AMD News Archives

Last month the engineers at AMD managed to put out public, NDA-free documentation that covered the SB700/710/750 Chipsets. This south-bridge documentation is not nearly as exciting as seeing a new ATI graphics processors be documented in the public, but it does greatly help out the CoreBoot developers in enabling support for their BIOS project to run on systems with such hardware. This afternoon though there is RS780 Chipset documents for the CoreBoot developers and the general public.

As part of their Stream 2.0 Beta, AMD announced yesterday their OpenCL (Open Computing Language) Software Development Kit designed for multi-core x86 CPUs. They have submitted this SDK to the Khronos Group for certification, but it is available now. This OpenCL SDK, which is part of Stream 2.0, is available for both Windows and Linux. When it comes to AMD's Linux support, they are currently supporting this new SDK under OpenSuSE 11.0 and Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

Back in March we shared that the open-source ATI driver had gained support for the unreleased ATI RS880 IGP. Well, the RS880 ended up being turned into the 785G due to some problems on AMD's side, but today this new, much more powerful IGP has launched. With that said, another commit made to the xf86-video-ati driver today finishes off the support. The RS880 / 785G IGPs are now properly recognized and the 2D acceleration support is complete.

Ever since the RadeonHD driver switched to using AtomBIOS, there has been little in the way of feature differences between the xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd drivers. One of the few differences though is that Novell's RadeonHD driver has had HDMI audio support so that with the R600 GPUs and later, which contain an integrated audio processor, there is audio support for capable HDMI devices when also using a supported version of ALSA. The RadeonHD driver has supported the HDMI audio for some months now, while the other driver has not, but finally this work has been ported over.

It's a bit late in the month, but AMD has just released the ATI Catalyst 9.7 driver update for Linux. Officially, the only new feature in Catalyst 9.7 is production support for Red Flag DT 7.0, but there are some bug-fixes too. The bug-fixes range from segmentation fault fixes to addressing some monitor / RandR problems. This is not mentioned in the change-log, but there should be some composite support improvements (including video tearing fixes) within the Catalyst Linux release too. Overall though this is just another month with few changes that are visible to the end-user.

Months after AMD released documentation, programming guides, and sample code for the ATI R600 (Radeon HD 2000/3000) and R700 (Radeon HD 4000) series, glxgears is finally running atop these newest ATI graphics processors with proper GPU acceleration.

While most of the time getting new documentation out of AMD is for their ATI graphics processors, today they have pushed out four documents that amount to several hundred pages of information covering their latest Southbridges. The AMD SB700/710/750 chipsets are now well documented in these NDA-free programming guides that also cover the registers for this hardware.

Going back to last year we have exclusively been reporting on AMD's new HD video decoding interface, which is called XvBA. This interface for use with UVD2 GPUs is properly known as X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, which we have already described at length. XvBA itself has been supported by the proprietary ATI Catalyst Linux driver going back to Q4'08, but AMD has yet to release the documentations to this video API so developers of multimedia programs can implement this support. Of course, they also haven't released any patches themselves to add XvBA support to any programs, thereby rendering the current ATI Linux HD video decoding support as useless. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's VDPAU video API that was introduced around the same time continues to flourish with it being adopted by most Linux multimedia programs and it offers impressive results. Finally though it looks like AMD may be prepared to launch XvBA formally this summer.

AMD's John Bridgman has shared that the open-source R600/700 3D driver for Linux is becoming usable, slowly but surely. Months after releasing documentation, a programmer's guide, and sample code, their Mesa driver is beginning to do useful things -- more so than just rendering simple triangles.

With the forthcoming Linux 2.6.31 kernel there is finally Radeon kernel mode-setting support so that those running ATI graphics cards on Linux will be able to experience a cleaner boot process, faster VT switching, improved security, and other overdue features for Linux. Using kernel mode-setting with ATI Radeon hardware will require a supported kernel that is built with the appropriate kernel configuration options.

AMD has pushed out a new Catalyst driver update for Linux users this afternoon. The two new features in this release, as mentioned by their release notes (PDF), is support for new Linux distributions and MultiView support for Radeon hardware.

If you closely follow the Phoronix Forums you already know that the Catalyst 9.5 Linux driver is available for download. In fact, it has been available since this past Friday on their web server, but it was not officially announced and linked to from their driver web-site until now. The Catalyst 9.5 driver release notes do not mention much, in fact they are basically a facsimile of the Catalyst 9.4 driver release notes.

Besides seeing 3D acceleration for their hardware in an open-source driver, one of the other leading requests from ATI Radeon customers has been to see improved power management within the ATI X.Org driver stack. There is Dynamic Clocks support and some other power management capabilities, along with some more innovative ways, but ATI's PowerPlay is not fully implemented in the open-source stack. Today though committed to the xf86-video-ati driver is support for two new power management features. The two new power options in this open-source driver are ForceLowPowerMode and DynamicPM, both of which are xorg.conf options.

