AMD: It's Time To Open Up the GPU
I read at Slashdot two days ago :
AMD: It's Time To Open Up the GPU
AMD has called for the opening up of GPU technology to developers. Nicolas Thibieroz, a senior engineering manager for the company, announced today the launch of GPUOpen, its initiative to provide code and documentation to PC developers, embracing open source and collaborative development with the community. He says, "Console games often tap into low-level GPU features that may not be exposed on PC at the same level of functionality, causing different — and usually less efficient — code paths to be implemented on PC instead. Worse, proprietary libraries or tools chains with "black box" APIs prevent developers from accessing the code for maintenance, porting or optimizations purposes. Game development on PC needs to scale to multiple quality levels, including vastly different screen resolutions." And here's how AMD wants to solve this: "Full and flexible access to the source of tools, libraries and effects is a key pillar of the GPUOpen philosophy. Only through open source access are developers able to modify, optimize, fix, port and learn from software. The goal? Encouraging innovation and the development of amazing graphics techniques and optimizations in PC games." They've begun by posting several technical articles to help developers understand and use various tools, and they say more content will arrive soon.
http://m.slashdot.org/story/306407
is it important? Opinions?
by the way, I think It's time to develop open/libre hardware.
Will be fine, if they remove their shittyest firmware-data blob from their GPUs.
On the face of it, this sounds like an incredibly positive move by AMD. Is this the first sign of the big hardware manufacturers accepting that software freedom is the way of the future, as so many hardware start-ups have already done? Let's hope so. I look forward to hearing for the FSF about the details of this deal from their point of view, and whether there are any hidden catches in the fine print that we need to encourage AMD to remove.
Most stuff published by GPUOpen appears to be relevant for DirectX rather than OpenGL. There are a few OpenGL samples, but no "complete" code like TressFX.
Well, waiting for firmware to open up.......
Yes, waiting, but for now, Nouveau + reclock.
They will not open the actual blob.
Yes, waiting, but for now, Nouveau + reclock.
Thay will not open the actual blob.
Canonical will be back porting the amdgpu firmware from Linux 4.5 to their 4.4 kernel for Ubuntu 16.04. Something to keep in mind for Trisquel 8.
Will be fine, if they remove their shittyest firmware-data blob from their
GPUs.
On the face of it, this sounds like an incredibly positive move by AMD. Is
this the first sign of the big hardware manufacturers accepting that software
freedom is the way of the future, as so many hardware start-ups have already
done? Let's hope so. I look forward to hearing for the FSF about the details
of this deal from their point of view, and whether there are any hidden
catches in the fine print that we need to encourage AMD to remove.
Well, waiting for firmware to open up.......
Most stuff published by GPUOpen appears to be relevant for DirectX rather
than OpenGL. There are a few OpenGL samples, but no "complete" code like
TressFX.