Qualcomm Calls To "Kill All Proprietary Drivers For Good"

[accumulator]

not to offend but i think UVD is pointless, i think would be a lot better a common gpu independant shader/CL accel API(not inside mesa) library that can be used and optimized by third parties like FFMPEG or x264 to offload the heavy compute code to GPU regardless the codec and a shader/CL filter/effect library for the eye candy

Not pointless, it might actually be _essential_.. Apart from the technical benefits of either choice, a shader based decoder might open itself up for legal attacks. Since you basically define the decoding in software (shaders), then transfer those to the hardware, a lawyer might reason that the software is in violation of a patent. If instead UVD is used, the actual decoding algorithm is in hardware, which I suppose is licensed for the decoding..

[V!NCENT]

Not pointless, it might actually be _essential_.. Apart from the technical benefits of either choice, a shader based decoder might open itself up for legal attacks. Since you basically define the decoding in software (shaders), then transfer those to the hardware, a lawyer might reason that the software is in violation of a patent. If instead UVD is used, the actual decoding algorithm is in hardware, which I suppose is licensed for the decoding..

Think a little out of the box here; there are so much patents out there that you can only be certain of one thing: you're violating anyway. Period. You can't do software without patenting yourself and have a Cold-patent-War with everyone out there.

But as long as you don't investigate into what you're violating; pleasible deniability (the internal reviews are for patents and IP that you know of, which can be proven you can know about it, like in this case the HDMI crap you've licensed). You'll just adress the problem immediately once it surfaces. Also you can't sue before giving a warning to the offending party to try the fix the violation first ("I really didn't want to steal someone's invention, and we realy wanted to fix this because we didn't know, but they didn't let us know what we were violating thus we couldn't fix the problem" Judge:"Case closed motherfucker").

Just fscking do it and deal with problems later.

PS VP8 and WebM are better than MPEG anyway in all kinds of ways.

[notzed]

Drivers on themselves have no value. The value is in being able to control hardware.
I really like the idea of open sourcing drivers because many companies just abandon old things without support or anything. Sometimes not even stable, usable drivers!!! With Open Source drivers the community could adapt things to new platforms very easily.

It's not just that they have no value - they are a cost and a liability.

Given some of the stuff i've seen on the rhombus-tech mailing list, this sort of thing is probably one of the few chances the non-chinese tech has left as a market differentiator/possible competitive advantage.

[Ex-Cyber]

One problem with opening up drivers (and, by extension, firmware) is that companies really like the ability to take a single piece of hardware and turn it into multiple products by simply plugging in different blobs. In the most egregious cases, this is done by starting with a "professional" version of the product and simply disabling features until marketing is convinced that their professional/deep-pocketed customers won't be willing to buy the result. The people who do this view it as a huge competitive advantage -- they're able to develop two (or more) products for different market segments while paying close to the NRE costs of one product. So for open drivers/firmware to take off in this context, it has to not simply offer an advantage, but offer an obviously greater advantage than software-implemented differentiation.

[Qaridarium]

...Okaaaay, but how is this different from AMD itself refusing to open their own IP?

If a neighbor comes to your door wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, and you say "no -- absolutely not", are they going to care whether the reason why you said no is (a) you're an asshole, or (b) the guy you bought the sugar from at the supermarket is an asshole, who told you that you can't share it with anybody?

In both of these situations, you're to blame. The blame is obvious in situation (a), and I'm sure that (UVD aside) AMD wouldn't actually be in that situation, so you probably agree with me that this case wouldn't come up for AMD very often. For situation (b), you might be pointing at the guy at the supermarket and saying vehemently, "Hey, it's his choice, not mine!" -- but it was you who bought the product in the first place. "Let the buyer beware" -- AMD didn't think through the consequences of their actions when they purchased that IP.

Now it needs to reap the inevitable consequences of that, such as its customers being irrational/unreasonable and asking, "well why the hell would you buy sugar from someone who wouldn't let you share it with other people?!" When you make bad choices, expect them to come back to bite you. The world does not forget or forgive as easily as you want us to, especially when we have a quite-inflated sense of entitlement resulting from having bought your company's products and/or having invested varying degrees of cash into your company's stock.

This may not be a particularly common request -- after all, how many Windows users are insisting on free drivers or care about the encumbered IP -- but this is one of those decisions that is much more consequential than a cup of sugar, so the collective consciousness of your customers is all hoping that AMD will make wise and far-sighted decisions in the design of its hardware, accounting for market forces and potential situations that may not be fully realized at the time.

hey you are right they are Guilty anyway! they buy the IP into there hardware this means they are Guilty for this IP!

.
For all of the hardware decisions made up through, say, HD6000, I forgive you, because I know that you guys (the open source group within AMD) had very little involvement in the planning for that hardware. But if this situation crops up again for HD8000, it will be clear to all that you guys tried, unsuccessfully, to design a GPU free of external IP, and that the need for a quick fix for the Windows users took precedence over your concerns. If that's how it's gonna be, don't worry -- AMD alternatives are starting to emerge as Intel ramps up its GPU performance.

hey i think in the same way! hd2900-hd6000 is very unlucky ,.,
i think the hd7970 do not have a VLIW engine because of the opensource driver because all the tools for opensource drivers are risc+simd
also the hd7970 do have a new video engine and maybe this one is opensource friendly.

