Improved AMD Color Management Being Worked On For The Steam Deck

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Improved AMD Color Management Being Worked On For The Steam Deck

Open-source Linux graphics driver engineer Melissa Wen with Igalia, Joshua Ashton with Valve, and Harry Wentland with AMD have been working on kernel mode-setting (KMS) color pipeline enhancements for SteamOS and in particular for enhancing the Steam Deck...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Color-Steam-Deck

[Danny3]

That's awesome, many thanks to AMD and Valve!
Intel, Nvidia, WTF are you still waiting for, that others do all the hard works?

BTW, is that Red Hat conference still happening?
Wasn't supposed to be in april?

[slagiewka]

BTW, is that Red Hat conference still happening?
Wasn't supposed to be in april?

Starting today: https://wiki.gnome.org/Hackfests/ShellDisplayNext2023

[larkey]

That's awesome, many thanks to AMD and Valve?
Intel, Nvidia, WTF are you still waiting for, that others do all the hard works?

BTW, is that Red Hat conference still happening?
Wasn't supposed to be in april?

She's literally on-site currently, arrived per-wiki on 22nd, probably one of the reasons why the patch set is happening right now. So while the Hackfest is not the reason behind this effort, it's definitely a catalysator.

[Joe2021]

We need 30 Bit color asap! It actually is becoming ridiculous, it's 2023! That is true regardless of platform, OS or hardware like. Every OS, GPU and Display should support 30 Bit colors. I am so tired of this topic, which is ongoing since more than two decades.

[caligula]

We need 30 Bit color asap! It actually is becoming ridiculous, it's 2023! That is true regardless of platform, OS or hardware like. Every OS, GPU and Display should support 30 Bit colors. I am so tired of this topic, which is ongoing since more than two decades.

Average users still buy 6+2 bit monitors that use dithering to render all 16,7M colors. Those displays don't even support 100% sRGB or have nits levels above 300. Usually the resolution is also 1440p or lower.

[Mahboi]

I hardly believe that the Steam Deck can somehow get a much better screen through a kernel update, unless they've been sitting on a tiny optimisation all this time.

What seems much more likely to me is that they're looking into HDR/OLED support for an eventual Steam Deck II in the future. All the copycats (ROG Ally the first of them) which lazily use Windows prove one thing: the Steam Deck's concept is easy to copy hardware-wise.
At this point anyway, Sony (Playstation), Microsoft (XBOX), Valve (Steam Deck), ASUS (Ally) and pretty much all the others have heard Lisa's call: "Zen 2, 8 cores, and RDNA with LPDDR".

Running Zen 4/RDNA3 or in a year or two Zen5/RDNA4 is kind of the logical follow up.

Also, IIRC, Zen 2 was the big push in POWER, not in efficiency. Zen 3 worked on that field quite a bit, and Zen 4 trounced efficiency to an almost absurd degree, with the 7800x3D rocking more perf/W than anything ever made. I really expect either Zen 4 or Zen 5 3D V-cache tools to appear in a gazillion mobile units, whether it's Steam Deck-sized or laptop sized, in the coming years, and for the depth of AMD's hand to lengthen continuously.

RDNA still is the lesser option compared to Nvidia, but not so lesser that it can't be nicely plugged in and forgotten about. I am really hopeful about several 1080p capable low power units to rush to market within the next 2 years.

[Nille]

Average users still buy 6+2 bit monitors

They don't usually know it better.

[castlefox]

Average users still buy 6+2 bit monitors that use dithering to render all 16,7M colors. Those displays don't even support 100% sRGB or have nits levels above 300. Usually the resolution is also 1440p or lower.

I dont disagree about the average user.... But there should be more development of where the future power user and average will be. If everyone develops for the lowest common denominator, we will not see progress on a fast enough timeline. Obviously it is harder for free/community devs. work on the latest and greatest without a budget to get newer hardware.

[stormcrow]

They don't usually know it better.

Plenty of people know it "better". They just don't care. The only OS that gets HDR remotely correct is MacOS. Not even Windows does HDR right and Linux is a joke in that dept, so why bother with the (expensive) hardware needed to do it "right"? The amount of proper HDR content is pretty much non-existent.