Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: More ATi driver madness

["Hemmann, Volker Armin" <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de>]

On Sunday 13 August 2006 11:49, Duncan wrote:
> "Hemmann, Volker Armin" <volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de> posted
> 200608130038.56469.volker.armin.hemmann@tu-clausthal.de, excerpted below,
>
> on  Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:38:56 +0200:
> > On Sunday 13 August 2006 00:34, Antoine Martin wrote:
> >> I can't wait for ATI to open-source their crappy slaveryware drivers.
> >
> > you can wait for a long, long time. heise.de reported today, that ATI
> > will NOT opensource any drivers. They asked them and got a big fat NO as
> > an answer.
>
> Of course, it's all speculation at this point, but while they got no for
> an answer, some of the discussion I've seen has pointed out that's exactly
> what you'd expect folks from the ATI camp to say at this time -- before
> the deal is closed and in fact before the shareholders have even voted on
> it.  Not saying it will happen, not saying it won't, but simply that in
> such a situation, spokespeople tend to keep saying the same thing until
> they are told to say something different, because that's exactly what they
> are getting paid to do.  At this point, it's not unreasonable that the
> spokespeople simply don't know, in part because it's their job /not/ to
> know some things at this point.
>
> So I still have hope...
>
> Meanwhile, if AMD's intent is to be able to sell the whole solution, cpu
> and mobo chipset in some cases with integrated video, in ordered to better
> compete with Intel, they'll pretty much /have/ to open-spec it at least to
> a point, because Intel has.  To /not/ do so will leave them in a
> competitive hole, with at least one segment of their market, and an often
> early adopter one at that (Linux rolled out AMD64 support well before MS
> did, and for some time, Linux was the primary market for it, something AMD
> is well aware of, I'm sure).
>

AMD has no experience with the tangled mess, graphics IP is. So they might 
have some dreams, ATI knows that are not possible. The last time ATI openend 
up, they did not really opened the drivers, they paid a 3rd party, a 
corporation, to write open drivers, so ATI did not have to release the specs.


> Fortunately for me, I'm not planning on a hardware platform upgrade for at
> least a couple more years (I'm dual Opteron 242 w/ 8 gig memory currently,
> in a $400 Tyan dual-dual-core capable board I bought a couple years ago,
> and will be upgrading to dual-core Opteron 270 or 272s later this year
> after the upgrades drop the prices on socket 940s), and my Radeon 9200 AGP
> driving dual 21" monitors with xorg's native drivers seems to work
> relatively well, all things considered.

And the last ATI's don't even have 2d drivers, while David Airlie still waits 
for the 'ok' from ATI to release the ones he has written.

>
> By the time I'm looking for a platform upgrade in 2-4 years (I figure back
> to a single CPU again by then, but quad-core, maybe even octi-core),
> AMD/ATI should have open sourced if they are going to. If they haven't, I
> could well be buying Intel for the first time since my 486SX-25 w/ an
> incredible 4 MB of RAM!  

in 2-4 years, nouveau should have good working open drivers. Remember, they 
have the old open source 3d enabled driver source from nvidia from the 
Xfree86 3.X days. Before Nvidia was forced by unknon forces (some say MS and 
Intel) to close the drivers.

> However, given all I've read about AMD's goals 
> and reasons for doing this merger, I still consider this the best chance
> we've yet seen for AMD/ATI to release at least enough specs to allow
> reasonable 3D, even if it they do reserve some of the best stuff as
> closed, so I really do expect I'll still have a choice, and it won't be
> Baked Intel or Fried Intel or Intel on bread or ... (xref Monty Python,
> SPAM).

ATI does not even release 2d drivers at the moment ....
>
> Of course, by then, we should have a bit better data on whether the OGP
> (Open Graphics Project, google or wikipedia it if necessary) FPGA board
> got enough buyers to allow them to launch the regular chip version, and
> have at least some fix on how far off that might be if it did.  Depending
> on how the timing all works out, it's just possible I'll be buying the
> mobo/cpu platform with an OGP card in mind.  OTOH, if AMD opens their
> video specs/drivers as Intel has, it's just possible it could roll NVidia
> as well, and the OGP may end up not having a market, as everything else is
> open speced at least to /some/ degree anyway.

2d is open - from nvidia... and you don't need more, if you just have some 
servers running or only need basic desktop. ATI does not even has that. And 
Intel.. I just don't trust them. It would be typical for them to open their 
drivers and forbid the others to do the same, just to get some advantage in 
the market place. About the ogp - as long as there is no hardware, I don't 
even consider them. Even in very future plannings.
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