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Intel Open Sources Graphics Drivers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Aug 09, 2006 05:02 PM
from the running-scared-from-amd-ati dept.
from the running-scared-from-amd-ati dept.
PeterBrett writes "Intel's Keith Packard announced earlier today that Intel was open sourcing graphics drivers for their new 965 Express Chipset family graphics controllers. From the announcement: 'Designed to support advanced rendering features in modern graphics APIs, this chipset
family includes support for programmable vertex, geometry, and fragment shaders. By open sourcing the drivers for this new technology, Intel enables the open source community to experiment, develop, and contribute to the continuing advancement of open source 3D graphics.' The new drivers, available from the Linux Graphics Drivers from Intel website, are licensed under the GPL for Linux kernel drivers, and MIT license for XOrg 2D & 3D rendering subsystems."
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Backslash: Wireless, Gaming Addiction, Spam, and More 45 comments
Of the thousands of comments on yesterday's Slashdot page, gathered below are some of the ones that defined the conversations on the rise of wireless peripherals, the meaning of content-free spam, whether one can be truly addicted to online gaming, and Intel's move to open source some of its graphics adapter drivers. Read on for the Backslash summary.
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Now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now... (Score:3, Informative)
Now if AMD will open source the ATI drivers we will be all set.
Re:Now... (Score:3, Informative)
I thin
Re:Now... (Score:5, Informative)
Now if only we could get some open sourced drivers for higher end sound cards and more obscure wireless cards.
Parent
Re:Now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
OpenGraphics is not dead! (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's very much alive. Just before I posted this story, I sent a similar e-mail to the list. BTW, there's currently a call going out [gmane.org] for people to work on the OpenGraphics drivers.
However, I do worry that should Intel decide to put their graphics chip on a discrete PCI card it would eat up much of our potential market...
Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
The non-licensed parts of the code don't have to compile to be released. Besides, when bugs are traced back into the dark proprietary code, that would also make ATI the good guys and SGI the bad guys. ATI could claim that the licensed part is really fast and awesome and sweet, but proprietary, and that the community is welcome to try and replace it with something fast and awesome and
sweet, but open. Or even something slow and crappy, but rock-solid stable, that plays nice with Xorg and the kernel.
I suppose they might have licensed other companies code and signed away their right to ever release any code they ever write that uses the licensed bits. That would be a collosal blunder, but would partially account for silence on the subject.
I'm fairly certain that the real reason lies not the code ATI has licensed, but the code/tech they've worked hard on and feel they need to keep secret or else lose their edge against nVidia. Of course, it seems that same statement could be made, swapping the names of the two companies, and still be true. In fact, the "trade secret" and "intellectual property" argument is almost certainly the biggest reason for closed-source driver code. Besides, how can a company who is losing money afford to give anything away for free? At least it always seems like the investors and board of directors of tech companies seem to believe that they are perpetually bleeding cash, even when they file record profits with the SEC.
Anyway, that's quite enough ranting and unsubstantiated libel for one post.
Parent
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought Intel graphics with my laptop. At first I wasn't pleased with the performance, but then I got to testing it directly. I can easily get 30 fps in OpenGL for simple geometries. Its really not that bad. They doubled the performance since, and I'm sure their latest stuff is most useable. Can you imagine what they'll come out with next?
I didn't like Intel, but lately they've been attracting my pocketbook more than any other anti-FOSS businesses. As far as I'm concerned if they aren't pro-FOSS by now, they're anti-FOSS. They know just as well as I do what its all about. Microsoft, no matter how much they say they support it, is obviously fighting it tooth and nail behind closed doors.
Parent
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:5, Informative)
They tried that. After a while it Simply Didn't Work - It's not just SGI, and in fact the particular issue that I remember was support for S3 Texture Compression, aka S3TC. For whatever reason, the licensing of S3TC prevented them from ever supporting it in an open-source driver.
ATI started releasing binary-only drivers for Linux shortly after the UT2003 S3TC support fiasco. (In short, UT2K3 would only run on NVidia cards under Linux because they were the only ones that supported S3TC under Linux.)
Parent
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:3, Informative)
-1, Troll
Read Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt [linux.no]
Re:Competition from AMD/ATI? (Score:4, Insightful)
A driver does not have to be in the tree to be stable, running driver, and the driver being in the kernel tree doesn't mean that it is either stable or running.
And I should know, as I have written multiple closed-source Linux device drivers, two of which have open-source versions in the kernel that have at various times either not worked, or worked poorly, and both of which perform signifigantly worse than the closed version.
