2013: A Good Year For Open-Source AMD?

[Qaridarium]

Great news. I'm taking this as official confirmation direct from AMD that he's currently working on h.264 support and it will be available to end users soon.

Don't disappoint me

yo don't understand the Bridgman rhetoric he work on h.264 he also work on a UVD solution but this does not mean they release anything.
if he do not find a way to protect the DRM/Copyprotection in his solution there will be no release for "UVD3" they already drooped the work for UVD1 and UVD2....
but he will work on h.264 support after that to because the hd7970 do have a complete new video "engine" then they will try it for that hardware generation to.

the HDMI case show that the internal work @ AMD can FAIL! they worked on a opensource solution and after the legal check they dropped it.

and in my point of view they will fail for the UVD unit.

so the real target is the "VCE" video unit.

[Qaridarium]

I doesn't see this anywhere, but I hope to see UVD support soon too.

the possibility for UVD1 support is by ZERO! also UVD2 is dropped they try it for UVD3 but i don't think so...

in the end you will get "VCE" support. don't bet on UVD ...

[smitty3268]

yo don't understand the Bridgman rhetoric he work on h.264 he also work on a UVD solution but this does not mean they release anything.

The original post said they wouldn't release anything, and then bridgman said that was wrong.

I don't think there's any rhetoric there, although obviously they could change their plans I suppose.

Edit: I guess it said "in the coming years", and obviously I would be pretty disappointed if it really takes years.

[Qaridarium]

The original post said they wouldn't release anything, and then bridgman said that was wrong.

I don't think there's any rhetoric there, although obviously they could change their plans I suppose.

Edit: I guess it said "in the coming years", and obviously I would be pretty disappointed if it really takes years.

"I don't think there's any rhetoric there, "

LOL you are wrong the rhetoric is: the difference between working on it and RELEASE something.

bridgman is right he works on IT but this means NOTHING! because they don't Release like the HDMI sound stuff.

[bridgman]

Great news. I'm taking this as official confirmation direct from AMD that he's currently working on h.264 support and it will be available to end users soon.

The opposite of "nothing" is not "everything"; you are taking the most optimistic possible interpretation of what I said, which can lead to disappointment.

And then he got hired by AMD and now they pay him to work on something else...

Most of the work Christian has done since he started at AMD has been related to video decode, both with shaders and with UVD. He started with shaders, but switched to UVD when the shader work proved to be less than promising (which we discussed here several months ago). The issue was that the decode work

EDIT - where did the rest of my post go ?

OK, short version -- as posted here a couple of times before, shader work turned out not as well as hoped because the parts we could accelerate on GPU had already been implemented pretty efficiently on x86 SIMD instructions, so Christian switched to working on UVD. We don't know yet if we will be able to release the code, but Christian and others are looking into ways to make that possible.

[AnonymousCoward]

We don't know yet if we will be able to release the code, but Christian and others are looking into ways to make that possible.

Like I said: "you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open drivers for the coming years.".

Btw. This is not an interpretation of your words, but my experience in general. When there is no clear timetable and the only thing communicated is something like "we don't know when", it's either not going to happen or it's going to take a very long time.

So I stand by my words: "you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open drivers for the coming years."

[bridgman]

So I stand by my words: "you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open drivers for the coming years."

I guess... if you're just saying "I am knowingly taking the most pessimistic range of interpretations" then that's fair, and I have been very clear that people making buying decisions should not assume UVD support in the open driver yet.

On the other hand, pretty much everything with the open drivers so far has faced similar challenges and an awful lot of things *have* happened, so I think saying unequivocally that something is *not* going to happen is just as misleading.

My main objection with your previous post was not those words, however, but the (incorrect) statement that Christian had only done work on video decode before starting at AMD and that we had stopped him from working on that and shifted him to other tasks, along with the other conclusions you based on that statement.

[AnonymousCoward]

I guess... if you're just saying "I am knowingly taking the most pessimistic range of interpretations" then that's fair, and I have been very clear that people making buying decisions should not assume UVD support in the open driver yet.

On the other hand, pretty much everything with the open drivers so far has faced similar challenges and an awful lot of things *have* happened, so I think saying unequivocally that something is *not* going to happen is just as misleading.

But that's different. AMD has always been very secretive about UVD. How long did it take before we could use UVD with closed source Catalyst? Years no?

My main objection with your previous post was not those words, however, but the (incorrect) statement that Christian had only done work on video decode before starting at AMD and that we had stopped him from working on that and shifted him to other tasks, along with the other conclusions you based on that statement.

Is he working on video decode right now? Full time? I don't think so. Of course you're in a better position to know than me. But from what I can see from the internets it seems he's working on compute support?

[Qaridarium]

So I stand by my words: "you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open drivers for the coming years."

years? there are already hardware with the new video engine if the UVD will not work then the next gen video acceleration unit.

and this is not Years away... i bet on the beginning of 2013!

[smitty3268]

The opposite of "nothing" is not "everything";

Well, actually, it is. If anything in his post was correct, then saying "nothing" was correct was false.

But I was being a little tongue-in-cheek to begin with.

OK, short version -- as posted here a couple of times before, shader work turned out not as well as hoped because the parts we could accelerate on GPU had already been implemented pretty efficiently on x86 SIMD instructions, so Christian switched to working on UVD.

I'm a little surprised you didn't see this coming ahead of time. Years and years ago AMD put out marketing info that the bits of h.264 that couldn't be accelerated on shaders were good for 50% of decoding time. It was part of the reason they created UVD in the first place.