Back at the Red Hat Summit, Henri Richard said that AMD (and the former ATI) were going to come up with a plan to better support open source. Today we see the results of that promise and I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with the commitment that they have decided to make. I know that this was a struggle inside of AMD and I want to send a personal thanks to the people who worked hard to make this a reality. They deserve full credit and our thanks.
OK, to the meat of the story. AMD is making the commitment to do two major things:
- To develop of a fully functional 2D and 3D driver that supports all of their newer radeon chipsets. This will be done in full collaboration with the open source community and will have the direct participation of hackers from companies like Red Hat and Novell.
- To release documentation that anyone can use to build and support drivers for their chips.
In my mind it’s the release of documentation that’s most interesting and telling about the commitment. These guys are clearly doing the right thing and are going even further than Intel in their support of open source. It’s not just about the having drivers, it’s also about having the ability to work independently of the company in your development and decision making. Docs make that possible and are a great symptom of the way that they are thinking about how to interact with the open source community.
In my mind end users turn out to be the biggest winners in this story. The binary driver that AMD/ATI has today will continue to live on and be supported. But that doesn’t matter because the goal wasn’t to stop the evil binary driver makers. The goal was to create a great out of the box experience for people who want to use distributions like Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And what this means is that we can finally do this on ATI hardware across the board.
It’s also a huge win for those of us who understand that supporting end users and creating great experiences means having open source up and down the stack. For those of us who have been involved in the Fedora project, not including and supporting binary drivers has been painful. It destroyed our user base versus those who would be so quick to give up that flexibility for the sake of some short term gain. But we stuck to our guns and said “No, we can’t innovate in that model. That doesn’t scale and takes away our ability to move quickly. You will have to do better.” And it meant that in some small way we were able to drive the discussion to a place where open source becomes part of the answer instead of part of the problem. It turns it into an opportunity for growth. For those of you who stuck with us through the hard times in Fedora, we thank you. It was worth it and everyone who uses Linux, Fedora or not, will benefit.
It will take a while for the driver to turn from a framework into something useful. And it will take a while for all of the documentation to get published as well. (I hear the 2D docs will come first, followed after a period of time by the 3D docs.) So people will have to be patient. But they have made the commitment and decision to do the right thing. So, once again, thanks to the people inside of AMD who made this happen. We’re looking forward to working with you.
Update: Have a look at Dave Arlie’s post for some more specific information about how things have been moving to date.
Update: From Daniel Stone:
Matthew Tippett just threw a CD full of AMD/ATI specs to Dave Airlie, approved for public release with no NDA. I’m now holding one of those CDs as well. Thanks, AMD.
In the past five hours, we’ve pushed 72,000 PDFs, for a total of around 1TB. This … turns out to actually push the limits of our new fd.o setup.
Wow aren’t you self congratulatory! It’s great this is happening but it was only inevitable once DELL and other PC makers started getting serious about bundling linux. And it ain’t Fedora core they’re bundling, now is it?
It’s all true about needing better open source support and credit is due to many folks – including those “heretics” the FC community and others looked down upon… you know, the ones that actually led the way for all this by making a reasonably complete and easy to use distribution that could appeal to more than just geeks? Hmmm…
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This modt be the best thing ever happed to Linux!? Just think of having Compiz Fusion running out-of-the-box =)
Has anyone at Red Hat made a “Thanks AMD for opening the spces.” logo for people to puton their websites?
I would love to see that =)
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Specs will be under NDA, and the ‘skeleton driver’ will be GPL (not quite how the rest of X is licensed).
Henri Richard won 11-12 Stanley Cups in the 60′s and now
is bringing ATI to the 21st century and the open source communities.
Man, he truly is the greatest captain in sports history,
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“PC makers started getting serious about bundling linux. And it ain’t Fedora core they’re bundling, now is it?”
It is called Fedora and what they are bundling has long since included Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 or so years before Ubuntu was even born.
“you know, the ones that actually led the way for all this by making a reasonably complete and easy to use distribution that could appeal to more than just geeks? Hmmm…”
Like Red Hat?
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RedHatContributions
Let’s see what Ubuntu has contributed upstream? Shall we? Ubuntu is happy to include proprietary drivers. Fedora and Red Hat demands full open source ones. They should get your thanks. Not others.
I have an old Radeon 8500 and just this week was thinking of ‘upgrading’ to an nvidia because of ATI’s horrible driver track record. Although their newer stuff seems pretty descent it still was a major pain to get dual displays up and running on a Radeon 9800.
