Could be, but I think the more likely reason is that their open source efforts have been running uninterrupted for a longer period of time. We had a ~5 year gap after ATI entered the workstation business when it was hoped that the proprietary driver could handle everything. We get a lot of flak for dividing efforts between open source and proprietary drivers but it still seems like the only approach which covers all the bases including high end 3D workstation. Intel has not been in the 3D workstation business so an open-source-only strategy works for them (as it did for us until 2002-ish).
It wouldn't work for UVD but may be a fallback option for PM. Challenge is that even a big module has a relatively small number of inputs and outputs unless you invest a lot in frustrating reverse engineering efforts and that just seems like a poor use of time if there are alternatives. Note that binary modules are better for hiding "secret software sauce" (eg a spiffy shader compiler) than hiding HW programming info.
Yep, that has been noticed.
Being "the cost effective solution" is a fallback. Goal is to kick ass and take names![]()



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