Intel Open Sources Graphics Drivers

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."

Now...

If only a company who makes GOOD graphics cards would do the same!

Re:Now...

Actually, ATI/AMD is talking about open-sourcing [infoworld.com] their drivers too. nVidia already has pretty functional GNU/Linux drivers (albeit closed source), so with these other two GNU/Linux could finally have the support it needs to be a viable desktop alternative.

Now if only we could get some open sourced drivers for higher end sound cards and more obscure wireless cards.

Re:Now...

See, the interesting thing is that I wouldn't be surprised if *on Linux" the Intel cards end up beating ATI and NVidia just because of the drivers. I've got ATI cards in both my laptops and I'm not impressed by the speed with the open-source drivers (and I'm unwilling to live with all the trouble involved in the closed-source ones). I'm sure a machine with an Intel chipset and open-source drivers could easily beat both ATI and NVidia on Linux.

Wow.

This is a great move by Intel - I know which vendor I'll be picking for my next 3D card. I HATE that I only have the choice of Nvidia or ATI's "mystery binary blobs" to play games.

Re:Wow.

Well, this isn't for discrete graphics cards, right - it's for the built-in graphics in the 965 family chipsets. That's my understanding, anyway.

Still, a very nice move.

I think we're missing the point here.

Many, MANY home users out in the field use on-board video for everything. Now, I'm not saying this'll have them all converting to an Open Source OS, but this is yet another advance that would make sending the average noob user over to Linux without any sort of performance hit.

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.

Re:I think we're missing the point here.

INTEL
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.

Re:I think we're missing the point here.

Heck, they're even in the same town.
Intell's people could just take short drive for lunch
and pick up Invidia on the back to the office.

Mycroft

Re:Wow.

Yup: http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:Wow.

Not for Linux users.

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.

Re:Wow.

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).

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.

"you're not planning to play ANY recent games"

You know, there's a lot more to do with a computer than play games. Especially amongst those of us that run Linux, we tend to do a lot less gameplaying than the average bear.

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.

Re: Wow

Don't forget that _lots_ of people use Linux to get work done... and a whole crapload of that work is graphical in nature (including CAD and 3D rendering).

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

Happy now?

I can't say I particularly care (not using any on-board graphics), but this is a nice move on their part. Also, it would be interesting to see how this affects the performance/features in the long run.

Re:Happy now?

I can't say I particularly care (not using any on-board graphics)

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.

+1 Honesty

Finally, an honest karma whore.

Competition from AMD/ATI?

Hopefully AMD/ATI will compete by open-sourcing the drivers for their integrated chipsets. Some healthy competition would definitely help the Linux desktop.

Re:Competition from AMD/ATI?

That's a stupid excuse, though. They could always isolate the SGI-laden parts, LGPL the rest, and let the community at least have a fighting chance at replacing what's behind the proprietary API's. I'm not claiming that our homebrew routines would *ever* be better, but I suppose it is within the realm of possibility. Oh, and when I say "always", I do really mean *always*... at any point, even right this minute, they could do so.

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.

Re:Competition from AMD/ATI?

I agree, and most people don't need anything faster than an Intel 955, even the 855 is good enough for 90% of desktop use minus modern 3D gaming. They play quake just fine. What more does one NEED, honestly? ATI and nVidia better wake up or they may soon find a new real competitor on the block.

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.

Re:Competition from AMD/ATI?

"That's a stupid excuse, though. They could always isolate the SGI-laden parts, LGPL the rest, and let the community at least have a fighting chance at replacing what's behind the proprietary API's. I'm not claiming that our homebrew routines would *ever* be better, but I suppose it is within the realm of possibility. Oh, and when I say "always", I do really mean *always*... at any point, even right this minute, they could do so."
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.)

Re:Competition from AMD/ATI?

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15446 [osnews.com] Looks like they're at least considering it.

Re:Competition from AMD/ATI?

Also, that document is a complete lie. I don't care that it's in the kernel tree. There's lots of wrong stuff in there.

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.

Image quality?