I will now put the upgrade on hold and wait for the drivers that result from this announcement. It sure is good to see this.
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Thanks! :D
Great! Next card I’ll buy will be a ati :)
but first I wait a while what is comming.
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Well, according to Phoronix, AMD already failed both parts of it’s commitment.
>> To develop of a fully functional 2D and 3D driver that supports all of their newer radeon chipsets. This will be done in full collaboration with the open source community and will have the direct participation of hackers from companies like Red Hat and Novell. > To release documentation that anyone can use to build and support drivers for their chips.
Well, according to Phoronix, AMD already failed both parts of it’s commitment.
# To develop of a fully functional 2D and 3D driver that supports all of their newer radeon chipsets. This will be done in full collaboration with the open source community and will have the direct participation of hackers from companies like Red Hat and Novell. #
Well, yeah, it’s probably going to be “fully functional” if by “fully functional” you mean supports most (but not all) of the features with subpar performance: “The aim of this open-source driver is not to overtake the fglrx driver but rather is designed for those who just want a working desktop with 3D capabilities and basic video playback. This new driver is ideal for FOSS enthusiasts and those wishing to run the latest development kernels and versions of X.Org. The fglrx driver will continue full steam ahead with their monthly releases and will be for those who want a stable driver with top-notch performance [...]”
# To release documentation that anyone can use to build and support drivers for their chips. #
No, actually the documentation will be released under an NDA. It will only be released to selected people and it’s possible AMD will ensure those people won’t make the driver fully functional and start competing with the fglrx driver.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826
Okay, maybe I should have said “try to ensure”.
This is really funny. Considering that AMD is on one of the M$ whitepapers for Windows Server.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare/CaseStudyDetails.mspx?recid=4
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Ya can’t stop the negativity, Christopher. It’s not because we don’t *WANT* to believe, its that we’re intelligent enough to understand “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Feel free to hum “Won’t be fooled again” all day. I know I will.
It would seem the facts are coming out, and the NDA doesn’t, so far, sound like what we were hoping for. You lost me at NDA for open source.
A changed company. Yeah right!
Or maybe I should have read Mr. Airlie’s blog first today.
http://airlied.livejournal.com/50187.html
so maybe there is reason for optimism!
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This announcement sounds great until you get used to learning “ATI speak.”
“Release to the open source community” = select two or three x.org developers to sign an NDA — ATI will refuse to honor any further queries since they declare only two or three developers is the “open source community” so since the community has it (under terms in which it can’t be distributed among the community) there is no need to release it to anyone else in the community
“that anyone can use to build drivers” = everyone will be allowed to run the results of the two or three ATI hand picked NDA’d developers. there will even be a README explaining how to run “make” — this should not be taken to mean that anyone will be able to get access to the specs
“to develop fully functional 2D and 3D driver” = the specs of what ATI considers needed to support OpenGL 1.5/DRI will be provided — the full specification will never be provided. You thought ATI’s announcement of a VHA Kit for Linux ment they would be committed to providing a iDCT (hardware accelerated MPEG decompression) for Linux? HAHA! SUCKER!
“followed after a period of time by the 3D docs” = the provision in ATI’s will is to provide the 3D specification so on ATI’s death it will be provided — lets just hope ATI get around to dieing before the x.org developers do
There is nothing in what ATI has said that indicates that they aren’t just following business as usual of letting select parts of specification trickle out to select developers. You should have to be an employee of RedHat or Novell to assist in a truely open source driver but that is all the specification will be made available too. Also, a “full functional” driver should be able to take advantage of *ALL* the features the card was marketed as providing. If a HD video card is supposed to assist in HD-DVD or BluRay playback then those specification should be included for development of the “fully functional” driver. ATI will never live up to providing what the name of “fully” implies. This is just dishing more lies to the community to further sales of overpriced hardware that when used with open drivers is less useful that much cheaper video cards.
AMD could open source anything, if that code needs some additional CTM (close to metal) support and the CTM compiler doesn’t get released as well then still no one can use that open source code as you don’t have the compiler. Email i got back trying to obtain that compiler was: “stay tuned”.
When i googled i saw some others got that reply a year ago too.
