AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs

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."

I'll replace my nVidia when I see a good review.

[khasim]

The only way to get nVidia to release their specs is to show them that there is a real market.

I'll do my part and replace my AGP nVidia card with an ATI one as soon as there is a good review of an available card with this driver on Ubuntu.

Great

[qbwiz]

They've actually done it. It's time to buy an ATI card.

Hmm...

[Rod Beauvex]

I wonder if this has more to do with trying to get mind and market share over intel than them really beleiving Open Source is the future of the market. maybe it's both.

Nice bit of good news anyway.

Re:It seems to me...

[NerveGas]

Linux kind of carried the Opteron for the first year or so, since it had 64-bit and NUMA support, while M$ obligingly waited to release any such thing until Intel had an offering as well. Maybe AMD learned something from that.

Re:Great

[StormReaver]

"They've actually done it. It's time to buy an ATI card."

I've been recommending nVidia cards to everyone who asks, simply because their Linux support has been leagues ahead of ATI (now AMD, for those who haven't been paying attention). If the specs are credible enough to create a quality Free driver, then I'll switch to AMD in a heart beat.

Re:I'll replace my nVidia when I see a good review

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you on crack? Did anyone say anything about government? Has government ever made a peep about video cards and closed or open drivers? Did you read the summary before you spouted off?

STFU, FOAD, and take your paranoid attitude with you.

Re:I'll replace my nVidia when I see a good review

[ryszards]

Actually there's a good number of modern AMD D3D10 products available on AGP now, and the older R5-series hardware had good AGP presence as well. Not the high-end R600 I should say, but RV630 and RV610 (HD 2600 and HD 2400) are both available. And the Windows Vista driver sucks, somewhat hilariously.

Re:Sweet!

[walt-sjc]

Considering the issues I've had with closed source drivers over the years, I just can't EVER agree with them being OK. Closed source drivers have had all sorts of issues with not only kernel changes, but distro versions, architecture (64bit), xfree86 vs x.org, have issues with redistribution rights, etc.

Furthermore, BSD / vs linux vs Solaris. No, IMHO closed source drivers just suck in all cases. We need the specs. Specs for all hardware would allow us to have working scanners, webcams, wifi adapters, etc. on Linux / BSD no matter which brand you buy, or which architecture you use.

Let's let Nvidia know that we will all be moving to AMD/ATI for all future purchases over this issue, unless they too release specs.

Well hold on there

[Sycraft-fu]

They've released the specs, this doesn't mean anything yet. People forget just how complex graphics cards are. Writing a driver for something like a network card or SCSI controller is fairly easy, and that's also evident from how small the drivers are. There's just little to do. 3D cards are extremely complex, hence the massive amount of documentation. It isn't like there was just some magic number that needed releasing and the OSS drivers would be perfect with full support. There's now a ton of work to be done, since it sounds like it is just specs, not code, they are releasing.

So you'll probably want to wait and watch until the driver is ready to go and up to whatever performance and stability standards you need for your application. Switch now and you are likely to find yourself in essentially the same situation as before: ATi's binary driver, or an OSS driver that doesn't do what you want.

It'll be some time before this information can be transformed in to a fully functional, stable, fast driver. After all, if it were so easy, ATi and nVidia would have perfect drivers out on the launch of a new card and never need to do anything but minor updates.

Re:You may be right ...

[Rolgar]

I would say the message would come across better if you send it to nVidia.

The big effect will be if every Linux OEM started shipping Radeon in every box, that could be a pretty big number of lost potential sales that they weren't considered for solely based on software.

This could really be huge in the progress towards making Linux mainstream. The last few times I've installed Linux, installing my 3D drive for nVidia has required a few steps most users wouldn't or couldn't do. Several distros won't automatically set this up during install because the drivers aren't open. As soon as we get these drivers, Linux setup and support should get that much easier, because the installer will pop up a dialog that says "RADION XXXX detected, install 3D acceleration? Y/N."

We're getting a few steps closer to the mainstreaming of Linux, which will snowball once games and other software starts to include Linux binaries/installers on the disks that you can buy retail.

Re:You may be right ...

[thephotoman]

Better idea: instead of popping up a dialog asking to install 3D acceleration, the installer just does it. After all, it'll be free software.

Re:Sweet!