I've noticed an entire industry of low end graphics cards has sprung up to replace the fuzzy pictures from integrated intel graphics.

bravo, intel

will amd/ati take a hint? if not, it seems like intel is going to own the linux market. they already provide good drivers for their wireless cards (i'm using one right now).

Pwn The Market?

Hardly.

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.

first reaction:

Fantastic. Great work Intel. This puts your products in a different, more positive light for me personally. This could be really good for X11. I worked with it for about 10 years and have been very despondent about its chance in a world of proprietary drivers from ATI and NVIDIA being the only way to use modern graphics hardware. Maybe there's a chance for open source desktop after all.

Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones...

The argument against nVidia and ATI opening up their drivers was always that it would give other vendors a headstart in cloning their chipsets. They'd be able to tell how they work (from a hardware API level at least), and have a driver ready to go if they copied that API.

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.

Well, Intel's integrated graphics chipset is a far cry from the nVidia / ATI high-end accellerators. Cloning it will be next to useless (who'll buy a separate graphics card to replaace an on-board solution?) since most other chipset manufacturers already have on-board solutions of their own. I doubt this will change the high-end makers rationale for keeping their drivers secret.

Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones.

I'd be willing to bet the REAL reason they don't open their drivers is because they're using stuff they know is the intellectual property of others. Just a guess, though; I have no real information on this, but I'd be very surprised if they can't dig into each other's hardware under a microscope to figure out what the other guy is doing, and reverse engineer each other's drivers. These are some very smart folks we're talking about here.

Re:Maybe we'll start seeing Intel graphics clones.

Possibly.

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.

Nice

Nice.

I bet they're trying to preempt AMD doing the same with an integrated ATI chip.

Well played, Intel. Well played.

Linux Laptops!

Ok here is the thing...ATI and nvidia can be a bit of a pain...but on a desktop you buy one or the other and you plug it in and go. Laptops on the other hand your selection is FAR more limited and you have to juggle hardware, and more often than not, something just won't work right or well. This makes the Intel integrated laptops even more attractive now instead of the ATI/nvidia ones. I really hope they go backwards with this to and open their recent chipsets up completely as well.

Re:Linux Laptops!

I got a Dell Inspiron 6000 a bit over a year ago and I dual boot XP / Gentoo Linux. I choose to go with the ATI Mobile X300 (M300) graphics cards, and I say you made the right choice. In order to get it to play nice with radeonfb, I have to disable hardware acceleration. Before I had hibernate working, but it is not working with the currently installed version of fglrx (not the latest anymore, I think). I am definitely never buying an ATI graphics card again, and after this announcement, I may seriously consider Intel's offerings.

Prediction

This chipset has been a source of problems for people running Linux. I predict this move will smooth those problems out in pretty short order, because we can deal with the problem ourselves rather than wait on Intel to allocate the resources to the problem.

who needs open source drivers?

besides the desire/preference to have open source drivers for license compliance and moral/ethical reasons, there is a more practical reason why source access to drivers is handy. sometimes you need to recompile drivers from source in order to have them play well with operating systems features. for instance, if they need to respect the constraints of real-time systems such as rtlinux, rtai, or xenomai. these systems need to redefine cli/sti (clear/set interrupt) instructions (using macros) so that the real-time micro-kernel handles the interrupts rather than linux. open source drivers let you recompile with #include files that make this possible.

Re:who needs open source drivers?

Also, though not important for this particular driver, you have the advantage of using the same driver source on "unsupported" platforms. For instance, very few vendors support Linux with binary drivers for PPC, or even AMD64. Open drivers usually Just Work.

Kudos to Intel!

This is good news. Open Source won't fix a bad product (hello Netscape), but you can have an army of eager (unpaid!) geeks happily extending your product. The idiocy of companies that hold their driver source proprietary is beyond belief; Does nVidia and ARI really seriously believe it gives them an advantage? Hardly. nVidia's drivers are buggy and crash prone. I am sick of my nVidia card hanging, and the saps at nVidia's support merely send you an automated email "Have you installed the latest driver." Yes, and it also crashes. If I had the source, I could fire up MSDEV. But I don't.

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!