am all yours
One thing what bothers me, is why do you prefer to implement Caymans first, instead of Liano. No one with Cayman, as a highest end GPU from AMD, is gonna use r600g driver. No one would pay >$300, and use it as a GPU for <$100. Now this work will probably land in 2.6.39, which would be the kernel when Liano start showing on the market. I am headed towards Liano, after a couple of months, and this is somewhat disappointing. Bridgman, feedback appreciated.

[whitecat]

It's not the former topic, but about S3TC : what is the needed work to have libtxc-dxtn handled by r600 ? Because, it's sad, I know r600g can run commercial game (eg. ETQW which I have tested) but is totally useless without S3TC... I'm ready to pay for that !

Michael, could you do an investigation on S3TC and r600 support ?