Why AMD 8.41 Driver And Not 9.xx?

[ioannis]

considering the new driver is basically a new code-base, I'm surprised they have only bumped the release count by one.

8.41: "Should have been revision 9, but we are too modest for that" edition.

Thank you AMD/ATI.

[yoshi314]

considering the new driver is basically a new code-base, I'm surprised they have only bumped the release count by one.

maybe that's just the minor change ( #DEFINE DEBUG 0 ) compared to what happens on a monthly basis

[d2kx]

8.41 is not the Linuxversion. It is also the Windowsversion (with the marketing name being 7.9). It's the 41 driver since the new Catalyst driver was announced 41 month ago. The 9.* will happen when there's a complete rewrite of the Windows/all driver, too.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by ioannis

considering the new driver is basically a new code-base, I'm surprised they have only bumped the release count by one.

8.41: "Should have been revision 9, but we are too modest for that" edition.

Thank you AMD/ATI.

When are we going to see Solaris support; Given that Sun went out on a limb to help AMD out getting legitimacy in the server space, I think AMD needs to send a nice thank you to Sun in the form of better driver support and specification providing.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

When are we going to see Solaris support; Given that Sun went out on a limb to help AMD out getting legitimacy in the server space, I think AMD needs to send a nice thank you to Sun in the form of better driver support and specification providing.

Perhaps with their "open source" thing, there will be Solaris support.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by Michael

Perhaps with their "open source" thing, there will be Solaris support.

I doubt it; I've decided to boycott all AMD products (including ATI - they own it, so no excuses) until they opensource their drivers OR provide the same level of quality and support as their Windows product line up - to OpenSolaris.

[Svartalf]

Originally Posted by Michael

Perhaps with their "open source" thing, there will be Solaris support.

Okay, with you taunting us like this, I have to wonder- you did the SAME thing with the 8.41 driver (Heh...), could it be they may have gotten a clue (and kept it- funny that...) about all of this and are actually going to HELP us do open source drivers.

[Xipeos]

Originally Posted by Svartalf

Okay, with you taunting us like this, I have to wonder- you did the SAME thing with the 8.41 driver (Heh...), could it be they may have gotten a clue (and kept it- funny that...) about all of this and are actually going to HELP us do open source drivers.

I don't think the driver's going to be open source.

When Michael was taunting us, he didn't write the word ("_______" instead of tonight).
But now he openly said "perhaps ... open-source". Since he's not allowed to reveal anything, we must assume that he didn't. So no open source
(otherwise he would have said "maybe in the near future...")

[Svartalf]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

I doubt it; I've decided to boycott all AMD products (including ATI - they own it, so no excuses) until they opensource their drivers OR provide the same level of quality and support as their Windows product line up - to OpenSolaris.

Considering that I doubted that they'd be in a position to produce even something like the 8.41 drivers by the end of this year (don't ask- I can't tell you why...), I'd be cautious about doubting that they're not going to work on helping the Open Source community at least in the same way that Intel has.

Michael (who seems to have an inside track up in Canada right now...) seems to believe they're going to do something USEFUL in that regard. I'm not holding my breath (I like the color blue, but not on my skin... ) but I'm going to adjust my doubtfulness upwards a little to be more hopeful about the whole thing at least for now.

[Svartalf]

Originally Posted by Xipeos

I don't think the driver's going to be open source.

When Michael was taunting us, he didn't write the word ("_______" instead of tonight).
But now he openly said "perhaps ... open-source". Since he's not allowed to reveal anything, we must assume that he didn't. So no open source
(otherwise he would have said "maybe in the near future...")

No, but perhaps they will be working on making the specs available, or sanitizing the Orca codebase so that the core functionality is opened to the world. In all honesty, they don't have as much proprietary stuff in there, it's more covering for egg-on-face silicon flaws.