The State Of Open-Source Radeon Driver Features

[crazycheese]

@bridgman

Hello there! I did a small survey among friends asking them what would they choose: a driver that is open source but slower and doesn't implement all features or a proprietary driver that works just like in windows in terms of speed and functionality? They all answered proprietary.

From what I've read, your duty as an employee of AMD is to provide the most value to the company, that is contribute most to their bottom line. And how do you do that? By listening to your customers and serving their needs to your best ability. Your customers want the proprietary drivers. They don't care about this open source bullshit. They just want something that is equally fast to their windows driver. The radeon driver isn't it. So, instead of wasting your time and your company's money, I think that since people want the proprietary driver you should focus on that one. You actually should focus on those guys at X.org and tell them to stop changing the ABI every damn month so you don't have to change things in the proprietary driver just so it can work on the new version. I think that your company and your customers would be best served if you and other people at AMD manage to convince those guys from X.org to actually write a good API once and for all and drop support for the radeon driver.

Just my 2 cents. Have a good day!

Hello idiot!

Point 1:
I did a small survey here too: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...-abadon-Nvidia
Result for the lazy:


Point 2:
We have problems exactly because AMD and Co produce closed source drivers.
If windows driver would be opensource, we would have exactly same features under Linux (and BSD, and Haiku etc) already.

Point 3:
The reason why closed source AMD driver is lacking features of closed source Windows driver, is because AMD LACKS MANPOWER.
If the base driver would be opensource - they would need to only write one driver and only request community to push their driver on different OSes.
But because closed source driver has secrets, patents and DRM all over the place, only the initiated are allowed to do this and every initiated must be overseen, which results in:
1) a ROLL of people which do MONKEY JOBS instead of direct programming.
2) ONLY couple of OSes supported
3) ONLY ONE OS from this couple is FULLY supported

Point 4:
Linux is flagship opensource OS. If you want to blobbify and close everything, you obviously chosen wrong OS and wrong forum!

UP: Point 5:
If you dislike windows, go start your own proprietary OS and enjoy IMMEDIATE FAILURE.
Because no proprietary driver will support your stupid OS, because you lack marketshare.

[duby229]

@bridgman

Hello there! I did a small survey among friends asking them what would they choose: a driver that is open source but slower and doesn't implement all features or a proprietary driver that works just like in windows in terms of speed and functionality? They all answered proprietary.

From what I've read, your duty as an employee of AMD is to provide the most value to the company, that is contribute most to their bottom line. And how do you do that? By listening to your customers and serving their needs to your best ability. Your customers want the proprietary drivers. They don't care about this open source bullshit. They just want something that is equally fast to their windows driver. The radeon driver isn't it. So, instead of wasting your time and your company's money, I think that since people want the proprietary driver you should focus on that one. You actually should focus on those guys at X.org and tell them to stop changing the ABI every damn month so you don't have to change things in the proprietary driver just so it can work on the new version. I think that your company and your customers would be best served if you and other people at AMD manage to convince those guys from X.org to actually write a good API once and for all and drop support for the radeon driver.

Just my 2 cents. Have a good day!

This is a perfectly valid arguement IF the proprietary drivers were stable.... But they arent.... They simply don't work for the vast majority of people. They crash the x server, they panic the kernel and they don't render shaders properly.

Tell us why should they invest more time into something that doesnt work and never has?

[ChrisXY]

Can you guys give bridgman a break? I'm pretty sure he is not the one "we" need to "convince" and I for one appreciate his time spent here explaining why stuff happens.

But then, I can't tell how serious crazycheese really is with all that smileys and humorous undertone.

Exactly the reason AMD shouldn't contribute to open source. Because of these idiots. Take the hint bridgman and only work on proprietary. And better yet, don't provide a driver for linux at all. Let them feel the squeeze.

Seriously? Because of one or two people in some forum you would advise the world's second biggest graphics card company to abandon their support for the worlds's most prevailing operating system (When mips and arm boards with pci-express arrive, what graphics will work the first there?)? Do you hate freedom?

edit:
As for fglrx: google

fglrx "asic hang happened"

10.300 results.

[crazycheese]

But then, I can't tell how serious crazycheese really is with all that smileys and humorous undertone.

I am dead-serious man. I love AMD and love ATI.

My first AMD was am5x86-133, which I overclocked to 160Mhz by pumping bus to 40Mhz.
When Nvidia Geforce 256 came out, I sold my Riva TNT2 and got first Radeon 64DDR exactly because they were canadian company and taiwanese Nvidia (remark due to already plenty of technology present in Taiwan, but only single competitive vendor outside, ATi) was destroying everyone (incl. 3dFX).

And right now, after switching to Linux completely when MS showed its true face with Paladium in Vista times, I want that now merged company actually gets some marketshare as pioneer on opensource wave.
But they just act like virgin schoolboys, unsure to do first steps. You can't lead, if you don't act like a lead.

But if they continue coward cartel tactics, that luckily don't work anymore, since Google (amen!) broke the balance with Linux and produced a mirriad of startups of various juicy platforms, - all Linux or opensource based, nearly all gaming platforms, - they will sooner or later go bankrupt.

Yeah, sorry, I withdraw from thread then. You have a point.

[BO$$]

Hello idiot!

Point 1:
I did a small survey here too: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...-abadon-Nvidia
Result for the lazy:


Point 2:
We have problems exactly because AMD and Co produce closed source drivers.
If windows driver would be opensource, we would have exactly same features under Linux (and BSD, and Haiku etc) already.