[Just Some Guy]

OMG, you mean you can't run the same computer equipment for 20 years and expect it to before useful work in a modern fashion?

Your reading comprehension is worse than your grammar. By 20, you mean 5. It still "[something] useful work in a modern fashion", except that it's been artificially crippled by recent driver updates.

Probably just because they want money. Let's burn them.

Child, meet Market. Customers don't want to spend more money than they have to. Paradoxically, this often means they'll spend even more money with the companies that don't put the squeeze on them.

Re:Great

[Xtravar]

I've been recommending nVidia cards to everyone who asks, simply because their Linux support has been leagues ahead of ATI (now AMD, for those who haven't been paying attention).

True, true. My girlfriend got a laptop a couple weeks ago and one of the deciding factors was nVidia vs ATI. I haven't even considered an ATI card for myself and I recommend that others get nVidia.

It's about fucking time that companies realize the trickle-down effect of abusing nerds. Who do the ignorant masses go to when they need advice? Their nerdy friend...

ATI lost market share for almost the exact reason that IE did (albeit to less extent).

Re:You may be right ...

[ultranova]

Better idea: instead of popping up a dialog asking to install 3D acceleration, the installer just does it. After all, it'll be free software.

An even better idea: since a Free driver can be included in the kernel source and compiled into a module, the installer doesn't have to do anything special to enable 3D acceleration. It just installs all available kernel modules as normal and the kernel figures it out at bootup time and loads the ATI driver if appropriate.

Re:Great

[poopdeville]

Is it really though? That's not rhetorical. Without RTFAing, I want the slashdot opinion - is this or is this not the proof that ATI is the solution for linux graphics? I was almost certain that my next card would be an nvidia, but this may change that.

It will be, in a few weeks. Moreso in a few months as the drivers improve. Performance tuning is one of the open source methodology's strengths.

3 options.

[khasim]

#1. Send it to ATI and let them use it in their marketing campaign.

#2. Send it to nVidia to show the profit that is going to their competitor from a FORMER customer.

#3. Send it to BOTH.

Re:Sweet! Sour!!

[Just Some Guy]

And the newer drivers still support chips that predate your GF4.

For the record, Nvidia says otherwise [nvidia.com].

You all should be grateful instead of pissing in their Cheerios.

"Thank you, oh benevolent masters, for supplying the software required to use the hardware that you gave me in exchange for money." Was that suitably deferential, or should I bend my knee more?

Actually

[CrazedWalrus]

Heh - I think you're missing the implication of his statement.

Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.

If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem.

So it's not an issue of what's *wrong* with Linux, it's what's *right* with it. The problem is that this presents circumstances the hardware world isn't used to dealing with.

Re:It seems to me...

[AJWM]

I think AMD said almost as much when they announced that they'd be releasing specs and open drivers for these GPUs. The next step in processor development will be to combine the CPU and GPU on the same chip, and AMD wants to be sure that Linux and other OSS is there to support it.

High end is good but...

[ceeam]

... what about all those X1100 and similar in all these notebooks? And pardon my ignorance - are there already good, reliable, full-featured drivers for the likes of 9800 etc?

Re:Actually

[Kalriath]

If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem.

Bullshit. I haven't had to upgrade my PC through the last three releases and it works fine. Hell, I have Vista running on a laptop with only a 1.4GHz processor and it runs fine. That's with Aero enabled (my understanding is that this would be roughly equivalent to Ubuntu with Beryl and Compiz correct? and have I spelt that right?)

I think the main problem with Linux is that if a vendor releases a closed source driver (which some are obliged to do by legal agreements for other companies technologies) that the next minor Kernel release can break the driver. In the Windows world, it takes a major release to break drivers (i.e. Windows 4/Windows 98 to Windows 5/Windows 2000 or Windows 5.1/Windows XP to Windows 6/Windows Vista)

Re:Teaser indeed...

[fabs64]

Well, if I can't get specs, my next video card will be an nVidia. Why should I suffer because my HW vendor wants to hide something from me? Do they really believe that non-functional hardware gains them any marketshare?

Now how does this make a lick of sense? nVidia haven't released ANY specs.
Also, I'd imagine that 2d rendering is reasonably similar across chipsets, but I admit I'm just guessing there.

