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#61
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
On a sunny day (31 Jul 2006 10:49:50 -0700) it happened "Yousuf Khan"
wrote in .com: Jan Panteltje wrote: Hi, I think this is a difficult issue, as releasing source can give the competition clear hints _how_ the hardware works. I have followed some of the discussion about GPL 3, Linux, DRM, and the open source-ing of drivers in the Linux kernel. I think that it should not be mandatory. It would just scare hardware manufacturers away from Linux. Could be wrong on that, but why should they give away a possible lead they have in hardware design? How could telling which registers on the GPU do what function, possibly help the competition? That's like saying that AMD shouldn't reveal the function of the 64-bit RAX to R15 registers to Intel because it could give away internal secrets of their processors. Well, it could, of course if competition _wanted_ to, they could disassemble code.... But there may indeed be tricks, special instructions, what is done in soft- and what is done in hardware... special registers, protocols, instructions. I have done some hardware design, I sure know you can learn about the hardware from the software. I think the reason they don't want to open-source the drivers is because they don't want to reveal their dirty little secrets like doing deliberate things to prevent their hardware from cooperating with a rival's hardware. I'll cite the Creative Labs vs. VIA incident from a few years ago. Or perhaps they don't want to reveal the special benchmark optimizations they've done to get better framerates on a specific game (pretty much every driver that Nvidia or ATI release is like that). Actually I think opening up the source would be good for the GPU industry, it might lead to some hardware level compatibility, which would obviate the need for things like Microsoft DirectX. Yousuf Khan |
#62
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
Yousuf Khan wrote: David Kanter wrote: Yup, I'm absolutely certain that AMD will bring a level of professionalism to ATI's corporate culture. It's helped by the fact that in this acquisition there is a clear boss here -- AMD. There's no pretension that this is a merger of equals, this is an outright acquisition. If any sort of changes are required, then one guy will have the final say. If AMD had gone with Nvidia, then the lines of command would've been a bit blurred. I certainly hope so. I was on a CC with some folks regarding the merger and one of my questions was: "Does this mean I can look forward to ATI drivers for linux that don't suck ass?" The response: "You know, that's the first time anyone asked us about that." I think it is one of those issues that may not be readily apparent to an exec, but that they will get around to fixing. First order of business for AMD should be to open-source the ATI drivers. That's not ever going to happen. As someone else pointed out, the device driver contains a lot of information about what the hardware is doing. For instance, if ATI or NV were to have any code paths that recognize certain prominent benchmarks and then alter their behavior, all that would be exposed to the public. Similarly, if ATI or NV had any algorithms that reduced image quality (when it wouldn't be noticeable) to improve performance, they'd get jumped on for that (unjustly so). It's also quite likely that the driver contains a lot of code which cannot be GPLed. The Havok physics engine probably requires some code in the driver, and that's definitely not GPL. etc. etc. I think what AMD will do is improve the quality of Linux support substantially, but fall short of fully opening the driver. I could see opening up a few very noncritical areas of the driver, but not anything substantial. Of course, maybe we'll all get a pleasant surprise. Establish good relations with the Linux community right off the bat. BTW, what CC was it, that you were you on? It was a call between myself and two guys from AMD (one was Hal Speed, who is a strategic marketing guy and worked closely on the merger)...it wasn't a recorded one open to the public, but I doubt it would have been very interesting to the public at large. Also having open-source drivers for ATI cards will allow media centre functions to work through Linux just as well as it works through Microsoft. Perhaps a version of AMD Live, that makes use of Linux as the OS rather than Windows, making Live a truly OS-agnostic media centre strategy. I don't think even Intel can claim that. I don't think you really need to have open drivers for that to work. That's actually a really good question, will AMD Live work on linux...I think most PMs or marketing guys would say it's not worth the effort, but that would be interesting. DK |
#63
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (31 Jul 2006 10:49:50 -0700) it happened "Yousuf Khan" wrote in .com: Jan Panteltje wrote: Hi, I think this is a difficult issue, as releasing source can give the competition clear hints _how_ the hardware works. I have followed some of the discussion about GPL 3, Linux, DRM, and the open source-ing of drivers in the Linux kernel. I think that it should not be mandatory. It would just scare hardware manufacturers away from Linux. Could be wrong on that, but why should they give away a possible lead they have in hardware design? How could telling which registers on the GPU do what function, possibly help the competition? That's like saying that AMD shouldn't reveal the function of the 64-bit RAX to R15 registers to Intel because it could give away internal secrets of their processors. Well, it could, of course if competition _wanted_ to, they could disassemble code.... But there may indeed be tricks, special instructions, what is done in soft- and what is done in hardware... special registers, protocols, instructions. I have done some hardware design, I sure know you can learn about the hardware from the software. In the example I mentioned, the magazine noticed that Quake? looked rather ugly with an ATI video card. They renamed it ~Quack.exe and the detail and image quality went up while the frame rate went down. The implication was of course, ATI was blatently cheating. Old saying ~never underestimate the power of a rigged demo to impress. It is my understanding that ATI drivers have a serious amount of assembly code in them if not all. I believe this is another problem with the GPL license. Specifically code should be portable. I don't think it would be that hard to implement the changes. Managment can just have the first round of drivers in C and release that via the GPL. They could hand optimize the code with assembly later to do any dirty little tricks they want, but at least the vanilla C code could be Q.C.'d, debugged, and ready for the Unix clones. |
#64
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:17:00 -0400, Yousuf Khan
wrote: First order of business for AMD should be to open-source the ATI drivers. Sweet dreams - nobody in their right mind will begin the acquisition from giving away IP. Besides, Linux market share of desktop/laptop/workstation is negligible, and if there is any money to be made off GPU and/or integrated graphics, it's in Windows. Servers - that's where Linux share matters - are a different kettle of fish, this market couldn't care less about graphics performance. NNN |