Go actually read that document. The argument it makes is that a stable kernel/driver API is a bad idea because the kernel/driver API is unstable. It's a circular argument. The real issue is three-fold. One, there isn't enough agreement amongst the diversity of kernel developers to ever come up with a stable API, two, there is no dicipline amongst the people in charge to maintain that stability even if a consensus was reached, and three, there are some who would like to keep the interface unstable merely to keep this argument for open source drivers valid.
Dispite all that, the only real roadblock between ease of binary driver development and what we have today is that there is heavy backporting amongst distribution vendors without incrementing the kernel version number. In other words, vendors lie about their versions in order to maintain the illusion of version stability for their customers... But even that is a minor issue, as it only makes the people who run on the bleeding edge suffer, and nobody runs on the bleeding edge in production.
Parent
first reaction: (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that there's a working Intel 3D driver with source, does this mean that other vendors might start making cheap clones of the Intel graphics chips? Or was the above argument really a red herring.
And if they did, what's to stop them from making chips that use the same API, but work much better?
Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another reason why they are unwilling to release the information might be because it would prove that they have been bullshitting us for a long time.
Chances are that the difference between a £50 card and a £300 card is in the software: by changing just one bit in one byte in the huge, bloated blob of a driver, you could extract £300 performance from a £50 graphics card. It can't be economically viable for them to fabricate different GPUs to use on "cheap" and "expensive" cards. Instead, they have an I/O pin {maybe several pins?} on the GPU which they tie to 0V {so it reads as a 0} on the cheap cards, or leave unconnected {so it looks like a 1} on the expensive cards. The driver software reads the state of the pin and determines whether or not to run the card in "expensive" mode.
{Then, of course, there are the various "cheats" built into games to make them run faster or better with certain graphics cards -- or, to put it more accurately, to make them run slower or worse with other graphics cards. Games companies are certainly not above accepting bakshish.}
The RAW formats used by digital cameras are similarly undocumented for pretty much the same reason: the JPEG files are interpolated up to much higher resolutions than the sensor actually generates. Revealing the format of the RAW file would also reveal the real number of pixels on the image sensor, and likely open up camera manufacturers to prosecution under consumer protection law.
Parent
Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones. (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to have forgotten that ATI cards were fully documented until about 2002-2003 or so, when they started licensing technologies from other companies that were forbidding them from releasing documentation or open-source drivers for said technologies.
The Unreal Tournament 2003/S3 Texture Compression fiasco showed that not licensing such technologies would be commercial suicide. ATI
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet they're trying to preempt AMD doing the same with an integrated ATI chip.
Well played, Intel. Well played.
Linux Laptops! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux Laptops! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
who needs open source drivers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:who needs open source drivers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Kudos to Intel! (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel made an earlier foray into 3D with the i740 which didn't do that well in the marketplace. But now they're back, and this is a nice first step. If they drive nVidia and ATI (and especially nVidia) out of business, I wouldn't shed a tear. Truth is even Microsoft by taking over Shaders with HLSL has done a better job that nVidia with their proprietary Cg language. Open sourcing their drivers shows good faith. Come on Intel!
This is a VERY important development (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a VERY important development (Score:3, Insightful)
If you play games, well then they are not fine. But gamers are such a minority I dont their attitude should destroy a sensible purchase.
Talking out of both sides of my face, (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, Thank You Intel, so very much.... BECAUSE Even the laziest of our part-time hobbyist programmers will be able to improve your driver performance.
All these years I just refused to believe Intel could develop and ship newer and newer Card/integrated Video chips that were lightyears behind in performance and features. I instead chose to think of them as a Hardware Company full of Hardware Engineers who look down on the few "soft ones". I can understand how that might develop there.
I believed, some day, they would come around, and hire some PC Software/Driver Engineers. Someday the driver would rescue their possibly brilliant designs.
Well this is even better. We get our open graphics card with every e-machine.
Except, Of course Intel doesn't pay for it and yet reaps the rewards, and naturally perpetuates the undervalued view of us software guys.
Vicous cycle.
Re:Talking out of both sides of my face, (Score:4, Interesting)
Erm... I doubt it.
For the past few years, off and on, I've been porting the XFree/Xorg Intel 8xx graphics drivers to BeOS, so I have a fairly close relationship with that code, and unusually detailed knowledge of the chip series. Unless this represents a completely different codebase (which I doubt), it's really not that bad. Unless you're planning on turning it into a full kernel-mode driver, taking advantage of native interrupts and so forth, there's not a lot that could be improved.
