A look at the latest Radeon graphics driver stack

2 Comments

1. 

   ThoseJaggedLittleEdgesInTheViewPort on November 29, 2017 at 10:43 pm

   It’s getting to the point
   It’s getting to the point with the disruptive ads runnig on Phoronix’s website lately[ads that sometimes float over the comments section blocking the view with no close button] that I may stop going there and instead just go over to the r/amd reddit page instead and read the article related subject comments there. Maybe someone can invent a re-comment entry and post some replies there if Phoronix and other websites’ do not curb their ad partner’s nasty methods.
   .
   .
   //Soapbox off

   Over at Phoronix Someone wondered about Blender 3d and it pertains to Linux. I have, even on Windons, noticed that Blender 3D’s viewport quality has gone down for me and my Radeon 7650M(Terascale Rebrand) GPU that is missing one of the 4 OpenGL functions/extentions for multi-sampling that appears one missing call appears to be mostly Nvidia related in most of the google searches that I have done.

   Those Jagged lines in the Blender 3d Edit mode on my 3D models in Blender’s OpenGL viewport are really getting ugly and I’m having to use full sampeling for snapshot OpenGL rendering for on any OpenGL snapshots that I take from the current ViewPort camera and even then the quality is not that great and I need to size my models up in better quality. But even then that does not help if the openGL drivers are missing some extentded OpenGL driver functionality and Older versions of Blender 3d had better viewport quality on my hardware.

   AMD’s desktop APUs can not get here soon enough and hopefully in some laptops with desktop Raven Ridge/Vega graphics APUs inside from ASUS, or others. Blender 2.78c is my current version and I’m still waiting a little while before I go up to Blender 2.79 as that’s not been out long enough for all the bugs to be fixed. The Blender foundation still needs to include some PRE AMD GCN/generation GPU information in their latest release versions because there is still a large number of Terascale rebrand Redeon 7000 mobile series GPUs in usage on laptops.

   But it’s good to see more open source driver support for AMD’s GPUs even if it’s currently mostly from the linux community. AMD still has not open sourced their internal GPU driver stack like they have stated that they are in the process of doing. RADV/Vulkan is coming along nicely so It’s looking about time for maybe a Linux OS based laptop OEM to maybe announce some Raven Ridge options as that would be great for having AMD APU based hardware after 2020/2023 when the only Windows choice will be windows 10, which I fully expect Microsoft to rename Windows and go full on with an OSAAS business model.

   Note:

   “Known Limitations

   OpenGL Anti-Aliasing Support

   Some graphics cards do not support this feature (known as the frame-buffer multi-sample OpenGL extensions).

   In this case rendering works but no anti-aliasing is performed.

   Enabling Full Sample, can be used to workaround this limit, because it does not rely on hardware multi-sample support.

   Exact extensions needed, as listed in output from Save System Info (OpenGL section):
   •GL_ARB_texture_multisample
   •GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit
   •GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample_blit_scaled [Missing This]
   •GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample ” (1)

   (1)

   “OpenGL Render”
   https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/opengl.html

   Reply
2. 

   OpenISAsAreBestest on November 30, 2017 at 2:07 am

   This is big news for the
   This is big news for the RISC-V Open Processor ISA. Nvidia uses RISC-V also in its Falcon(FAst Logic CONtroller), so look out ARM Holdings. The more users of RISC-V the more ISA extentions for new features that can be added to the RISC-V ISA. RISC-V is an open ISA (2).

   “RISC-V has a big new hardware backer… Western Digital.

   Western Digital just announced at the RISC-V Workshop conference that they will be getting behind RISC-V for the next generation of big data and fast data. They plan to switch over “one billion cores per year to RISC-V.” By the time their transition is complete, they anticipate to be shipping two billion RISC-V cores per year.

   Western Digital will be using RISC-V within processors and controllers for “purpose-built devices, platforms and storage systems for Big Data and Fast Data applications. We are moving beyond just storing data to now creating entire environments that will enable users to realize the value and possibilities of their data.”
   ” (1)

   (1)

   “Western Digital To Begin Shipping Devices Using RISC-V”

   https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Western-Digital-RISC-V

   (2)

   “RISC-V: The Free and Open RISC Instruction Set Architecture”

   https://riscv.org/risc-v-foundation/

   Reply

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