In a Phoronix Forums thread where a user had asked about the open-source 3D support status for the ATI R600/700 hardware in Mesa, AMD's John Bridgman has shared that it might be coming next week. It has been a long time coming, but the developers for the past few months have been working on the Mesa and updated DRM code in a private code repository, but next week we could finally see that code pushed into a public Mesa branch.

AMD's Alex Deucher has released the xf86-video-ati 6.12.2 driver this morning, not to be confused with the official Catalyst 9.4 proprietary driver that will come later this month. The open-source ATI driver update has a fair number of changes for this point release. In particular, the 6.12.2 release has lots of bug fixes and Textured Video / X-Video improvements. Additionally, there is mode-setting support for the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card that was released late last month usng the ATI RV790 GPU.

Back in January there was the release of the R600/700 3D documentation that is being used along with some open-source code to begin powering up the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 hardware with OpenGL acceleration support in Mesa. Some of this code should be out soon, but this past week AMD has released some more NDA-free documentation. This time the documentation concerns the R700 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA).

AMD's current flagship offering when it comes to integrated ATI graphics is the Radeon HD 3300 / 790GX. This IGP was introduced last fall as a minor refresh to the Radeon HD 3200 / 780G Chipset. As something new for consumers to consider, soon it looks like AMD will be introducing the RS880. The RS880 will likely have a marketing name within the Radeon HD 4000 series and will be their fastest integrated graphics solution, well, for now.

Early this morning we shared that AMD is dropping R300 through R500 support in the Catalyst driver. Beginning with the Catalyst 9.4 release, the Windows and Linux drivers will only support the R600 and R700 series (and eventually, R800) of ATI Radeon graphics processors. However, when writing that article we had no official response whether the Catalyst 9.3 legacy driver would support X Server 1.6. We can confirm now, however, that the R300-500 series legacy driver will not support this newest X.Org server release.

In late December AMD had released R600/700 3D code that allowed open-source triangles to be drawn and a AtomBIOS decompiler also came out of Novell just a few days later. In late January we were then greeted by public R600/700 3D documentation. While no working 3D support has yet to appear in the Mesa stack, the 2D EXA acceleration and X-Video support has matured relatively quickly. This work has now made its way into the mainline code for the open-source ATI stack.

A day after the ATI Catalyst 9.2 driver update was issued for Windows, Catalyst 9.2 for Linux is now available. However, there really isn't much at all to see with this release. There are no new features, but there are sixteen known resolved issues. None of the fixes in this proprietary Linux driver update are particularly interesting.

Just a week ago there was a new release candidate for the xf86-video-ati driver, but today the ATI 6.11.0 driver has been officially unveiled. Worth noting in this open-source X.Org driver update is a CRTC/output/encoder rework and Render extension repeat mode fixes. The xf86-video-ati 6.11.0 driver also has quite a few bug fixes since the release of xf86-video-ati 6.10, which happened just a month and a half ago.

Late last year AMD had released R600/700 3D code and in late January had then released R600 3D register documentation to begin work on an open-source driver stack supporting the latest ATI Radeon GPUs with 3D acceleration. One of AMD's partners in this open-source work has been Novell, which wrote an open-source utility to begin sending 3D commands to the GPU in a very primitive form and to analyze the different operations. This utility is called r600_demo, which we explain in full detail here.

Alex Deucher has announced a new release candidate for the next xf86-video-ati driver release. The xf86-video-ati 6.11 release has a major rework when it comes to the display output code along with a memory corruption fix for the ATI RS780 memory controller. There are also quite a few bug-fixes in this first xf86-video-ati 6.11 RC1 build. The full change-log can be found on the X.Org mailing list.

AMD this morning has announced five new Phenom II processors. What is special about these processors, however, is that they use the Socket AM3 and they support DDR3 system memory rather than the DDR2 memory type they had long been using. There are Phenom II X3 and Phenom II X4 processors that now support DDR3 memory. Of course, with these new AM3 processors from AMD you will need a new supportive motherboard. Sadly, however, we have none of these new Phenom II processors from Linux so we are unable to tell you anything about their Linux support -- no performance figures or even if they work at all. Hopefully the troubles aren't there like when the Phenom was first introduced on Linux.

In late December, AMD had released open-source R600/700 code used to begin supporting 2D and 3D acceleration for the latest ATI graphics processors under Linux using an open-source stack. This code in its initial form just provided basic but fast 2D acceleration and on the 3D side was only able to draw triangles. This month an AMD Video BIOS Disassembler was released by Novell, which is one of AMD's open-source partners. This evening, however, AMD has released its R600 3D specifications to the general public.