#65
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
Rick Cortese wrote:
In the example I mentioned, the magazine noticed that Quake? looked rather ugly with an ATI video card. They renamed it ~Quack.exe and the detail and image quality went up while the frame rate went down. The implication was of course, ATI was blatently cheating. Old saying ~never underestimate the power of a rigged demo to impress. Well then the solution might be that they should open-source only their linux drivers, make them clean and free of all demo rigging functions. I'm sure that's already done inside the current ATI Linux drivers, since there's no need to compete in Quake framerate competitions in that platform. They open-source the Linux drivers and put it out into the public and like most open-source projects, the public starts improving them itself. It is my understanding that ATI drivers have a serious amount of assembly code in them if not all. I believe this is another problem with the GPL license. Specifically code should be portable. I haven't heard anything about portability being necessary in GNU projects, all that matters is that the source code be made available to the public. Otherwise, why would they put GaS (GNU Assembler) into the GCC suite? Reading x86 assembler code could be more than enough to bring out a driver for Linux on another platform. Somebody must be smart enough to translate assembler from one platform to another. I don't think it would be that hard to implement the changes. Managment can just have the first round of drivers in C and release that via the GPL. They could hand optimize the code with assembly later to do any dirty little tricks they want, but at least the vanilla C code could be Q.C.'d, debugged, and ready for the Unix clones. Yup. Yousuf Khan |
#66
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
Yousuf Khan wrote: Rick Cortese wrote: In the example I mentioned, the magazine noticed that Quake? looked rather ugly with an ATI video card. They renamed it ~Quack.exe and the detail and image quality went up while the frame rate went down. The implication was of course, ATI was blatently cheating. Old saying ~never underestimate the power of a rigged demo to impress. Well then the solution might be that they should open-source only their linux drivers, make them clean and free of all demo rigging functions. I'm sure that's already done inside the current ATI Linux drivers, since there's no need to compete in Quake framerate competitions in that platform. As I mentioned before, there is probably a rather substantial amount of code inside GPU drivers (especially for workstations) that cannot be GPLed, because someone outside of ATI owns it. For example, most workstation drivers have a lot of application specific optimizations and settings that have been heavily tested. Some of those tweaks are no doubt owned by the application vendor, which may not want to GPL their code. You didn't respond to my post discussing the issue of code that cannot be GPLed...which incidentally, is one of the major reasons why Solaris is under its own license (some of the elements in solaris aren't owned by Sun). Also, you have done nothing to address the problem that GPU drivers almost certainly contain code that would give a lot of internal details about the device itself, and would aid a competitor in analyzing it. They open-source the Linux drivers and put it out into the public and like most open-source projects, the public starts improving them itself. How does this help ATI sell more cards? What is the ROI for this? I don't think there is much they could gain by open sourcing drivers that they couldn't otherwise...say by having good linux drivers in the first place. It is my understanding that ATI drivers have a serious amount of assembly code in them if not all. I believe this is another problem with the GPL license. Specifically code should be portable. I haven't heard anything about portability being necessary in GNU projects, all that matters is that the source code be made available to the public. Otherwise, why would they put GaS (GNU Assembler) into the GCC suite? Reading x86 assembler code could be more than enough to bring out a driver for Linux on another platform. Somebody must be smart enough to translate assembler from one platform to another. I don't think portability is a requirement...I mean there are open source drivers, and most drivers are sure as hell not portable. DK |
#67
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AMD should open-source the ATI drivers
David Kanter wrote:
As I mentioned before, there is probably a rather substantial amount of code inside GPU drivers (especially for workstations) that cannot be GPLed, because someone outside of ATI owns it. For example, most workstation drivers have a lot of application specific optimizations and settings that have been heavily tested. Some of those tweaks are no doubt owned by the application vendor, which may not want to GPL their code. That's a separate codebase for those drivers. You don't want to release such specialized drivers to the public anyways. Just GPL the generic drivers. Also, you have done nothing to address the problem that GPU drivers almost certainly contain code that would give a lot of internal details about the device itself, and would aid a competitor in analyzing it. I think this is the least important of all of the concerns. The graphics card makers aren't the only ones that have balked at releasing open-source drivers because of this concern. I've seen everyone from makers of SCSI cards to ethernet cards, all doing this. It's the sign of an immature company, with an immature corporate culture. You can't learn anything about laying down the internal chip circuits simply from their software interfaces. The only thing they're worried about is that a competitor is going to create a card that is completely software compatible with their own cards. For example, if Nvidia or Matrox sees the source code of ATI drivers and creates a card that can use the ATI drivers, thus saving them the time and expense of creating their own drivers, or vice-versa. Actually I think this might actually be a good idea for the GPU industry, if the GPU makers did start copying each other in there software interfaces. It would lead to a unified software model for GPUs, much like there is a unified software model between AMD and Intel in CPUs. In the case of CPUs, just knowing the software interfaces (aka the instruction set) has not resulted in internal secrets being revealed. They should go towards the same model in GPUs. They open-source the Linux drivers and put it out into the public and like most open-source projects, the public starts improving them itself. How does this help ATI sell more cards? What is the ROI for this? I don't think there is much they could gain by open sourcing drivers that they couldn't otherwise...say by having good linux drivers in the first place. Well, right off the bat, they will save on Linux support costs by open-sourcing the drivers. Second their drivers will be included in all Linux distros right away by default, thus no need to maintain codebases for SuSE vs. Red Hat vs. whatever. When the drivers are included by default in each distro, the maintainers of the distro do the testing and support. Yousuf Khan |
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