AMD/ATI finally treating Linux on par with Windows
Several months ago AMD announced new ATI Linux drivers and that they were going to open up their GPU specifications. Well, the talk is over and the real thing has finally happened. Over the last several months, ATI proprietary Linux driver has gotten to be on par with NVidia's Linux driver. But there are two open source ATI drivers that are picking up new features and is being improved upon on a daily basis.
AMD continues to publish programming guides and register information routinely for their latest hardware. Now AMD has really stepped up and evolved their linux support by leaps and bounds. They are working to push new high-end features into their linux driver (example is the multi-GPU crossfire support) with their new Radeon HD 4850. On top of that, they are now showing off Tux on their product packaging and will be including Linux drivers on their product CDs too!
Previously Linux drivers were an afterthought. Some examples were when ATI introduced the X1000 (R500) series cards. Consumers did not see any Linux support for seven months after it was released. More recently the Radeon HD 2000 (or R600) series cards took six months for any Linux support to be had. This should now be a thing of the past. With the recently announced Radeon HD 4800 (or RV770) series cards, they will ship the Linux driver on the CD included in the box (unlike nVidia who has never shipped Linux drivers with their product). Plus, they are getting ever so close to offering all of the same features in Windows and Linux drivers alike.
One reason why it would take so long between new GPU releases and Linux support was that the amount of code being shared between the two driver sets was very little. But since last year saw a new OpenGL driver introduced, now more and more code is shared between the two driver bases. This sharing of code is not too dissimilar to what nVidia does with its code between Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Obviously excluding any of the platform specific parts. This has seen nVidia having a pretty good record of delivering support for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris within days of a new product lauch. With the exception of nVidia's GeForce 8 series cards and their bugs and performance issues of late.
As mentioned before, ATI will be prominently displaying Tux on their official packaging and they have asked the AIBs to include Tux on their packaging as well. Which this may just mark the first time Tux will be prominently displayed on a wide-scale computer hardware package targeted for desktop users.
Also, I would like to add that some of the performance numbers being floated around for the new ATI boards show that nVidia may have given up the performance high ground to ATI. It will be interested to see nVidia's response to both the performance and such high quality Linux support. This could really heighten Linux support across the board for all Linux users.
AMD continues to publish programming guides and register information routinely for their latest hardware. Now AMD has really stepped up and evolved their linux support by leaps and bounds. They are working to push new high-end features into their linux driver (example is the multi-GPU crossfire support) with their new Radeon HD 4850. On top of that, they are now showing off Tux on their product packaging and will be including Linux drivers on their product CDs too!
Previously Linux drivers were an afterthought. Some examples were when ATI introduced the X1000 (R500) series cards. Consumers did not see any Linux support for seven months after it was released. More recently the Radeon HD 2000 (or R600) series cards took six months for any Linux support to be had. This should now be a thing of the past. With the recently announced Radeon HD 4800 (or RV770) series cards, they will ship the Linux driver on the CD included in the box (unlike nVidia who has never shipped Linux drivers with their product). Plus, they are getting ever so close to offering all of the same features in Windows and Linux drivers alike.
One reason why it would take so long between new GPU releases and Linux support was that the amount of code being shared between the two driver sets was very little. But since last year saw a new OpenGL driver introduced, now more and more code is shared between the two driver bases. This sharing of code is not too dissimilar to what nVidia does with its code between Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Obviously excluding any of the platform specific parts. This has seen nVidia having a pretty good record of delivering support for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris within days of a new product lauch. With the exception of nVidia's GeForce 8 series cards and their bugs and performance issues of late.
As mentioned before, ATI will be prominently displaying Tux on their official packaging and they have asked the AIBs to include Tux on their packaging as well. Which this may just mark the first time Tux will be prominently displayed on a wide-scale computer hardware package targeted for desktop users.
Also, I would like to add that some of the performance numbers being floated around for the new ATI boards show that nVidia may have given up the performance high ground to ATI. It will be interested to see nVidia's response to both the performance and such high quality Linux support. This could really heighten Linux support across the board for all Linux users.
Labels: FOSS, Linux, Technology
posted by Brian Wright at 11:03 PM
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