Open-Source Radeon HD 7000 Series Still Lacking

[airlied]

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

oh wierd, I never saw any public lrb drivers, nor a promise they'd be open source, nor in fact any information on what the drivers would look like in terms of internal architecture.

maybe you have some link to an intel person saying it.

Dave.

[entropy]

Hasn't Larrabee evolved into 'Knights Corner'?

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blog...cture-support/

[bridgman]

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.

Intel's integrated graphics with incremental architecture are supported at launch so they're wonderful. Our integrated graphics with incremental architecture are supported at launch but we suck. Discuss.

Hasn't Larrabee evolved into 'Knights Corner'?

Knights Corner doesn't have graphics drivers, does it ?

[entropy]

Knights Corner doesn't have graphics drivers, does it ?

Well no...

[agd5f]

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.

Nvidia supports their hw via their closed source driver. AMD supports our hw via both closed source and open source drivers. You can use the closed source drivers in the interim while open source driver support progresses. How are nvidia or AMD any different in this regard other than the fact that AMD actually supports open source?

[jvillain]

Nvidia supports their hw via their closed source driver. AMD supports our hw via both closed source and open source drivers. You can use the closed source drivers in the interim while open source driver support progresses. How are nvidia or AMD any different in this regard other than the fact that AMD actually supports open source?

Yes you are right. I can wipe my machine and reinstall an older OS and hope I didn't lose any thing then spend weeks getting it all configured the way I want it again and I would have to go back to listening to the graphics card run at full bore again running up my power bill because of the older kernel and I can't ever upgrade for fear of breaking the video drivers etc, etc. But then patching and security aren't really all that important are they? Just seems natural that you would let the graphics card dictate what OS you run don't you think?

Now back to the real world. Going forward any Intel based mobo's I buy will have integrated graphics and I will just disable it if I feel a need to down grade to a separate video card. I have stuck with AMD mobos, procs and graphics because they at least used to make an effort to support Linux. But that support really seems to be diminishing. Seriously publishing the register to twiddle to turn on audio over hdmi is so proprietary that it needs to be locked away in a safe some where? Really? You get a lot more sympathy from me over cutting edge graphics stuff because that at least has the potential to give some info away. But for the love of Pete the on off switch for audio over hdmi as a critical trade secret? Come on. That's just insulting to the people that buy the hardware.

[bridgman]

Yes you are right. I can wipe my machine and reinstall an older OS and hope I didn't lose any thing then spend weeks getting it all configured the way I want it again and I would have to go back to listening to the graphics card run at full bore again running up my power bill because of the older kernel and I can't ever upgrade for fear of breaking the video drivers etc, etc. But then patching and security aren't really all that important are they? Just seems natural that you would let the graphics card dictate what OS you run don't you think?

?? The topic was newly introduced GPUs, specifically SI, not older GPUs moved to a legacy branch.

Now back to the real world. Going forward any Intel based mobo's I buy will have integrated graphics and I will just disable it if I feel a need to down grade to a separate video card. I have stuck with AMD mobos, procs and graphics because they at least used to make an effort to support Linux. But that support really seems to be diminishing.

Diminishing ? Why would you say that ?

I could understand "my expectations are constantly increasing and your support is not growing quite as fast as my expectations", but not "diminishing".

Seriously publishing the register to twiddle to turn on audio over hdmi is so proprietary that it needs to be locked away in a safe some where? Really?

No, not really. Not even true. We published the registers. What we weren't able to do despite months of trying was publish the finished code.

You get a lot more sympathy from me over cutting edge graphics stuff because that at least has the potential to give some info away. But for the love of Pete the on off switch for audio over hdmi as a critical trade secret? Come on. That's just insulting to the people that buy the hardware.

You might want to look at the code. It's not an on/off switch, not even close.

[curaga]

Knights Corner doesn't have graphics drivers, does it ?

The point is that Knight's Corner (evolved Larrabee) is the closest equivalent to a discrete Intel GPU, despite not being an actual GPU. The fact Intel open-sources the sw for it is quite encouraging for the argument that "given a hypothetical Intel discrete GPU, they would open-source the driver".

There, the same point, just written in three times the words. Clear enough?

[barkas]

Nvidia supports their hw via their closed source driver. AMD supports our hw via both closed source and open source drivers. You can use the closed source drivers in the interim while open source driver support progresses. How are nvidia or AMD any different in this regard other than the fact that AMD actually supports open source?

Exactly. The AMD Open Source driver does not yet support SI, and may not for months or years, while the binary driver is an unusable PoS. Well done.

Don't try to tell me the Blob is usable, last time I tried it, that was sometime last year, it did not support gnome 3 for 4 months straight after release and crashed when I started xbmc. Unfortunately the OSS driver did not support hdmi audio back then so I was basically screwed on my htpc -> back to windows. Not to mention that xvba just does not play back some videos it does fine in windows.

EDIT: Don't take that as mindless amd bashing please. It comes from long and painful experience from myself and also colleagues who also work in IT. One of my colleagues started his linux htpc with an AMD gpu and gave it up after 3 months and bought nvidia, which more or less worked out of the box for him.

EDIT: corrected NI to SI

[bridgman]

Exactly. The AMD Open Source driver does not yet support NI, and may not for months or years.

?? NI support has been there for a year or more. Trinity support has been out for a few months and that's based on NI.