For this one I'm actually going to give you an easy out that a lot of people won't accept. Get the Gallium3d shader-based video decoding working well and I'll let you off the hook for UVD. From a desktop perspective the two solutions are equivalent in the results, except maybe a measurable difference in power, but who cares for a desktop?

right! but i think a shader based solution with the CPU as command processor do have many overheat for the PCIE transfer. this means they need the "Stars" processor inside the UVD unit to command the shader units to kill the overheat of a shader solution.

this means if they "Lose" on the UVD side they also lose on the shader based solution for "WebM"

yes i know this is sad

[»John«]

It's not just that they have no value - they are a cost and a liability.

And every vendor out there is trying real hard to minimize cost and liability as much as physically possible in order to maximize his profit, which is exactly why resulting blobs of proprietary crap and customer support suck so unbelievably hard.

One problem with opening up drivers (and, by extension, firmware) is that companies really like the ability to take a single piece of hardware and turn it into multiple products by simply plugging in different blobs. In the most egregious cases, this is done by starting with a "professional" version of the product and simply disabling features until marketing is convinced that their professional/deep-pocketed customers won't be willing to buy the result.

Yet another perfectly valid reason to just "love" all those inherently treacherous blobs of proprietary crap. dfx. got it absolutely right - this is one of biggest types (if not the biggest) of scam ever.

[agd5f]

In both of these situations, you're to blame. The blame is obvious in situation (a), and I'm sure that (UVD aside) AMD wouldn't actually be in that situation, so you probably agree with me that this case wouldn't come up for AMD very often. For situation (b), you might be pointing at the guy at the supermarket and saying vehemently, "Hey, it's his choice, not mine!" -- but it was you who bought the product in the first place. "Let the buyer beware" -- AMD didn't think through the consequences of their actions when they purchased that IP.

Why is AMD to blame for you not being able to fully utilize encumbered technologies? It's not so much a technical issue with any hw block, it's more of an issue with HDMI and related technologies themselves. I would turn the comment on you. Let the consumer beware. If you want to use a technology with a number of inherent encumbrances, be prepared for limitations. Maybe use DP and toslink instead?

[Qaridarium]

Why is AMD to blame for you not being able to fully utilize encumbered technologies? It's not so much a technical issue with any hw block, it's more of an issue with HDMI and related technologies themselves. I would turn the comment on you. Let the consumer beware. If you want to use a technology with a number of inherent encumbrances, be prepared for limitations. Maybe use DP and toslink instead?

amd is to blame because they waste there energy and chip on encumbered technologies like HDMI/UVD/DHCP

just watch the AMD website 100% commercial for windows there isn't ANY linux desktop or linux notebook system on there website.

they also make commercial on DRM/Copyprotection stuff like HDMI/DHCP/blueray and they don't make commercials about Opensource Free driver and Free Techniques.

they are Guilty in only supporting encumbered technologies without an alternative.

[V!NCENT]

Why is AMD to blame for you not being able to fully utilize encumbered technologies?

On one hand AMD is doing all kinds of good things by supporting Coreboot, FLOSS driver development, documentations, etc.

But on the other hand they believe that forming a MPAA-ball-licking-club is good for technological progress. Quess why that fucking sucks? Now they can't even get a stupid monitor connector out of the lawyers office. How stupid is that?!

Nobody asked for HDMI, btw... The sole reason this was ever adopted was because of BluRay and quess what? Disc media is dead! Now what's that stupid connector good for?! Nothing! We have DVI. We've got Bluetooth audio. Why the f-....

Nevermind I'm not even using it. Point is; AMD fscked up by joining an already dead initiative (to stop a Napster version 2.0 situation with movies) and now it bites.

[bridgman]

But on the other hand they believe that forming a MPAA-ball-licking-club is good for technological progress. Quess why that fucking sucks? Now they can't even get a stupid monitor connector out of the lawyers office. How stupid is that?!

Where did you get the idea that we had something to do with "forming the club" ?

ATI and AMD have both pushed back hard on DRM and related technologies, but once the rules were in place and we had to choose between implementing the standards set by others or walking away from 3/4 of the GPU market we did the same as all the other GPU hardware vendors and implemented what was needed to sell chips. Feel free to call that evil but I don't see why you are singling AMD out unless you feel that "shooting the messenger" will somehow make the world a better place.

Nobody asked for HDMI, btw... The sole reason this was ever adopted was because of BluRay and quess what? Disc media is dead! Now what's that stupid connector good for?! Nothing! We have DVI. We've got Bluetooth audio. Why the f-....

Actually no... HDMI has absolutely nothing to do with BluRay other than arriving at roughly the same time and providing a convenient display connection that supported higher resolutions with a single connector. You could just as easily say that "the only reason it was adopted was HD-DVD" or "the only reason it was adopted was HD streaming video".

The reason for supporting HDMI is that a lot of customers want to use their HDMI-connected TVs (which rarely have DVI).

Nevermind I'm not even using it. Point is; AMD fscked up by joining an already dead initiative (to stop a Napster version 2.0 situation with movies) and now it bites.

Just to be clear, which initiative are you talking about ?