Open-Source Radeon HD 7000 Series Still Lacking

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source Radeon HD 7000 Series Still Lacking

While Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are only two months old, there's already a feature-rich driver and the full programming documentation available. Meanwhile for the Radeon HD 7000 series from AMD that is now more than six months old, the open-source driver is still incomplete and the documentation is lacking...

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

[DanL]

Well, Southern Islands is a major architectural change over Northern Islands. Knowing the "tick-tock" nature of Intel's products, Ivy Bridge is probably a much smaller and incremental update over Sandy Bridge. While the SI response time does seem a bit slow, comparing the response time of IB and SI is probably an apples/oranges comparison.
Also, I wouldn't judge progress on SI by the commits in the mesa main branch. When it comes to new products, AMD tends to drop code in chunks.

[allquixotic]

I had a post a few months back keeping track of the number of days to meet the milestones for Evergreen... let's see if they can improve upon those numbers for SI. Honestly it's not likely because the architecture is way more complicated and their programming efforts are now divided among RadeonSI, r600g, OpenCL/Clover and all the old legacy stuff they're still working on. PLUS the next gen which I'm sure they're feverishly working on.

Basically SI owners getting royally screwed out of half the useful lifespan of our cards. It's why my new laptop has an Intel IGP and, for the eventuality when Nvidia/Nouveau gets their act together, a discrete Nvidia chip. Never again AMD.

[entropy]

Well...

intel provides documentation and has "only" a FOSS driver (which is appreciated, don't get me wrong).
They have the money and a relatively large team, right? It doesn't look like they complain about having next
to none commits from the community.

NVIDIA doesn't care about documentation and FOSS. Users are mostly fine with the blob.

AMD on the other hand provides some documentation, some developers and they maintain a blob which
they won't give up for several reasons. Compared to intel the main focus (unfortunately) isn't on the FOSS driver.
They obviously hoped that providing documentation attracts a heap of community developers as it was always stated:
"All you (the companies) have to do is providing docs, we - the community - will develop the driver".

I'm guessing here, ofc; due to the financial situation and the lack of community developers, Bridgman & Co. might
just have a hard time to justify further money to be invested in legal reviews or even new developers hired by AMD.
So it will take longer to release the documentation as there's still the Catalyst driver for bleeding-edge hardware.
It could be the case that things would be different if community efforts gained far more momentum.
Correct me, but wasn't it only Corbin Simpson and Marek Olšák who contributed major work to the radeon stack
and are not AMD, Red Hat or Suse employees?

[drag]

What AMD really needs to do is drop the catalyst driver from their website and just put their effort for the Gallium driver for public consumption. Leave the catalyst driver for OEMs and customers that specifically pay for it. That's really the people they make it for anyways.

The Gallium driver really is nicer then many people here give it credit for, but that doesn't make for the type of coverage that is encouraged here.

[tecknurd]

Look on the bright side at least 2D works from what I saw at the following page.

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

If you want 3D, it seems you have to wait. Though previous Radeon models still lacking in the 3D department as well.

The Gallium driver really is nicer then many people here give it credit for, but that doesn't make for the type of coverage that is encouraged here.

Gallium3D is really additional layer that graphics does not need. Sure it makes it easier for developers to bring features for a video card, but it also brings in higher latency. High latency for graphics is frown upon, so writing drivers that has fewest layers as no layers is the best to keep the latency low.

[jvillain]

Basically SI owners getting royally screwed out of half the useful lifespan of our cards.

Yes we are. I really, really wish Intel would put out a couple of discrete cards. They would probably do well in the linux market even if they aren't the electronic version of a top fuel funny car they still generally work better than any option from AMD or NVidia once it is running under Linux. I just can't imagine why any one would buy a high end card and stick it in a Linux machine. If there were descent open source driver then OK I would pony up the dough. As it is it's like sticking the tranny from a Lambro in your Civic. I don't need the sound of a jet engine along with a huge power bill to get plain old unaccelerated 2D which is all I am getting now.

[airlied]

Yes we are. I really, really wish Intel would put out a couple of discrete cards. They would probably do well in the linux market even if they aren't the electronic version of a top fuel funny car they still generally work better than any option from AMD or NVidia once it is running under Linux. I just can't imagine why any one would buy a high end card and stick it in a Linux machine. If there were descent open source driver then OK I would pony up the dough. As it is it's like sticking the tranny from a Lambro in your Civic. I don't need the sound of a jet engine along with a huge power bill to get plain old unaccelerated 2D which is all I am getting now.

how do you know Intel would open source drivers for a discrete GPU :-)

Dave.

[curaga]

^ Their closest equivalent, Larrabee, has everything open-sourced.

[89c51]

how do you know Intel would open source drivers for a discrete GPU :-)

Dave.

They have a clear record thus far and if all the tech in the card is theirs i don't see any reason to release a blob. Their only quirk is that they don't use g3d.