The State Of Open-Source Radeon Driver Features

[crazycheese]

I agree. If the world would just give me their money then I wouldn't have any problems at all.

You will have a LOT OF problems, because you forgot that money is only an instrument to motivate people. Nothing more. They are worthless outside of the scope.
If you remove money from people, they get angry.
And you also forgot weapons.
Angry people with weapons vs you with their money - its not going to end up good for you.

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?

They don't give it for free. They develop each series by accurately targeting market demands, starting from initial investment calculation via design, manufacturing up to selling where they get expenses covered and receive profit.
I am buying their cards. They get money from me. Where is "free"? The driver software is in freedom form because its tremendously cheaper to adapt, its secure and it fuels the progress. But its not coming written 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).

I will nothing from you, receiving without giving is a crime.

But you see, not everybody is a communist (especially when they are on the receiving end), and some companies work for profit.

Communism and capitalism are different approaches to same problematic, to commonwealth society. None of the approaches is flawless.
Also, unfortunately communism has three major flaws that prevent it to apply efficiently on society level - that is - the authority must be equal to citizens(1), material equilibrium renders progress nearly impossible(2), everyone should be open on informational level (means no lying)(3). Capitalism has no less flaws, it forces overproduction, overconsuming, damaging concentration of material wealth, and... slavery by the means of private property. The civil american war between states is a prime example.

If left without state control, both systems will unavoidably lead to power overconcentration and a totalitarian system.

Fortunately, in most countries, regardless of the approach, the offsets are covered by laws. For example, in America, as per constitution, speech and information are discarded from term "capital".
You can't own soul, you can't control speech, you can't own information.

Also, information and information producer or carrier have completely different nature.
Lets take word "apple" and real apple.
If someone consumes word "apple" by mentioning it, the information will multiply. If someone leaves word "apple" alone, the information will vanish as less and less information carriers carry it.
If someone consumes apple, it will be destroyed. If someone leaves apple alone, it will exist further.

Hence capitalism is better applied to material nature (by means of private property and preservation) and communism to informational nature(by means of sharing and reuse).

The problematic reappears again, as everything in IT is information and a process. So, workers, consume material goods to produce information, which in term can't be seen and sold as a capital.
Stallman has already explained by means of GPL, that information must be free, yet production of information should not be(and is never) free.

This is why - don't sell copies, but sell programmer time.

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.

I am nothing, I observe the nature of things and follow it. I don't carry pink or grey glasses, they deviate the observation.
Simple does not apply to term "ideal", it depends on state of things.
In this case, opensourcing the driver will produce vast platform advantage and compatibility of AMD solutions to all current and future systems.
Basically, they have good hardware - if they make it easily supported everywhere, it will act like a glue.
What the danger is, if they do it the wrong way, their investments in RnD will be lost by no one compensating it, but simply reusing - which is why the whole income model should be redone.
Right now, people are purchasing their hardware solutions which compensate the costs for the driver development. Driver and feature customization can also be improved by software as service approach. I have mentioned it long ago, people will gladly pay for good opensource driver development if they see the results. For development outside of this scope they might deploy distributed cost locks - that is, the feature is unlocked once they get enough supporters/purchasers.

Xorg is irrelevant, because it is underway to be aborted (and very probably rewritten). It is natural state of things, that at certain degree of complexity, when lessons are learned, it is better to abort everything and restart from scratch in order to eliminate underlying (architectural) problems. Xorg is no exception - thank you Xorg, bye Xorg, hello new Xorg.

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.

Where did you ask? In a pool of clueless people? To provide educated opinion, one should know BOTH ways equally good.
You asked sheep. Recieved "Meee". Now you claim "Meee" to be the ultimate answer. Meee don't think so.

Also, I repeat - Linux has proven the advantage of opensource. It advances things, where proprietary approach closes them down, separates them, drains their energy and lets them die irrevocably.
Proprietary approach to information is like communism to society.

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.

If people switch to Linux just for the sake of switching, it must be their curiousity. Curiosity is a natural feeling which is HIGHLY DAMAGED by *habit*. And Windows is PREINSTALLED since MSDOS, it puts HEAVY meaning on *habit* - from being preinstalled, up to winapi. Result: windows people do not switch to Linux due to curiosity. Because they have lost it, thanks to microsoft!