The most annoying part with this driver release is that it still needs the BIOS to set display modes. BeOS can't access/execute the BIOS, so the driver has to be full native. I'll probably still have to do some fairly icky things to make it work...
Schwab
Parent
intel's docs HAVE BEEN OPEN for all their chipsets (Score:4, Informative)
Full specifications - not open source (Score:3, Insightful)
So my question is this - does Intel also fully disclose the full specifications and internal workings of their chipset? My guess is no. Most likely, the drivers will be developed by Intel employees with access to internal documents. Those drivers could then be debugged and possibly optimized by the community but the community will still be locked out of development.
Willy
Re:Full specifications - not open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Their silicon is just crippled - there's honestly no way around that when you're effectively producing a $5 graphics solution (which is approximately the cost difference between Intel chipsets without integrated graphics and Intel chipsets with integrated graphics.) Even if a technology is economical to implement in silicon, at that price point it's not feasible to license technologies from other companies unless absolutely necessary, such as S3 Texture Compression, which was the technology that basically started the branch between closed-source and open-source ATI chipset support.
It does what it's designed to do extremely well (unlike many other "el cheapo" solutions which are designed to do more but just don't do any of it well), it just simply is NOT designed to do very much.
Parent
Independent Nvidia open driver effort - Nouveau (Score:5, Informative)
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ [freedesktop.org]
If you're an owner of an nVidia card, please do all you can to help contribute! They appear to be suprisingly far along.
--
Slashcode bug # 497457 - unfixed since December 2001 - Go look it up [sourceforge.net]!
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Still, a very nice move.
Parent
I think we're missing the point here. (Score:5, Interesting)
Taking a 180 degree turn and looking right back at your interpretation of the story, I find it very likely that Intel will be teaming up with nVidia sometime soon. Now that AMD owns ATI, Intel should be wide open to purchase nVidia if they want, and (although I'm not saying they'll need it), pairing Intel's massive resources with nVidia's enthusiast motherboard chipsets and universal video options, things could improve rapidly for the both of them. However, if Intel is going to enter the market as a third video force, that seems unlikely, although we could see Intel graphics cards interfacing well only with intel boards and intel CPUS, and the customer could likely lose if such a situation becomes possible.
Anyway, I think I've speculated enough. The bottom line is that open-sourcing these drivers is a very interesting and likely harmless move for intel to make, and it should make the jobs of many OS coders easier in the open source OS circles.
Parent
Re:I think we're missing the point here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Type: Public (NASDAQ: INTC)
Founded: 1968
Location: Santa Clara, California, USA (incorporated in Delaware)
Key people Paul Otellini, CEO
Craig Barrett, Chairman
Industry Semiconductors
Products Microprocessors
Flash memory
Revenue $38.83 billion USD (2005)
Operating income $12.1 billion USD (2005)
Net income $8.7 billion USD (2005)
NVIDIA
Type: Public (NASDAQ: NVDA)
Founded: 1993
Location: Santa Clara, California, USA
Key people Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO
Industry Semiconductors- Specialized
Products Graphics processing units
Motherboard chipsets
Revenue $2.375 Billion USD (2005)
Net income $302.5 Million USD (2005)
Employees 2,737 (2005)
Website www.nvidia.com
Check out those rows, especially Revenue and Net income. Intel is a MUCH larger company.
Compare to
AMD
Type: Public (NYSE: AMD)
Founded: 1969
Location: Sunnyvale, California, USA
Industry Semiconductors
Products Microprocessors
Revenue $5.848 billion USD (2005)
Net income $165.483 million USD (2005)
Employees 18,100 (Nov 2005)
Website www.amd.com
ATI
Type: Public (NASDAQ: ATYT)
Founded: 1985
Location: Markham, Ontario, Canada
Key people David E. Orton, CEO
Industry Semiconductors
Products Graphics cards
Graphics processing units
Motherboard chipsets
Video capture cards
Revenue $2.222 Billion USD (2005)
Net income $41.676 Million USD (2005)
Employees 3,469 (2005)
Ati, suprisingly enough, has MORE employees than nVidia, an essentially equivalent revenue, and a higher next income.
If AMD can buy ATI, Intel should be able to buy nVidia with little problem.
Parent
Re:I think we're missing the point here. (Score:4, Funny)
Intell's people could just take short drive for lunch
and pick up Invidia on the back to the office.
