AMD had some news at the 2014 X.Org Developer's Conference that concerns their strategy when it comes to providing open source drivers for Linux. To start off with the bad news, the new unified driver was prototyped on a not yet released Linux kernel and Sea Islands GPUs and will only work on the next generation of graphics cards, the Pirate Islands. That is not a terrible thing as backwards compatibility can be a Kong sized monkey on the back of a driver and a fresh start allows the incorporation of features that might be skipped if legacy support is a main focus. Only a small portion of the driver blob will be proprietary, the majority will be based on Catalyst but will be fully open source and editable. This means users of the X.Org Server or even just those playing with new versions of the Linux kernel will no longer have to wait for a new Catalyst to be released nor will those playing with OpenGL. Dive in deeper at Phoronix.
"Alex Deucher of AMD has taken the floor at XDC2014, which got underway today in France to provide an update on the company's new unified open-source driver strategy. Compared to what I originally reported earlier in the year when breaking the news, there's some notable changes but overall this is an exciting endeavor for AMD Linux customers with the open and closed source AMD GPU drivers going to share the same (open-source) Linux kernel driver."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- HGST plans big data assault @ The Inquirer
- Galaxy Note 4 features Samsung's smallest ever NFC chip @ The Inquirer
- First gigabit-over-COPPER chipset lands @ The Register
- Shift up, gran! Microsoft turns living room into AR game 'space' @ The Register
- Countless Belkin routers go TITSUP in massive mystery meltdown @ The Register
Better get that working with
Better get that working with STEAM OS, because win 10 is just more Spy for Redmond and still those god awful Tiles, and Rory is out of there good luck Dr. AMD is going to need it. The RX calls for a Custom ARMv8 ISA core, and that new x86 that the K man is working on, any ARM reference cores will not compete in tablets, just get the ARMv8 ISA and roll your own 6+ IPC sauce. It’s GPUs, and APUs, and whatever server SKUs will make SeaMicro sales, hopefully the console makers will make a refresh, but something has to change AMD, better look at Power8, Xeons, Opterons, and whatever IP you can license, that does not require too much engineering for your server business, Power8 is a RISC design that has SMT, maybe a license is not such a bad idea to get something out the door, in a quickly derived fashion for various server SKUs. M$ is handing you an advantage with its restricting DX12 to win 10, but the STEAM OS boxes are going to become even more popular, with M$ forcing people on to its cloudy OS, and Bing-a-fied brain dead search snooping of every start menu search, among other deal killers.
Time for Rory to hop back on the turnip cart, and see what village he lands in next, once the cart hits a bump and tosses him, still sleeping, at his next destination.
guess you didn’t figure out
guess you didn’t figure out how to turn off searching in the start menu yet…….its really easy.
Not to worry you probably use google everyday sending that to someone elses cloud, better make another tin foil hat, they are coming to get you!!!
“They” already have us thanks
“They” already have us thanks to people like you….