AMD Releases 3D Programming Documentation

Michael Larabel writes "With the Free Open Source Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) starting today, where John Bridgman of AMD will be addressing the X.Org developers, AMD has this morning released their 3D programming documentation. This information covers not only the recent R500 series, but goes back in detail to the R300/400 series. This is another one of AMD's open source documentation offerings, which they had started doing at the X Developer Summit 2007 with releasing 900 pages of basic documentation. Phoronix has a detailed analysis of what is being offered with today's information as well as information on sample code being released soon. This information will allow open source 3D/OpenGL work to get underway with ATI's newer graphics cards."

One Moment While I Go Dance in the Streets

[darkonc]

This is the end of the beginning.

Now that AMD/ATI has come over from the Dark Side, I expect that Nvidia and all of the other graphics chip manufacturers are going to be close behind. It may take them a year or two to work out the logistics, but they'll be here.

More and more people are moving over to Linux/BSD Free/Open software, and letting yourself be locked out of a growing market is the kind of things that CEOs and CTO's get fired for.

It used to be the case that manufacturers could peacefully close their eyes to the Open Source / Free communities and drink the Microsoft brand Kool-Aid because all of their competitors were doing the same thing. Now, however, with one of The big guns having committed to solid support of the Open Source universe, their less responsive competitors have a massive flank open that is going to have to be responded to.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered an Nvidia card yesterday.

One Moment While I Go blow hot air.

[Anonymous Coward]

"More and more people are moving over to Linux/BSD Free/Open software, and letting yourself be locked out of a growing market is the kind of things that CEOs and CTO's get fired for."

Uh huh. And just how many CEO's and CTO's have been fired for using ATI or Nvidia's binary blob? I suspect the number's between zero and your imagination.

"This is the end of the beginning. "

The total number of hardware and still growing that's released with a binary blob is still greater than the total number that have open source drivers.