The ati petition

[Hamie]

Alex Deucher wrote:

>On Sat, 04 Sep 2004 11:20:56 +0100, Hamie <hamish at travellingkiwi.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Alan Cox wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>On Gwe, 2004-09-03 at 16:23, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>The machine?  AMD 2800XP.  Biostar M7-NCD-Pro Motherboard.  A gig of
>>>>DDR333 dual channel ram, and an Extacy 9200SE 128 meg card.  I
>>>>certainly ought to be able to run tuxracer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>9200 3D works in CVS Xorg.
>>>
>>>Their 2D in CVS works up to the very latest PCI Express hardware - which
>>>I think counts as pretty damned good support.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm not sure what the PCI Express hardware is sorry. But anything r3xx
>>based (Radeon 9600, 9800 etc) doesn't have squat as far as acceleration
>>goes AFAIK (I'd be grateful... extreemly grateful... If I was wrong...
>>But unfortunatley, I don't think I am). AT least in open source... And
>>that's the main problem.
>>    
>>
>
>They provide full 2D accerlation for all their currently available
>cards as well as full support for both crtcs, non-bios mode setting,
>and DFPs, LCDs, and CRTs.  The only thing that requires the use of
>their binary module is 3D acceleration for their current chips.  Ati
>is no different than any other chip vender at this point.  With the
>exception of intel no other vendor has released opensource drivers or
>databooks for current generation 3D chips. When you look the feature
>set they support in opensource it outweighs what almost evey other
>vendor provides.
>  
>

As Alan just informed me... From reading the sources, I'd assumed that 
the 2D required DRI as well as the 3D.

>  
>
>>ATI probably THINK they're doing a good job with supporting Unix users
>>and their fglrx closed source drivers. And for SOME users (OK. The
>>majority) it probably works quite well. That's desktop people who don't
>>use ACPI for power management, and who never need to suspend their
>>machines etc..
>>    
>>
>
>Part of the problem is X (xorg/xfree86) has no support for ACPI.  They
>are merely working within the framework provided by the windowing
>system.  No X driver supports ACPI.  Full ACPI would probably require
>at least some sort of kernel component and for the most part X is
>completely userspace. Do any of the other binary-only drivers support
>power management at all?  Until X gets proper power management support
>don't look for things to really improve.
>
>  
>

It's not power management that's required for this particular problem... 
It's recovery from suspend/resume...

Well, OK. Power management really is required, if only to have the damn 
fan not run 100% of the time on my laptop, but just managing to not 
crash & burn on resume (Or even when returning from text mode) would be 
nice... Heck if they managed that I could use the fglrx drivers & 
probably wouldn't even care so much. But unlike the Open Source 
solution, there's nothing I can do beyond filling out a form on their 
site that gets completely ignored... I know it gets ignored, because 
I've filled it out for EVERY release they've made in the last 6 months 
since I got my r50p. And they've never fixed a single problem. Nor have 
they even acknowledged it.



>>Unfortunatly they have IMO missed the point... There is more than one
>>windowing system (i.e. XOrg & XFree) and although their drivers probably
>>work (Where they do work) in both systems at the moment, they may not
>>tomorrow... Plus they work in a manner where the ATI developers decree
>>they should work. It's hard to belive they even recognise that the
>>drivers are actually used on laptops for example. Purely because on a
>>laptop they are not the best shall we say at recovering from
>>suspending... They also don't work with frame buffers... And I like
>>200x75 text mode...
>>
>>if ATI would just release the programming information there'd be any
>>number of people willing to write GOOD and STABLE drivers that would
>>work for ALL situations... And if they didn't work, someone (Besides the
>>original author, who may not even know we have a problem after all)
>>could fix them. Because all the information would be there...
>>    
>>
>
>Instead of complaining why not try and develop a power management system for X?
>  
>

Because it's not needed to fix the problem? if it was, then none of the 
XOrg drivers would recover from suspend/resume... And they do... The 
r200 does fine I believe...

>  
>
>>Their model may work in Windoze, but even there the VENDOR usually does
>>the drivers... At least as far as IBM laptops go... ATI probably never
>>even deal with laptops in the windoze world. And thus would lack the
>>experience required to truely appreciate what's required.
>>    
>>
>
>Most laptops drivers are tweaked by the laptop OEMs because they tend
>to all be wired slightly differently.  different laptops support
>different panel sizes and output types (dvi/hd15/tv/etc.) as well as
>wiring different GPIOs to different laptop hardware so things like fn
>key combos works.  The laptop oems customize all of that to give their
>laptop the edge. As such they need to tweak ati's reference drivers to
>fully support the way they wire everything up.
>
>  
>
>>Of course if I'm wrong I'm sorry.... I wish I was & that the ATI drivers
>>were the best in the world (Because after all I have a laptop with an
>>M10/rv350 in it). But unless ATI release the INFORMATION for CURRENT
>>chipsets (Heck the 3xx isn't even state of the art any more, thats the
>>4xx isn't it?) taht's never going to happen.
>>    
>>
>
>I too would like to see full open source drivers for the 3d component
>of current chips, but whether we have specs are not there are still
>quite a few infrastructural changes that need to happen to X in order
>to fully utilize every feature of the chips.  Plus even if they
>released they specs, who'd write the driver?  Writing a 3D driver is
>no trivial task.  Most developers work on X part time.
>
>  
>

Well... There's Vladimir Dergachev for a start. Or are you implying that 
only people employed by ATI would ever have the smarts or time to doit? 
Well heck, the same goes for an OS I guess Linus has been wasting his 
time hasn't he?

I'm a little confused... Why do you think I should be grateful to ATI 
for NOT supporting the 3D open source drivers?


H