AMD's Alex Deucher has announced the release of the xf86-video-ati 6.10.0 driver. This open-source ATI graphics driver update brings forth bi-cubic scaling on R300/400/500/690 chipsets, new ASICs are supported by this DDX driver, reduced X-Video tearing, and quite a few bug-fixes.

It's been nearly six months since xf86-video-ati 6.9.0 was released, but we're finally nearing a new version of this open-source ATI driver. David Airlie has announced the release of the first xf86-video-ati 6.9.1 release candidate.

AMD has yet to go through their final intellectual property review on the R600/700 3D documentation that could yield open ATI R600/700 3D graphics by Christmas (though the chances of this happening are slimming), but Novell's Hatthias Hopf has provided a status update to report that they have internally begun work on an RV770 DRI driver for Mesa.

In addition to announcing the Shanghai Quad-Core Opterons today, AMD has also released an updated Linux graphics driver. The AMD Catalyst 8.11 binary driver though doesn't have many Linux changes worth speaking about. The advertised features for this release is support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 (RHEL 4.7), a CrossFireX watermark, and display scaling support for DVI/HDMI/analog interfaces to 480i/p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p.

As the successor to their Barcelona Quad-Core Opterons, Advanced Micro Devices has this morning announced Shanghai. AMD's Shanghai is the code-name to their next-generation 45nm quad-core Opteron processors. In addition to moving over to a 45nm process for reduced power and improved performance, Shanghai CPUs are slated to deliver unsurpassed virtualization performance, improved energy efficiency, and a more competitive price-performance ratio.

Yesterday we shared about the experimental DRI2 work for the Radeon driver and today we have another open-source ATI accomplishment worth sharing: the R600/770 DRI support is nearing a working state. Matthias Hopf, one of the Novell developers working on the xf86-video-radeonhd driver, has stated that the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) support needed for 3D acceleration with the R600/700 series is getting closer.

It's been a while since Jerome Glisse last had any major announcements to share, but today he's announcing that he is in the progress of bringing DRI2 (Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2) to the open-source Radeon driver.

Yesterday we reported on Canonical shipping an unreleased ATI Catalyst driver with the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 8.10. This driver labeled fglrx 8.54.3 adds support for X Server 1.5 / X.Org 7.4 and the Linux 2.6.27 kernel. Later in the day then, AMD did go ahead and release Catalyst 8.10. However, this isn't the same driver as what's found in Ubuntu.

With Canonical publishing the ATI Catalyst 8.10 driver even before it's been announced by AMD or appearing on their driver download page, we've taken this opportunity for an early look at this next Linux driver. In early September we confirmed XvMC and UVD are coming to ATI's Linux driver and that it would be enabled in the October driver. Looking at the default AMDPCSDB (AMD Persistent Configuration Driver Store Data-Base) in this driver for Ubuntu 8.10 there is indeed the Unified Video Decoder (2) option and it's enabled.

Behind open-source 3D acceleration for the ATI R600 and R700 series, improved power management has been a much sought after feature among those using the open-source xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd drivers. There has been Dynamic Clocks support since earlier this year, but it's not nearly as advanced PowerPlay found within the Catalyst driver. We are now though getting closer to reaching open-source PowerPlay support.

Since Advanced Micro Devices acquired ATI Technologies back in 2006 they have experienced some financial hardship over this $5 billion USD purchase. In hopes of turning around this situation, AMD has announced this morning they have split themselves from their manufacturing facilities as part of their Asset Smart strategy.

LM_Sensors 3.0.3 was just released earlier this week, but a rather interesting patch has appeared today on the LM_Sensors mailing list. Back in July an AMD Phenom Thermal Linux driver was made for LM_Sensors, but today's patch adds the AMD Phenom 10h support to the k8temp driver. Additionally, this patch also provides thermal monitoring support for AMD's 11h processors.

After slides had leaked out onto the Internet last month that AMD is going to support playing high-definition multimedia content on Linux, we had talked a bit more about UVD for Linux. There are two shared libraries already shipping with the AMD Catalyst Linux Suite, libAMDXvBA.so.1.o and libXvBAW.so.1.o, that reference XvMC and UVD2 (Unified Video Decoder 2) but they aren't yet being utilized by the proprietary driver. If those slides are to be believed, however, the official high-definition video support (such as Blu-Ray) will arrive this month in Catalyst 8.10.

With the most recent Catalyst 8.9 Linux driver release there is support for MultiView on FireGL and FirePRO graphics cards. This allows the user to use multiple graphics cards together in order to build a single X server that spans all of these displays. With some motherboards such as the ASUS P5E64 WS Professional having four PCI Express x16 slots, you can have four graphics cards and if each one provides two DVI ports you then can have yourself an eight-monitor setup. Each monitor can be configured through the AMD Catalyst Control Center Linux Edition.

