AMD releases R500/R600 Documentation to X.org devs

[aidanjt]

It seems AMD's recent efforts to push ATi graphics onto the Open Source arena is very much sincere this time around, main article at Phoronix. The documentation is freely downloadable from X.orgs servers for anyone to read and chip in code. Of course it will take some time for usable R500/R600 opensource drivers to show up, perhaps as long as a year, but it was a bold move for AMD, who will no doubt help with the development of the X.org effort.

This is great news, Linux users who have owned ATi cards have suffered for years with lack of opensource drivers, and very bad propriatory drivers. Along with a new rewrite of the closed source drivers around the corner, things could be looking up.

[alsenior]

hands up who downloaded even thought they have no idea what any of it means

[mike_w]

This is some of the best news I've heard in a while - I expected the improvements in the closed source drivers, but not a release of the documentation, especially with no NDA.

[aidanjt]

hands up who downloaded even thought they have no idea what any of it means

I downloaded them even though I probably wouldn't use them, but the documents detail the all registers in two of their chips, and there's more to come.

[ikonia]

lets review this thread in 6 months time........and then see whats going on

[benwoodcock]

good idea, or just make a new one and dont get blasted for reviving this[]

plzd, r open source drivers better than DAMMIT ones?

[ikonia]

DAMMIT ones ?

[benwoodcock]

Amd/ati!

[ikonia]

I've mentioned this before in your other threads, but could you please speak in English, no text speak or shortened words, it makes your posts really hard to read and understand.

[aidanjt]

One of the nicer effects of this is, with all the noise that this has generated, we can expect more companies to slowly change their ways, and see that it can be in their own best interests to help opensource developers, write, and maintain working drivers for their products. And it completely discredits any future claims of IP protection (it was never a valid claim to begin with, but it was still an excuse long slugged around). In reality, hardware register access doesn't explain how hardware impliments a function or subsystem, hardware IP was always safe.

Also of note, the 2 documents help with the 2D aspects of the cards, more will follow suit for the more advanced parts of the hardware, such as 3D and video acceleration (after drawn out discussions with their lawyers no doubt, about 3rd party IP and what not), but the current documents have already helped the Gatos project get Video input/output working with r300 cards. I believe the driver is already in X.org's GIT repo.

Anyway, we'll see how things progress. We should see more news being generated throughout the month.