AMD To Open ATI Specs

Several readers tipped us the followup of yesterday's AMD/ATI news, the new development hinted at by Phoronix: AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver. An anonymous reader opines: "AMD appears to be following in Intel's footsteps with upcoming releases. If AMD is successful NVidia will have real competition in the GNU/Linux gaming arena. While past support by ATI was unsatisfactory the new AMD buyout appears to be having some effect."

What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[nweaver]

Lets see, ~2% of the users run linux. What fraction of those are actually gamers?

Seems like a move more for the high-end workstation market.

well let's start then

[howlingmadhowie]

okey-dokey. time to put our money where our mouth has been the whole time. let's get coding :)

(do i want to know what sort of NDA the specs are going to be under?)

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[BlowHole666]

I am a gamer and the only reason I run windows now days is because most of the games use DirectX. Perhaps with driver support from ATI and Nvidia more people will start writing in openGL because they will realize there is a market for gamers on Mac, Linux, and Windows. Just because people use Linux does not mean they do not play video games. Thats why we all have windows boxes so we can play the games (or run wine).

Good for them

[salimma]

They are going one step further than nVidia (good binary drivers, documentation lacking). This looks like it is aimed more at redressing AMD/ATi's current shortcomings vis-a-vis Intel: with a 3D-accelerated open-source graphics driver, the only thing missing from an AMD-on-laptop equation is reliably-open Wi-Fi.

And no, Atheros does not count. I refer to the pre-n fiasco, which took months before the only open-soure developer with NDA access was able to come up with specifications. Perhaps AMD should come up with a wireless NIC next?

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[protomala]

I was going to ask the same thing, what gaming?? More than open-source drivers, we need a good replacement for DirectX.

Re:Linux gaming arena?

[A beautiful mind]

You can joke all you want, but based on my own sample of Linux gaming, it is actually doing quite well.

For example in the case of Eve Online with a few hundred thousand subscribers, an officially supported Cider (Transgaming) client is in works and under beta testing. That is from an all out Microsoft shop.

The fact is, companies are reacting to demand. There are a lot of people who would ditch Windows in a heartbeat if only for windows-only games.

Why show good will now?

[bo0ork]

Could this be becuase ATI might be falling behind nVIDIA technologically, rather than the AMD purchase of ATI? They might feel they don't have so much IP to protect any more. Just guessing.

lets get ALL the info...

[scharkalvin]

I hope they release info on the video capture and TV out features of all of the ATI chipsets. It would be great to be able to support all of the features in the "all in one" chipsets. Especially the new HDTV tuner / capture cards.

Can't wait!

[Orange Crush]

If quality Linux drivers actually materialize and they have a fully open spec, I'll jump ship from nVidia in a heartbeat. An open spec will help a lot with gpgpu projects. I'd love to be able to take full advantage of my otherwise idle GPU while say . . . transcoding video . . .

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[Constantine XVI]

In other words, someone needs to make a convincing (read: easier than DX) interface to OpenGL+SDL, and put it under a commercial-friendly license, and convince people to use it to build X-platform games. Both OpenGL and SDL are very X-platform (outside of OGL, SDL actually uses DX on Windows, Quartz on Mac, and straight Xlib on *nix)

oh yes!

[phrostie]

very sweet!

i know it won't happen over night, but it will still be nice to apt-get my ATI updates.

More than just Gaming

[downix]

I read this, then the comments, and realized that a lot of people see vid cards as just gaming accessories. This couldn't be further from the truth. Look at industrial graphics and video workstations! nVidia is dominating there, and AMD is hungry for a piece of that pie. Open up docs, get the geek that the office keeps in the closet to get excited, he sends the list of the part upgrade to the boss for the graphics workstations, bada-boom AMD market share of ATI video cards grow.

The help for gaming is just incidental, AMD is keeping its eyes on the real prize, the industrial market.

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[AvitarX]

If they convince people to submit code BSD style, than they can even possibly end up with better windows/BSD/Solaris drivers too.

h264 acceleration then?

[Manic Miner]

You can currently only use ATI and NVidia drivers on windows to off-load decoding of h264 video, this makes playback under linux of HD DVB streams almost impossible (you get frames dropped even with top of the line CPU's).

Hopefully this will mean we can get XVmC support for ATI cards to do h264 decoding, this would be awsome, and a big boost to the media centre community. I look forward to seeing the developments, maybe soon I can put an ATI card in my Freevo Media Centre and actually be able to view HD content - woot!

Re:Curious.

[Reapman]

Um... ever hear of a game called World of Warcraft? or how about a game called Doom or Quake? Transgaming, the makers of Cedega / Wine, have had deals with EA (you may have heard of them before) in the past, for their Mac software sure, but to say that Linux is still completely off the map is a bit short sighted. I still prefer Windows for gaming, sure, but Linux gaming has come a LOOOOOONG ways from even a few years ago.

