2013: A Good Year For Open-Source AMD?

[smitty3268]

The cake is a lie!!!
The cake is a lie!!!
The cake is a lie!!!
The cake is a lie!!!
The cake is a lie!!!

OK. Never mind... On a serious note, I have not seen any commits lately for VDPAU State Tracker. Does anyone know if H.264 support is in the works yet? I had to move to NVIDIA card for my HTPC about six months ago and was not particularly happy about it.

Or do I get sent back to the "Aperture Science Enrichment Center" for asking this question?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RthZgszykLs

Will AMD even touch h.264 support, or will the community have to do that because of patent issues?

[amphigory]

Will AMD even touch h.264 support, or will the community have to do that because of patent issues?

Christian König started H.264 work back in January I believe. It should be safe as long as it is left as a build option (akin to '--enable-texture-float' switch).

[AnonymousCoward]

Christian König started H.264 work back in January I believe. It should be safe as long as it is left as a build option (akin to '--enable-texture-float' switch).

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

I think it's safe to say that you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open MAD drivers for the coming years. Nobody is working on it and AMD don't seem to care.

[bridgman]

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

I think it's safe to say that you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open MAD drivers for the coming years. Nobody is working on it and AMD don't seem to care.

It's "safe to say" in the sense that nobody will hunt you down and hurt you for saying it, but (reads again to be sure) yep, everything else you said in that post was wrong.

[amphigory]

Slightly OT but I'm wondering if Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA will all have their collective asses kicked by ARMv8 (64 bit) based chipsets? My Samsung Galaxy SII (Exynos 4, ARMv7 core) delivers awesome performance considering it is such a low power device. I'd buy a laptop with ARMv8 today if I could. It would be cool to have a notebook one only had to charge every three days or so... :-)

Edit: Just read the NVIDIA is jumping on the ARM bandwagon...

[Qaridarium]

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

I think it's safe to say that you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open MAD drivers for the coming years. Nobody is working on it and AMD don't seem to care.

It's "safe to say" in the sense that nobody will hunt you down and hurt you for saying it, but (reads again to be sure) yep, everything else you said in that post was wrong.

EPIC LOL...... AnonymousCoward really floats in the liquid manure here.

Did someone say "food" ?

[gordboy]

This is all starting to sound reminiscent of Chiang Kai Shek, who promised every Chinese New Year that "We will retake the mainland". The truth is the "Nationalists" went further into decline with each passing year.

And so it is with AMD and their lame duck open source efforts. Things are going backwards, not forward. I was once an advocate for the open source radeon driver, because I was a weak-willed, gullible fool, believing the extravagant promises.

[amphigory]

This is all starting to sound reminiscent of Chiang Kai Shek, who promised every Chinese New Year that "We will retake the mainland". The truth is the "Nationalists" went further into decline with each passing year.

And so it is with AMD and their lame duck open source efforts. Things are going backwards, not forward. I was once an advocate for the open source radeon driver, because I was a weak-willed, gullible fool, believing the extravagant promises.

I'll see you at the party.

Cheers,
Mao Zedong

[smitty3268]

Christian König started H.264 work back in January I believe. It should be safe as long as it is left as a build option (akin to '--enable-texture-float' switch).

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

I think it's safe to say that you can forget about H.264 support (whether it be UVD or shader approach) in the open MAD drivers for the coming years. Nobody is working on it and AMD don't seem to care.

It's "safe to say" in the sense that nobody will hunt you down and hurt you for saying it, but (reads again to be sure) yep, everything else you said in that post was wrong.

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

[RussianNeuroMancer]

soon.

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