If people switch to Linux, because certain game is available there - they shouldn't, because games should be crossplatform and opensource demands that. Windows heavily uses *exclusivity* - a reverse meaning of *restriction*.
Exclusivity is damaging factor, because its a straight way to slavery! However, inventor should be granted exclusivity for acceptable timeline, so he can compensate the costs, but NEVER if exclusivity results in freedom- or possibility reduction.
For example, Siri was originally meant to be available on variety of platforms. Its developers would receive compensation for the work as exclusive inventors.
However, once Siri was purchased by Apple, Apple restricted its usage only to own platform. This is damaging illegal method of "exclusivity".

People actually switch to Linux, because it either fits better for the job, or because they are reverse-forced to - they run from tyranny. It does not restrict their freedom.

Ideally, you shouldn't switch environment, because you have tons of curiosity, was able to compare different systems and current system fits you well. This is valid way.

I don't feel well when a system postulates monopoly, gathers all technologies, destroys companies, drives the market and its users in a totalitarian choiceless way.
For example, google monopoly is based on openness, innovation, absence of limitation and service. That's a good way. You make your choice!

Then come games, yes!

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.

You are one of them? Then I suggest you spend more time to understand the system deeply, just to understand why it has its current form, before you make any claims.

Regarding opensource or not drivers - the formula is easy: More attention equals better driver.

More attention may happen due to personal interest(direct or indirect) or financial interest(money, again direct or indirect). Ideally the code should get maximum attention without blocking the attention from flowing back.
Hence proprietary companies reinvent same bicycles on constant basis instead of working on parts or unique variations.
Recently they learned to lend bicycles though, although now they impose bicycle-lend-tax even on pedestrians, bar none.

Every company wants more money, but forgets that money is only an instrument to provide innovation and commonwealth of the society.
Because AMD agrees only with marketshare approach, but fails to seek ways to gain this marketshare we have a suboptimal drivers.

And opensource driver performance is currently 50-80% of proprietary driver. That ONLY thanks to people not seeking "simple ways". So please suggest ways to improve it. We already have windows and know the damages.

[liam]

AFAIK it was correct, although a couple of posts later we realized we were talking about slightly different "next steps" anyways. Airlied was talking more about full DPM; I was talking more about "finer grained static PM" especially in the case where power tables had very few entries.

We agree on where we want to end up; I had just guessed that there would be some community-driven interim steps along the way and I guessed wrong.

Thanks for the response.

Ok, I re-read some of earlier posts in this "thread" (which is getting to be Tolstoy-esque in length) and you are right that there was a certain amount of talking past one another, but, when Matthew chimed in, and Dave then explained why they choose not to purse static PM further (the hope seemed to be that if they didn't improve the PM further there might be more push from the AMD side to get the relevant docs for talking to the PM system and they also seemed like they wanted to avoid further code review on any changes they make) the conversation kinda stopped.
Assuming Matthew and Dave were right, I don't see why anyone would attempt to further improve the current PM implementation unless the effort were directed towards reverse-engineering. The amount of work and the expected results just don't make sense. Again, this is assuming they were correct.

Best/Liam

[Hamish Wilson]

This thread is like a checker board - one post is useful and relevant and then the next is bullshit. And the cycle repeats...

[bridgman]

when Matthew chimed in, and Dave then explained why they choose not to purse static PM further (the hope seemed to be that if they didn't improve the PM further there might be more push from the AMD side to get the relevant docs for talking to the PM system

That's a reasonable hope, but having unhappy users doesn't actually make it easier to release even more programming information. If anything it's more likely to make decision-makers question whether the whole open source driver effort is worth doing, at least that has been our experience so far.

It is probably the case that if a *totally* satisfying PM solution could be created with the available info then that might weaken the argument for releasing more info since there would be no apparent customer benefit, but I don't think anyone was expecting the short term work to go that far.

and they also seemed like they wanted to avoid further code review on any changes they make) the conversation kinda stopped.

Yep, nobody likes writing dead-end code even if it does make a big difference to user satisfaction in the short term.

[liam]

That's a reasonable hope, but having unhappy users doesn't actually make it easier to release even more programming information. If anything it's more likely to make decision-makers question whether the whole open source driver effort is worth doing, at least that has been our experience so far.

Since their strategy of having unhappy corporate users seems a bit silly, plus your comment about the possibility of AMD pulling out of the community effort altogether must have occurred to them, I have to think that they are coming from a position of privileged info. OTOH, perhaps it's as simple as hoping that by telling their clients that the problem is on your end their clients would then complain to AMD and hopefully pressure the release of the relevant docs. The other possibility seems to be that Dave doesn't have the time or the motivation in the form of requests from RH clients for this work.

