Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 9th Sep 2009 22:29 UTC, submitted by lemur2
Open source 3D graphics drivers for ATI R600 garphics cards has been submitted to the kernel-next tree for possible inclusion in the Linux kernel 2.6.32. "David Airlie has pushed a horde of new code into his drm-next Git tree, which is what will get pulled into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel once the merge window is open. Most prominently, this new DRM code brings support for kernel mode-setting with R600 class hardware as well as 3D support."
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RE[2]: R700+ also supported
by yfph on Fri 11th Sep 2009 04:10
in reply to "RE: R700+ also supported"
Member since:2009-09-03
ATI released documentation for R500's too
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_tcore_releas...
RE[3]: R700+ also supported
by lemur2 on Fri 11th Sep 2009 04:20
in reply to "RE[2]: R700+ also supported"
Member since:2007-02-17
ATI released documentation for R500's too http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_tcore_releas...
Correct. And they did so in Feb 2008, almost a full year before they released the R6xx/R7xx documentation.
There was a pre-existing (reverse-engineered) open source driver that already achieved basic 3D support for R500 and earlier. I think some effort went into improving that after the R500 documentation was released by ATI.
However, about a year later (i.e. earlier this year), ATI released the R6xx/R7xx documentation. The architecture was significantly different.
AFAIK this required a re-write of the driver. I think the project was even called radeon-rewrite (Google for it).
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzA2MA
AFAIK this new open source driver slated for inclusion in Linux kernel 2.6.32 more-or-less represents the outcome of radeon-rewrite merged with other radeon driver codebases.
Edited 2009-09-11 04:23 UTC
Member since:
2007-02-17
The new code (just being released now) for R600 (and R700 apparently) has been written using provided documentation from ATI. Kudos indeed.
The earlier drivers, for R500 and older GPUs, were reverse-engineered. These are for an older architecture of GPU, and those cards are no longer supported by ATI's proprietary driver.