Re: closed nVidia support actually bad

[Psykechan]

The issue with a closed driver for the nVidia cards that actually performs somewhat well is actually a detriment for the community at large. It causes some people who would be interested in making a better open driver to just suck it up and use the existing closed driver because it's easier even though it has many problems.

I am very thankful that AMD has released specs. Until nVidia follows suit there should be no real reason to buy nVidia cards. This means that they will be forced to eventually release specs and those of us who had no support from nVidia will finally get a working driver.

As an nVidia customer, all I can say is Thank You AMD!

Re:I'll replace my nVidia when I see a good review

[microbee]

Well, there is a real market.

Since DELL has been shipping pre-installed Linux PCs, they will eventually favor ATI if it performs better than nVidia due to higher quality drivers.

Re:Great

[Dolda2000]

If the specs are credible enough to create a quality Free driver, then I'll switch to AMD in a heart beat.

Yes, me too. I was actually planning to do an upgrade of my box in a little while, for the first time in many years now, and I was sure that I was going to get an nVidia card, but this might turn that decision around completely.

However, I have to wonder -- I really have no idea about ATI GPU parts, but the impression I got is that they are releasing the specs for the new top-of-the-line units, and since I don't even play games, I'm not interested in such things. What I'm interested in is having dual-display, TV output, 2D acceleration and XV working on the budget cards (and without making VGA BIOS calls, thank you very much), but I have yet to hear whether these released specifications will cover enough to create a truly free, fully featured driver for the budget model GPUs.

Also, apart from budget models, how will these specifications apply to older cards? I still have a Radeon 7500 lying in a drawer doing nothing just because I never got the TV output working on it in Linux. As a side story on that one, I even engaged in communications with ATI to try and get some specifications on that card in order to enhance the X driver with TV output support, but even when I managed to get my hands on documentation, it conspicuously excluded any information on the registers controlling the TV output encoder (even though I had explicitly requested that information...). That's when I resigned myself and bought a GeForce 5200 instead.

Re:It seems to me...

[markov_chain]

reconsidering my ATI boycott.

See, the boycott worked!

Re:Actually

[mcrbids]

Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.

Hear here! I have an ANCIENT AMD K6-2/450 doing backups. It has 2.5 TB of hard disks in it, and its only purpose in life is to copy files over the network every day. It's 10 years old, and has been in continuous 24x7 duty all along. Rock stable, too - why change it when it works fine and performance isn't an issue?

I haven't had to upgrade my PC through the last three releases and it works fine. Hell, I have Vista running on a laptop with only a 1.4GHz processor and it runs fine.

You sir, are an amazingly patient person. I credit you for your lack of desire to do meaningful work. Wally would be proud! [dilbert.com]

But it can finally be done

[TeXMaster]

Of course it's going to take time, but the crucial point here is that it can be done with officially released specs, without having to waste time reverse engineering and wild-guessing how things should be done.

Consider this: I'm actually surprised how far nouveau development already went, without any specs and starting from the obfuscated nv driver. How much further could they be now if they had the specs and didn't have to waste uncountable hours tracing register changes and second-guessing their use?

Re:Well hold on there

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah, there might be bugs. Who cares. That is the reason why we have the code, so that I can look at the source and fix stuff I want to get working.

No they haven't

[Andy Dodd]

"Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly."

In short, we have 2D documentation but no 3D documentation. It's been this way for years, nothing is different.

The last time someone (Matrox) said "3D specifications to arrive shortly", a whole bunch of suckers (including myself) bought cards and got shafted because the promised specifications were never released. My G200 was replaced by a Riva TNT2 within six months and I haven't left NVidia since then.

Others promise open specifications and fail to release them fully, resulting in cards that are paperweights.

NVidia doesn't promise open specifications, but at least they deliver solid drivers that work (and work well).

Re:It seems to me...

[Jesus_666]

For the vast majority of XP users, 64 bit had pretty much zero benefit (and quite a few disadvantages) until maybe a year - 18 months tops - ago.

In fact, I know nobody who actually uses 64-bit Windows at home. Everyone has his AMD64-compatible setup, but even Vista goes purely in 32-bit mode because the 64-bit version has compatibility problems, stability or performance issues etc.

The only boxen I've seen actually make use of their 64-bit architecture were Linux boxen and Macs (kind of; pure 64-bit mode coming with Leopard). Windows users usually treat their AMD64 CPUs as really fast i686s.