Point 3:
The reason why closed source AMD driver is lacking features of closed source Windows driver, is because AMD LACKS MANPOWER.
If the base driver would be opensource - they would need to only write one driver and only request community to push their driver on different OSes.
But because closed source driver has secrets, patents and DRM all over the place, only the initiated are allowed to do this and every initiated must be overseen, which results in:
1) a ROLL of people which do MONKEY JOBS instead of direct programming.
2) ONLY couple of OSes supported
3) ONLY ONE OS from this couple is FULLY supported

Point 4:
Linux is flagship opensource OS. If you want to blobbify and close everything, you obviously chosen wrong OS and wrong forum!

UP: Point 5:
If you dislike windows, go start your own proprietary OS and enjoy IMMEDIATE FAILURE.
Because no proprietary driver will support your stupid OS, because you lack marketshare.

I agree. If the world would just give me their money then I wouldn't have any problems at all. But this is not how it works. Why should they give you their code for free? Just because you want to? The damn thing costed millions of dollars to make. Why should they just give it away for free? Of course the world would be a better place if everybody just gave you what you want (from your point of view of course). But you see, not everybody is a communist (especially when they are on the receiving end), and some companies work for profit. I am pragmatic. It's simpler to just make sure the proprietary works by not fucking with X.org so much than to convince AMD to open source their driver.

And about that survey. Do you really not see how those results might be skewed or just feigning idiocy? You're asking stuff on phoronix which is full of fanatics (they call themselves idealists) about open source. I asked people who don't care what open source is. Those people are the majority. Go ahead. Ask people what would they choose. People who use windows and don't care about linux for example but would switch to linux if they could play games on it. Or people who are fed up with the move to windows 8 and would like something else but don't know about linux. See if any of them chooses the open source driver with 10% of the proprietary driver performance.

[duby229]

Nobody here said that amd should open source their proprietary driver... If they did we'd just end up with a bloated buggy steaming pile of oss crap.... Remember the xfi driver? It would be something reminisent of that...

I think AMD's oss efforts -are- on the right track. I like the oss drivers. They work well and are extremely stable. They just have long standing missing features.

[rvalles]

Nobody here said that amd should open source their proprietary driver... If they did we'd just end up with a bloated buggy steaming pile of oss crap.... Remember the xfi driver? It would be something reminisent of that...

I think AMD's oss efforts -are- on the right track. I like the oss drivers. They work well and are extremely stable. They just have long standing missing features.

Alright. And their infrastructure work on mesa/gallium3d isn't amd-specific, which doesn't just mean everybody benefits, it also saves costs in the long run: Once they change paradigms in hardware they can still use the infrastructure work on gallium3d, like the new radeonsi driver they're now writing.

At this point, both feature-wise and performance-wise, gallium3d and the free drivers seem to be actually going somewhere. It used to be nobody would believe free 3d drivers would ever catch up but that's not the case anymore; now it seems like it's only a matter of time.

[ChrisXY]

But they just act like virgin schoolboys, unsure to do first steps. You can't lead, if you don't act like a lead.

Well, but I understand it. Legal stuff can get easily ugly. I'd rather not know how much money samsung and apple alone have already thrown in the sinkhole that is the legal patent system.

[duby229]

Just read an article on the front page that Fermi has video decode support in their oss drivers..... I mean really? It's ok for them, but it's really sad that they get it first. ARRRGGGGHH!!!

[Hamish Wilson]

Hello there! I did a small survey among friends asking them what would they choose: a driver that is open source but slower and doesn't implement all features or a proprietary driver that works just like in windows in terms of speed and functionality? They all answered proprietary.

Small sample group, and an inherent bias in the questioning. Bad surveying, poor statistics.

From what I've read, your duty as an employee of AMD is to provide the most value to the company, that is contribute most to their bottom line. And how do you do that? By listening to your customers and serving their needs to your best ability. Your customers want the proprietary drivers. They don't care about this open source bullshit. They just want something that is equally fast to their windows driver. The radeon driver isn't it.

I am a quite loyal customer and I do care, a lot. And I am not alone. You can not just write us off because of some flawed survey of your friends.

Besides, that is what the Catalyst driver already provides with full support from AMD. Unhappy with the state of the Catalyst drivers? Bug the Catalyst team, and stop blaming the free drivers which have nothing to do with what you want to have in the first place.

Can you guys give bridgman a break? I'm pretty sure he is not the one "we" need to "convince" and I for one appreciate his time spent here explaining why stuff happens.

One word: yes.

And about that survey. Do you really not see how those results might be skewed or just feigning idiocy? You're asking stuff on phoronix which is full of fanatics (they call themselves idealists) about open source. I asked people who don't care what open source is. Those people are the majority. Go ahead. Ask people what would they choose. People who use windows and don't care about linux for example but would switch to linux if they could play games on it. Or people who are fed up with the move to windows 8 and would like something else but don't know about linux. See if any of them chooses the open source driver with 10% of the proprietary driver performance.

Yes, his survey is flawed, but it is in fact less flawed then yours. My suggestion is for both of you to stop assuming you have any kind of real grasp of who wants what and just accept the fact that you are only arguing for what you yourselves want.

I think AMD's oss efforts -are- on the right track. I like the oss drivers. They work well and are extremely stable. They just have long standing missing features.

Again, yes.

At this point, both feature-wise and performance-wise, gallium3d and the free drivers seem to be actually going somewhere. It used to be nobody would believe free 3d drivers would ever catch up but that's not the case anymore; now it seems like it's only a matter of time.

Yes, yes, and yes.