Now if someone would find a way to get FFXI running under Linux, me and the other 3 people on the planet that care about that would be quite happy. :P

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[anagama]

At the moment, if you're not doing gaming, the best video card on Linux is actually an Intel one.

Ain't that the truth. My macbook running fusion wipes the floor with an ATI based system that by all accounts ought to be able kick the macbook to the moon. The ATI output is glitchy and choppy while the Intel chipset w/ its under-awesome shared memory set up totally rocks.

The only reason I have that ATI card is because I needed a low profile card quickly and it was my only option locally. I avoid ATI like botulism if I can. But if AMD really follows through with this, I'd become an ATI fanboi.

Re:At last

[MrNemesis]

If, at the end of the day, nVidia up the ante even more, then it's all good for us Linux users.

I've been crying out for HD XvMC acceleration for my Intel and nVidia cards for at least a year now, be interesting to see if ATI manage to beat them to the punch...

This really changes things

[crush]

Hmmm. This is awesome news. The last 40 or so systems we purchased were all Intel based purely because of the fact that they were so much less trouble due to being supported with Free drivers. This changes the equation though. It sounds from the announcement that we'll be getting better quality drivers because AMD/ATI will be releasing the full specs and not merely documenting through the use of code (which is cool and still makes Intel supportable).

Some things I still wonder about are whether or not the comparably priced AMD/ATI systems will have good Free drivers for other integral components such as wireless (which Intel have also got a lead with due to their IPW3945ABG). Intel have also got some very important work underway with PowerTOP [linuxpowertop.org]. The upcoming Fedora 8 will be benefiting from the results of extensive testing with PowerTOP (which is written by ex-Red Hatter, now Intel employee, Arjan van de Ven). This allows monitoring of the major drains of power in laptops and can also be a major factor in server rooms.

I'm delighted by this whole move and it means that I can now make recommendations which include ATI cards as part of the specifications to purchasing. In terms of whether the AMD/ATI platform as whole will be a competitor that depends on whether the AMD motherboard chipsets will also be as open, Free and supportable. Intel have an incredible headstart [intel.com] in this area and possibly this will prevent them from moving into the stand-alone 3D card market (which is what I thought was going to inevitably happen). It looked as though AMD/ATI were headed for extinction, but I guess the reality of sales started to catch up with them.

All in all good news that opens up some more options for us. Perhaps we'll be seeing some interesting Dell machines soon!

SVGATextMode enhancement

[Skapare]

I have a different interest in this. With documentation, even SVGATextMode [freshmeat.net] can be enhanced to run at higher geometries, and adjust modelines to better fit various displays ... on the new ATI hardware. But someone will have to hack it, given the many years that SVGATextMode has been stagnant, and that may end up being me.

Re:Linux gaming arena?

[Chris Burke]

I don't (or at least am not going to look for one), but I play WoW on Linux using Transgaming's Cedega and since every time a WoW patch comes out there's a good chance something will break, I've been following the forums. There were a number of people who were having problems with the anti-cheating client, and Transgaming told Blizzard about the problem and the resolution was that Blizzard changed their client. This has also gone the other way, with Blizzard helping Transgaming figure out why Cedega wasn't working with WoW anymore so they could fix Cedega.

Blizzard still isn't exactly pro-Linux, but they certainly aren't anti-Linux and even for someone who is Linux neutral this was more than they were required to do.

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[Shawn is an Asshole]

At the moment, if you're not doing gaming, the best video card on Linux is actually an Intel one.

For now, my personal favorite card is the Radeon 9200. It's not the fastest, but it does have excellent fully open source 3d drivers. It handles Beryl with the eyecandy maxed out with no problem, and I can play GTA:3/GTA:VC (wine), Doom Legacy (native), and America's Army (native) with no problems.

I've used several Intel ones (82845G, on Dell Optiplex's and HPs) and can't stand them. Beryl hardly runs on it, and it can't even handle GLMatrix as a screen saver. Does anyone know if the "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100" is decent? That's the main reason I'm holding off on getting a Dell laptop with Ubuntu. I need my Beryl/Compiz...

Damn I'd love to be able to buy a laptop with a Radeon 9200 and a Core 2 Duo...

Whaddaya mean "let's start"?

[WebCowboy]

Work has been underway for quite a long time. R200 specs were released quite awhile ago and R200-based cards are somewhat workable with #D-accelerated desktops. R300 specs until now were not released and a substantial effort was underway to reverse-engineer the platform. The same goes with NVidia--the Nouveau project has been very active in the past year adding Free 3-d acceleration support to their drivers and has collected a lot of data for reverse engineering purposes.

The money's ALWAYS been where our mouths are, it's just that reverse-engineering these cards is a pretty monumental task (many orders of magnitude more work involved than what was involved in reverse-engineering the entire IBM PC platform in the 1980s). For reasons completely unrelated to technical issues or even market demand, we end up having to settle for using previous-generation hardware on Linux systems because of the time it takes to wade through "trade secrets".

This news from ATI is great news for the entire community. Perhaps with NVidia being the last holdout of the big graphics hardware players they'll finally succumb to "peer pressure" and drop their unreasonable stance regarding the release of specs. I've seen the remarkable progress made by the Nouveau team despite NVidia's stonewalling. With ATI actually showing signs of cooperation I think Free ATI driver development will advance extremely quickly. Furthermore, this may have implications beyond the Linux community--in everything from embedded uses to the Windows community. If the interface spec for ATI hardware is public it means that the quality of open AND closed drivers for all platforms has the opportunity to improve, as those outside ATI will be able to give more constructive input on found bugs.

Hopefully this is an early sign of an overall trend towards opening hardware. I've been worrying lately that as open software gains traction that big companies will try to cling to their old business models by making hardware more closed.

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[Ash Vince]

First point is actually to whatever moron modded this as a Troll. Why?
Just because he asked a valid question that you do not want to answer does not make it a troll. If you can post something then piss off somewhere else which doesnt have a comments area, it just lets you rate news on how interesting it is to your narrow point of view.

My second point was to say that I will be very happy if ATI actually follow through with this. I used to buy ATI cards as they are usually slightly cheaper than NVidia's similar offerings. Then I got annoyed with the state of ATI support under linux and started looking at the NV cards.

When I discovered they tried to keep as much of the code in the driver constant between Linux and Windows I switched as this made sense and meant you got similar performance under both OS's. If a decent open source driver appears for ATI (As I am sure it will) then my next purchase will be a top of the range £300+ ATI card.

Re:GNU/Linux and Mac OS X gaming using xawtv

[geekboy642]

Well, first of all nobody makes multi-player/single-monitor PC games, because a PC is so much more personal than a console and big-screen TV. But it's just code, right? You can plug multiple USB keyboards/mice into a PC, and the USB hardware reports events with a per-device ID, so if the HID driver's written right you could filter that to actually effect separate player UIs. From there it's as "simple" as writing the game to handle and display multiple separate POVs, and to route input properly.

Unfortunately, I know just enough about windows to know I don't have a clue how easy or difficult this would all actually be.

Perfect Storm Brewing?

[Xenographic]

Does anyone sense a "perfect storm" brewing? OOXML is delayed (but not quite derailed, yet) and many want to standardize on ODF. Vista adoption is crap--moving requires a rewrite of all your business apps, anyhow, and the hardware drivers aren't stable yet, so if you're going to transition to something else, now is the time. Ubuntu is proving itself usable by the computer illiterate. Now we have the potential for good graphics drivers, not to mention major retailers selling Linux machines. Microsoft is bogged down with anti-trust suits everywhere and they're chasing Google's advertising dollars now, because growth is nearly impossible for them to find.

Don't get me wrong: Microsoft won't just implode suddenly. But it's pretty amazing that their lock-ins are weaker now than they've ever been and that they're only getting weaker, not to mention that they're trying to compete on so many fronts at once while their two profitable divisions, Office & Windows, are suffering.

Anyone else suspect that we might possibly be seeing the start of the slow decline of Microsoft's empire?

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually nVidia (or however they capitalize it these days) has claimed that they will open their drivers, whenever ATI opens theirs.

Re:At last

[LWATCDR]

IF the drivers are any good then I think it will have a much bigger effect than you might imagine.
I always bought nVidia based video cards and nVidia based motherboards because I like AMD cpus and I wanted to run Linux as well as Windows.
Now I can go with AMD/ATI for motherboad, graphics, and CPU.
Not only that but I will have a selection of graphics solutions from low cost on board up to the high end.

The big key is that now the PC makers that want to sell Linux system will have totaly open solution from top to bottom from AMD.

The disto makers can offer drivers.

Now will AMD also open up all the motherboard drivers so we can have the same raid support as Windows?

Re:What GNU/Linux gaming area?

[brunascle]

$150 will get you an nvidia card that will handle any game on the market at top settings.

no it wont. i spent $400 on an 8800GTS a few months ago, it's closer to $360 now. there are quite a few games that i cant play at max settings without < 25fps at 1920x1200: stalker, dirt, quake 4 (IIRC) etc.

yes, $150 will get you a fine card. but the ridiculously priced cards do make the games look better. if you have the money to blow, why not?