News ATI drivers

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 06 September 2007, Richard Lamont wrote:
>Hal V. Engel wrote:
>> On Wednesday 05 September 2007 11:02:32 Erik Andrén wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Xavier Bestel wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> as everyone has probably seen already, AMD just publicly promised specs
>>>> and a reference driver for all cards starting with R500. Great.
>>>
>>> Source?
>>
>> I was wondering the same thing.  Doing some googling I found:
>>
>> http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/
>
>There's a little more from the Kernel Summit on the paid-for version of
>LWN today:
>
>"AMD manager Chris Schlaeger was then challenged to "give us some good
>news." According to Chris, Linux is very important to AMD; the company
>believes that the Opteron processor would not have been anywhere near as
>successful without Linux support. The company's future plans lead to an
>interesting problem, though. The "Fusion" product line will feature a
>central processor and a graphics processor on the same die. Continuing
>to support free software on the CPU while keeping the GPU closed leads
>to all sorts of contradictions; it's really not an option. So, to avoid
>losing Linux support altogether, AMD has made an important decision.
>
>"Starting with the R500 chipset and going forward, AMD will fully
>support free drivers for all of its graphics processors. This support
>will not take the form of a release of the current proprietary ATI
>driver; that code is not considered to be something that anybody would
>really want to look at. So there will be a clean start. AMD will release
>specifications and a skeleton driver with the plan to have 2D support
>working by the end of the year. The company is clearly hoping that the
>community will do much of the work on the driver, but it also plans to
>participate actively in the process. If AMD follows through - and there
>is no real reason to believe that it will not - then driver problems for
>AMD/ATI chipsets will soon be a distant memory."

Like changing the stripes on a zebra, or the spots on a leopard.  Rotsa ruck.  
It will happen when the lawyers for AMD let it, which is never.  At least 
until we shoot all the lawyers as William Shakespear suggested all those 
years ago.

All this is, is buzz to sell the nextgen cards, I've fallen for this bait 
about $500 worth over the last 10 years.  Next time, the drivers will be a 
fact instead of some PR persons recycled output before the ATI box gets a 2nd 
glance on the shelf.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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