AMD Has No Plans To Suspend Catalyst For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Has No Plans To Suspend Catalyst For Linux

Since AMD's decision to discontinue HD 2000/3000/4000 series support from the Catalyst driver plus other changes that upset some hardware owners, there's been some rumors that AMD may be discontinuing development of the Catalyst Linux driver and focus solely upon the open-source AMD Linux driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTEyMzI

[Kano]

I do not see any source link in that article only links to phoronix? Where is the source? It would be unlogical to drop fglrx completely but who is Jammy Zhou and where did he say something?

[blackiwid]

To clear up the rumors, Jammy Zhou of AMD said, "We will definitely continue the fglrx development, which is becoming more and more important for AMD."

thats it, to say we continue it, because whatever ok, but to say that gets more important so in the conterpart the open one becomes less important (logical) is the nail, I will not go for amd anymore, if the hardware is not extremly more expensive for the same feature I will buy Intel hardware in the future.

bb amd....

[halfmanhalfamazing]

Not now, of course.

When the performance is better. Once more features are in place. Power management, perhaps.

It's the logical endgame, anyways. Who really thinks AMD wants to keep up two different driver lines in perpetuity? It seems fairly clear to me that the long(really, the long long long long long) game is to one day have the OSS driver be the only one. They did port it to Windows, after all.

Do you want Mesa updated almost instantly when OpenGL 4.6 is introduced? 5.2? (pick a number) It's much more likely that AMD will contribute to Mesa like Intel is doing if they're only tied into the OSS, and not into Catalyst as well.

Realistically, years from now - The OSS driver should stand alone having deprecated Catalyst.

[Michael]

I do not see any source link in that article only links to phoronix? Where is the source? It would be unlogical to drop fglrx completely but who is Jammy Zhou and where did he say something?

There is no source link to publicly cite.

[tsuru]

I'm more curious about what kind of black magic of graphics driver development (science?) has not been revealed by now in white papers, verbally, subtle hints, etc. Surely the fast-path "trickery" for specific programs can't explain all the performance difference... Being this frustrated, I can only imagine the open source devs'.

[bridgman]

thats it, to say we continue it, because whatever ok, but to say that gets more important so in the conterpart the open one becomes less important (logical) is the nail, I will not go for amd anymore, if the hardware is not extremly more expensive for the same feature I will buy Intel hardware in the future.

bb amd....

OK, I have to ask.. how can you possibly look at market trends and our own presentations (nobody seems to have commented on the open source plans discussed at AFDS yet, which is surprising) then conclude that "fglrx getting more important" means that the open source driver is becoming less important ? Did all the other OSes disappear from the market while I was travelling ?

I'm more curious about what kind of black magic of graphics driver development (science?) has not been revealed by now in white papers, verbally, subtle hints, etc. Surely the fast-path "trickery" for specific programs can't explain all the performance difference... Being this frustrated, I can only imagine the open source devs'.

There isn't any black magic AFAIK, just lots of optimization work. The open source driver isn't at the point yet where per-application "tricks" are the best use of time -- that comes in somewhere around 80% average performance relative to Catalyst (roughly where the r300g driver is today). There is still lots of room for generic improvements, like the shader caching changes in the last couple of weeks and all the 2D tiling / HyperZ work being done now.

[Jonimus]

There is no source link to publicly cite.

So no mention what so ever on how you obtained this quote? Why should we believe you? Something like "in an email to blah he mention" or "via phone interview person X said" would have sufficed. Glad to see you're working so hard at keeping phrononix a respectible news source that works hard to cite sources and provides external link for more info.

On that note was there ever even a rumor that catalyst was gonna be dropped for linux? You would think that would be be news. Nope just another excuse for Michael to half ass an article about nothing.

[GreatEmerald]

(nobody seems to have commented on the open source plans discussed at AFDS yet, which is surprising)

What plans are those? Probably there are no comments about that because people are not aware of that to begin with...

[DanL]

Since AMD's decision to discontinue HD 2000/3000/4000 series support from the Catalyst driver...

For anyone who hasn't figured it out, ATI/AMD always drops support for relatively new GPU's after a couple years, often with the products still available for sale (look at Catalyst 8.28.8 and 9-3). It doesn't mean they're ending Catalyst. What it means is that you shouldn't be shocked when it happens and shouldn't whine/cry about how you're never buying AMD again.