Only about 2 out of 40 phone calls i managed to get someone on the line to talk to, but still no answer by email. Not a ‘no, over our dead body you get CTM’ nor a ‘yes, somewhere in the year 2100 you get CTM’. Just that ‘stay tuned’ from a while ago.
AMD/ATI really sucks here as it’s not obvious to the average people that they keep behind all that necessary stuff. I wasted 420 euro on that card, and still can’t use it for GPGPU as a result.
If you google, you will see ATI announced in 2004 already that they would release all kind of things they still today didn’t release.
So what’s the value of this press report now?
Vincent
All I can say is, “YEEEEEEEEESSSS!!!”
Since I currently own a Athlon X2 AM2 & 7900GT and am going to buy a Phenom X4 & HD2900XT, this is the best-timed news for me, personally. I see a trend starting — Commercial support for FOSS.
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Now Phoronix claims there won’t be any NDAs!
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA0Ng
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Wow!Glad to see AMD goes open. Current headache with drivers is not a good thing. I was almost ready to trash my X1300 card and by something else that works better under Linux (I do use Kubuntu 7.04).
First, its about bloody time that AMD\ATI are releasing some “specs”, and “Docs” to the community at large. Its important Microsoft accept the Linux, and BSD commune out there blah blah blah, but like so many “USERS” have said over many many yeras now, “when are the drivers’ coming” ?!
and btw, Henri Richard,”… is just a greedy lipstick-painting Rat, that left an Unsinkable ship…” :) seriously funny blogger @overclockers.com
anyway, I really wish Microsoft or Intel would have bought ATI -it would have looked better on ‘dem.
That way, those $6Billion AMD dollars(that were partly yours and mine) could have been used to build their 45nm CPU processing plant and we’d be playing with an 8-Core AMD Rocker baby!
those poor AMD stock holders must be goin’ crazy.
(… Nortel Network anyone ?)
Its heartfelt to know, on the other hand, now that Intel\nVidia are beating the crap out of AMD\ATI -they’re being “nicer” to us. -giime a break pleeez!! -Its about freakin’ time ! sheeez.?
I have always personally admired and more important used AMD CPU’s, but hate ATI’s (past CLOSED philosophy unless you’re just using Microsoft products,.. but hey, thats cool too because you’ve paid for it, ok)
Somebody here said “…Since I currently own a Athlon X2 AM2 & 7900GT…”
-that is a great combo dude, AMD/nVidia rock and mostly because of their openess in the past. ATI has been notorious for lack of support, and their CLOSED-door policy. -we ALL knew that.
They did make good cards now and then at one time or another (the Radeon 9800Pro comes to mind, and yes it rocked with the best during its hey-day -I loved it)- UNTIL I finally tried to switch to Linux, and BSD.
(These days, I just keep a copy of Windows around for those really good Fun PC\Windows Games that you just can’t put down)
ok, back to FreeBSD, and Linux (I luv ‘em both) maybe nVidia provided those drivers outta compassion more than need, sure, but they still did it.
Don’t even mention ATI (in regards to its paper-tiger lying policies, and its non-cooperation) when it comes to Linux or FreeBSD -cause those poor programming developers know all about it, and their OpenSores.
Needless, they(ATI) were losing ground to nVidia and they(ATI) knew it.
Would nVidia need Intel to buy them? -Intel could only wish…. ha ha.
AMD will have to torture it outta those ATI commies, and I hope they do, and I hope AMD can rejoin the fight for Unix drivers for ALL PC’s again.
But, until they do, sorry paper-tigers’ are not allowed in the “performance” world, and until AMD/ATI GPU drivers are “better” than nVidias’ I’ll never invest into, or buy ATI-anything again.-with their attitude.
And really, why the _______ should anyone.!
Sure, I hate the “monopoly” of Intel over-priced CPUs’, and even worse their crappy 2-D integrated MB junk, and wow -not even a DIVX port yet! but unfortuantely I didn’t ask for this choice.
Sooo, its Intel and my “nVidia 8800GTX”(trust me, this GPU was the reason ATI is gone anyway) for this Dogs’ breakfast for now…?
cheers.
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Join us now and share the software,
You will see,
ATI you will seeee,
a’ bunch of geeckers investing piles of money,
that is true ATI that is truuuth !!!
GH:
If I see good progress in this my next desktop will be AMD/ATI
just like my HP notebook!! Way to go, Intel outside !!
ATI MOBILITY RADEON AGP (0x4C59) I ned a driver for this chip set…. pls…..22222xxxx
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