Yep, nobody likes writing dead-end code even if it does make a big difference to user satisfaction in the short term.

As you say, nobody likes writing stopgap code especially when even its utility is in question by some parties. There's also the seeming differing requests from customers that you and Dave are seeing.


Best/Liam

[duby229]

That's a reasonable hope, but having unhappy users doesn't actually make it easier to release even more programming information. If anything it's more likely to make decision-makers question whether the whole open source driver effort is worth doing, at least that has been our experience so far.

It is probably the case that if a *totally* satisfying PM solution could be created with the available info then that might weaken the argument for releasing more info since there would be no apparent customer benefit, but I don't think anyone was expecting the short term work to go that far.



Yep, nobody likes writing dead-end code even if it does make a big difference to user satisfaction in the short term.

That just doesnt make any sense though... On one hand you have a stable useable driver that is incomplete and on the other you've got a completely worthless driver that crashes just about every computer it runs on. Why would AMD stop contributing to the only good driver that supports its hardware? After all it IS their hardware. The expectation that folks who don't have the knowledge, skillset, documentation, or funding to develop a driver should have to do it by themselves for hardware that AMD should be supporting is kind of assinine. And at the very minimum it is unrealistic.

You take away the driver and you take away the ability to use the hardware... Its simple logic if you can't use the hardware then there isnt any point in buying the hardware. Thats really stupid. With steam coming to linux right now is a really retarded time to make that choice.

EDIT: If what you say is true about AMD's attitude internally then they have some serious problems to consider. FGLRX is ---NOT--- an adequate driver. the OSS drivers are the only workable solution for the vast majority of linux users. You take that away and AMD becomes irrelevant on linux.

Up until this conversation I had been very optimistic about the furure of AMD products on linux, but you make it sound as if the end is very near.

[bridgman]

Up until this conversation I had been very optimistic about the furure of AMD products on linux, but you make it sound as if the end is very near.

Don't let your increasing awareness of an imperfect but improving situation make you think that things are getting worse.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of your points in detail because you're basically saying "I don't like fglrx therefore everyone so must obviously believe it's crap and if AMD funds work on it then they must be stupid" over and over again. I continue to hear that fglrx works pretty well in the applications where its primary focus lies -- 3D workstation apps -- and it seems statistically unlikely that all of those people are stupid.

Also note that even if the open source drivers are superior for "the vast majority of Linux users" that doesn't mean fglrx doesn't have a place. Remember that fglrx's primary target is still the 3D workstation market (which is small but important), while the open source drivers *do* directly target the larger consumer and desktop client userbase.

I guess it would be unreasonable for me to ask you and BO$$ to come up with a consensus view before we go any further ?

[duby229]

I didnt say that AMD customers were stupid. I said it would be stupid for AMD to drop out of OSS driver development right now. It sounds like what you were saying is thats where things are headed. That AMD will drop out of OSS driver development.

If I interpreted you wrong please set me straight and tell me that AMD isnt going to.

EDIT: If you guys want to develop fglrx then thats fine... I just don't like how you use the fact that fglrx exists as an excuse for why its taking so long to bring up support for features in the oss drivers. Whenever video decode (or any other feature the oss drivers don't have) is mentioned it always come to "well fglrx exists use that, it was designed for cases that the oss drivers dont work in"... Thats all fine and good except that it doesnt work.... And then to make things worse you say that it should be up to "thousands" of community developers to do it for free with no documentation.

[smitty3268]

As you say, nobody likes writing stopgap code especially when even its utility is in question by some parties. There's also the seeming differing requests from customers that you and Dave are seeing.

That's the real disconnect I'm seeing.

Bridgman thinks these small improvements to the static profiles would make a big difference. The oss devs think no one except a couple phoronix readers would even notice.

I have to say, I kind of agree with Dave and the others. Improving the static profiles might help quiet a couple trolls, but 99.999999% of people need good dynamic PM, and nothing less than that matters at all. Better to spend dev time working on things people will actually care about.

[Drago]

Please tell us Bridgman, what are these 3D workstation customer demands, that Radeon driver can't satisfy, besides superior performance. Is it GL 4.x? Is it OpenCL? Is it some secret sauce that is used to differentiate Radeon chips from FireGL ones.
Isn't possible for FOSS driver one day in the future to be 3D Workstation compatible?
Tell us, what you think it could be done with currently available information for PM. You said something of AtomBios table interpolation. Explain. This are super honest questions. I am not trying to argue with you, by no means.
Thanks.