Mycroft
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Re:Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent point. Have they released drivers for their wifi components yet?
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah! Damn those blobs, giving you all that performance!!
Why would an open source driver be slower than blobs if the manufacturers created it?
The way I see it, by giving ATI/Nv my money I'm saying "hey, it's ok to pollute my system with code I can't look at" (and yes, I am capable of looking at it, but even if I wasn't *someone* is and that's the point). So Intel will be getting my money when I buy a new motherboard.
And it's not just about games - Xgl/compiz, xcompmgr, etc. etc.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Given that ATI and nVidia's support for Linux is next to nil, and that their mystery blobs are somewhat error-prone, (not to mention the inherent issues in using a generic binary - link conflicts, non-optimized machine code, etc.), I don't see how choosing an Intel card would be rediculous.
Sure, they're behind, but the 965 series is better than, say, ATI's 8500 (the highest of their cards that is properly supported in Linux). Seems to me that Intel's just jumped ahead of the game by becoming available to a niche market.
Meanwhile, I don't exactly trust the business-motivated hacks found in blobs from graphics card vendors (re: the quake.exe debacle). Having source makes a bechmarking far more auditable.
Parent
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the 9250 is the fasted fully supported ATI card under Linux. The r300 driver (9600, 9800 and X800) will probably soon be stable enough for widespread use, too. How the 965 compares to those, I don't know. But I suspect it'll be more than good enough for 99% of all users.
Parent
does the 9250 driver really work? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is anecdotal, but my experience (as of a couple months ago) is that the ATI 9250 SE doesn't work doesn't work properly with the open source driver. It renders, but appears not to be double-buffering. The screen flashes in a very ugly manner and I get to see frames of partially-rendered geometry. If I remember correctly, I got similar behavior with a radeon 7000. Currently, I'm using a cheap Nvidia card with the binary drivers (
"you're not planning to play ANY recent games" (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'm ecstatic over FINALLY being able to purchase a system that will run Google Earth, that I won't have to fuck with every time a kernel update happens, or ATI breaks their latest blob and I have to spend hours googling for a fix, or nvidia hasn't once again broken something because they don't think anyone but 10 users still use this graphics card.
There's *nothing* but good to be said about open source graphics card drivers that support halfway decent OpenGL. Even if I don't have the privledge of spending $500 upgrading my rig just to play whatever the flavour of the month PC game is out.
If Intel would do this for add-on cards and not just integrated chipsets (which is what I hear is the deal so far), I'd be as happy as I've been ever since discovering Linux.
Parent
Re: Wow (Score:4, Informative)
At my job we all have huge dual-processor Xeons running the absolute fastest videocards we can get our hands on (which right now are some variant of Nvidia Quadro cards)... and not a single one is using windows.
Now why aren't we running ATi cards? well... because their linux drivers suck.
So what's the incentive for writing good drivers for linux? Oh yeah... because a lot of people will use them... even if they're not gaming.
Friedmud
Parent
Re:Happy now? (Score:5, Informative)
One area where on-board graphics is important are notebooks - especially those thin and light ones. A choice of video card is rare, especially if one cares about battery life.
Traditionally, Linux support of new notebook video chips was very uncertain, as it is not possible to get a new notebook with a 2 year old graphics controller. Thus the fact that all-Intel notebooks are a safe choice (with not only 2d, but also 3d and wireless working under Linux) is a truly wonderful news.
Also, the new Xserver features have to be implemented on something before there are binary blobs that support them. So having an open code to experiment with, say, Render, impacts other graphics cards as well.
Parent
Re:Happy now? (Score:3, Informative)
+1 Honesty (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Pwn The Market? (Score:4, Insightful)
Closed-source Linux drivers can work well enough for a single kernel version in a controlled environment. You still don't get support from most distros that would want to build their own. Sure, if you cooperate you get in Novell and Red Hat's offerings, but not much further. You also get the onus of sinking the money into it to keep it working. Not to mention you pretty much guarantee being a problem to your users--think things like software suspend that never work right with closed drivers because certain problems can't be debugged or fixed (in which case improved quality *IS* a foregone conclusion).
You either get SLES / RHEL, or you get SLES / RHEL / Debian / Ubuntu / everything else... Not to mention improved operation. Of course, gravitating toward what works is why people are using open source in the first place. Sometimes "what works" is defined in terms of avoiding vendor lock-in and extortionate licensing.
Parent