Last month the Catalyst 8.8 Linux driver was released with CrossFire For Linux (including support for the Radeon HD 4870 X2) and OverDrive-based overclocking. In that article we also shared two new interesting libraries appeared within the driver package: libAMDXvBA.so.1.o and libXvBAW.so.1.o.

This week marks the one year anniversary since AMD had announced its open-source strategy and in two weeks will mark the anniversary of the xf86-video-radeonhd code release that contained R500 and R600 mode-setting support, but not much more. Celebrating this one year milestone was a celebration with Luc Verhaegen, Jerome Glisse, and Egbert Eich during XDS 2008 at the The Bad Ass pub in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In time for SIGGRAPH 2008, AMD has announced the ATI FirePro series with the FirePro V3700 and V5700 being the first two products. However, unlike many of their FireGL graphics cards, the prices on these two announced FirePro parts aren't that bad. The FirePro V3700 will cost a mere $99 USD while the V5700 will be $599 USD. These new workstation graphics cards support DisplayPort, OpenGL 2.1, and PCI Express 2.0. The FirePro series will start shipping in September so we expect there will be Linux support for these graphics cards by Catalyst 8.11. More on the FirePro series can be found in the press release and FirePro product page.

Many Linux users will be celebrating the Christmas holiday in five months, but it seems there's a holiday worth celebrating today for open-source ATI Linux users.

Since last month's release of Catalyst 8.6 for Linux we've seen the introduction of the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards and we've been allowed to share with you that CrossFire is coming to Linux along with other yet to be announced features. Today AMD has released the Catalyst 8.7 Linux driver and it doesn't deliver any new ground-breaking features, but it does bring a few improvements.

While AMD's financial outlook has been bleak with it closing down 12% today, if you're a Linux user -- particularly one with a quad-core Phenom processor -- there is good news to report from the AMD camp.

For those of you that have been using the open-source xf86-video-ati driver, need we remind you of its rapidly-improving state and feature set? One of the latest additions to this open-source ATI driver that supports the old ATI R100 graphics cards up through the new Radeon HD 4800 series (RV770) is tear-free acceleration. The current implementation of this tear-free acceleration is for EXA and Textured Video (X-Video) and should eliminate any "tearing" issues that some users experience. This code isn't yet found in the master branch of its development git repository, but can be acquired through the vsync_accel branch. Alex Deucher, the mastermind behind this latest code, has described this improvement on his blog.

Earlier this week we reported on RadeonHD driver support for the RV770 with the Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards. This support arrived within the RadeonHD driver's new AtomBIOS branch that relies upon ATI's video BIOS abstraction layer as opposed to "banging the registers" and interfacing with the hardware directly. However, the lead developer of the xf86-video-radeonhd driver has back-ported the RV770 support using these hard-coded paths.

The xf86-video-ati 6.8.0 driver was released back in February, and today version 6.9.0 has been released, which is coming just a day after its 6.9.0-rc2 release. Version 6.9.0 of this ATI driver adds improved EXA render support for R100/200 graphics cards, EXA render support for R300/400/500 graphics processors, and Textured Video support through X-Video for R100-500 graphics processors. This open-source driver supports all generations of Radeon graphics processors (aside from official support for the just-released HD 4850 and HD 4870). The complete change-log for xf86-video-ati 6.9.0 and source download links can be found on the X.Org mailing list.

While AMD still has yet to release any R600 programming documentation or the source-code to their KGrids or TCore simulators (though the documentation may finally just be days away), Alex Deucher and David Airlie have been working on R600 DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) support. Today the first bits of this DRI component for the Radeon HD 2000/3000 series is now available. Within the Mesa/DRM git tree at FreeDesktop.org is a new r6xx-support branch. This R600 DRM uses the CP (Command Processor) for communication, but before checking out this branch, be forewarned that 3D acceleration isn't ready yet. While there is open-source R500 3D support and it's working quite well, Alex believes it will be at least another month or two until the Mesa and DDX code is in place for this R600 3D hardware acceleration.

Twelve days after the first xf86-video-ati 6.9.0 Release Candidate, the second RC release is now available for testing. Since xf86-video-ati 6.9.0-rc1, the man page has been updated, a ShadowFB R600 fix, PLL tweaks, a possible fix for VGA on ATI IGP chipsets, warning fixes, cleanups, and other work. If you're interested in testing out xf86-video-ati 6.9.0-rc2 on your Radeon graphics card (up to and including the just-announced Radeon HD 4850/4870), this is a git-only release and can be cloned from git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati.