AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs 325
An anonymous reader writes "Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off ATI's GPU specifications to David Airlie on a CD. However, the specifications are also now available on the X.org site. Right now there is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next week."
Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hopefully a meaningful contribution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It seems to me... (Score:1, Informative)
Sure, the geek cred is a nice by-product of the choice they made. But that was inevitable, since they were geeks making geeky choices about technology (rather than marketing choices).
Re:Hopefully a meaningful contribution (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm, I now also see the ATI FireGL V7600 runs the RV630 too. Maybe that could work out for something too...
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's It's, not Its (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll replace my nVidia when I see a good review (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hopefully a meaningful contribution (Score:3, Informative)
In the past the hardware did not change much between releases (which is why one can have unified drivers). In particular, having documentation for one card goes a very long way to figuring out how to use a similar, slightly modified card. What happened after R300 is that ATI ripped out their 2d engine which made it impossible to figure out how to set modes on the new cards. Thus, we did not even have a 2d X-server, let alone 3d. With this documentation one can have a driver that allows distributions to boot directly to the largest supported mode - and then download binary driver if they feel like it.
Secondly, these documents are now public as opposed to limited to ATI-approved select developers. This makes a huge difference as more people would be able to contribute. Before, with experimental drivers, the outside developers could only provide feedback and getting them approved was not a speedy process. With docs available, not only the driver quality will go up but also one can hope for new and creative use of the chips. I really can't stress enough importance of having public documentation.
- Eagerly waiting for the 3d part - which is also needed for old-fashioned 2d graphics..
Re:My next cards will be ATI (Score:3, Informative)
As I understand it, the X.org DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) project are doing just that. In fact, they have been doing just that for ATI cards (among others) for some time, but progress has been slow, because they've needed to reverse-engineer everything (they previously could get specs with an NDA, but not since the 9200 cards). As a result, the DRI Radeon drivers currently only work with older cards (up through X850, IIRC), and provide little or no 3D acceleration for all but the oldest cards. Even so, the general consensus has been that their drivers are superior to the proprietary, FireGL drivers that ATI provide for Linux (and they work on *BSD, which the FireGL drivers do not[1]). With this information, they should be able to make steady progress on providing support for recent ATI cards under X.
[1] Not natively, at least. Last winter, I believe, they were finally made to work under FreeBSD with Linux binary compatibility.Re:It seems to me... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Its (Score:3, Informative)
Um, the summary says "expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly".
Re:You may be right ... (Score:3, Informative)
The world does not revolve around 3D. Matrox produce fine gear for high-quality 2D work, like medical imaging.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
Read David's blog - http://airlied.livejournal.com/ [livejournal.com] - there are a whole pile of potential problems about that driver. David accepts that it was on questionable ground, and so it will probably never see the light of day.