4 ms·

"Of course, much of that is auto-generated header files... A large portion of it with AMD continuing to introduce new auto-generated header files with each new

by 1-6 3y ago

"Of course, much of that is auto-generated header files... A large portion of it with AMD continuing to introduce new auto-generated header files with each new generation/version of a given block. These verbose header files has been AMD's alternative to creating exhaustive public documentation on their GPUs that they were once known for." So what's the point of saying that it's large?

dijit 3y ago
I read it as a bit of a negative situation. So the reason for mentioning it is to shame AMD into doing a more correct or sane thing instead of spewing out enormous amounts of what is basically repetitive noise. Pointing out that enormity is important because source files need to be stored; interpreted, versioned and parsed by humans/IDE's. It has an externalised cost (but, then again, isn't capitalism all about externalising costs?)
throwaway193439 3y ago
Because it's large and large is difficult to maintain. AMD maintains it but do we know how they are generated? Probably not. It's like a gift that stinks but you can't complain about because it's a gift.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >but do we know how they are generated? Probably not Having worked in the semi industry, I can fathom a guess: It's a spaghetti mess of cascading Perl scripts that parse the Verilog/VHDL design files, with their development going back 20+ years, full of comments like "don't touch this line because it breaks another line, nobody knows why", and maintained by a team where a gray-beard "Gandalf" engineer wearing an ATI t-shirt, has most of the deep-down low-level knowledge on how to un-fuck them whenever they get fucked, pardon my french.
  - baq 3y ago
    Having too worked in the semi industry, this is spot on
    - sshine 3y ago
      I haven’t worked in the semi industry, but I’ve worked with EE’s and Perl programmers, and they do love that undocumented lore. And the universe does reward you with a grey beard after enough Perl.
  - trws 3y ago
    I have not seen these scripts, but can confirm that AMD has a long history of such Perl scripts. Look at hipcc for a current, moderately frustrating, example of this. Also the last time I met one of the open source driver team in person he was, in fact, wearing a classic ATI red ATI t-shirt straight in from Markham. Much of that team is European now though from what I hear, and they’re generally a good bunch.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >ATI t-shirt straight in from Markham. Curious how much of AMD Radeon GPU development now is being done in Markham-Canada, as AFAIK, the modern Radeon architecture stems from ATI's acquisition of ArtX[1], a US-based spin-ff of SGI, which was responsible for the GPUs in the Nintendo GameCube, Wii and many other innovations like programable shaders, later found in ATI/AMD GPUs. >Much of that team is European now though from what I hear, and they’re generally a good bunch. I didn't know AMD has a GPU design team in Europe. Where? I know they had a fab in Germany and they have an office for the Ryzen and Infinity Fabric R&D in Romania, but I had no idea they do GPU stuff as well in Europe. Where is that office? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArtX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArtX
      - ahartmetz 3y ago
        >I didn't know AMD has a GPU design team in Europe AFAIK they don't, but the Linux driver guys seem to be mostly German and Polish and such. And yeah, they are doing good work. I half-expect AMD to reboot their Windows driver from the Linux driver code base at some point.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - happycube 3y ago
        They had Bitboys but sold them onto Qualcomm a while ago.
  - trollied 3y ago
    There's bound to be some tcl in there too...
- SXX 3y ago
  > AMD maintains it but do we know how they are generated? Probably not. Basically those files are generated from AMD GPU register data files where majorify of registers are documented, but there of course bunch of magic numbers as well probably because they belong to HDCP or other cases where documentation only available under NDA. There been a number of leaks of AMD internal documentation so anyone who is into GPU drivers can really find a lot of information on their GPU internal workings. I've archieved some of it many years ago and it's was never DMCA*ed: https://github.com/ArseniyShestakov/rai-bonaire https://github.com/ArseniyShestakov/rai-bonaire Source was a talk on CCC.

by 1-6 3y ago

dijit 3y ago

I read it as a bit of a negative situation. So the reason for mentioning it is to shame AMD into doing a more correct or sane thing instead of spewing out enormous amounts of what is basically repetitive noise. Pointing out that enormity is important because source files need to be stored; interpreted, versioned and parsed by humans/IDE's. It has an externalised cost (but, then again, isn't capitalism all about externalising costs?)

throwaway193439 3y ago

Because it's large and large is difficult to maintain. AMD maintains it but do we know how they are generated? Probably not. It's like a gift that stinks but you can't complain about because it's a gift.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>but do we know how they are generated? Probably not Having worked in the semi industry, I can fathom a guess: It's a spaghetti mess of cascading Perl scripts that parse the Verilog/VHDL design files, with their development going back 20+ years, full of comments like "don't touch this line because it breaks another line, nobody knows why", and maintained by a team where a gray-beard "Gandalf" engineer wearing an ATI t-shirt, has most of the deep-down low-level knowledge on how to un-fuck them whenever they get fucked, pardon my french.
- baq 3y ago
  Having too worked in the semi industry, this is spot on
  - sshine 3y ago
    I haven’t worked in the semi industry, but I’ve worked with EE’s and Perl programmers, and they do love that undocumented lore. And the universe does reward you with a grey beard after enough Perl.
- trws 3y ago
  I have not seen these scripts, but can confirm that AMD has a long history of such Perl scripts. Look at hipcc for a current, moderately frustrating, example of this. Also the last time I met one of the open source driver team in person he was, in fact, wearing a classic ATI red ATI t-shirt straight in from Markham. Much of that team is European now though from what I hear, and they’re generally a good bunch.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >ATI t-shirt straight in from Markham. Curious how much of AMD Radeon GPU development now is being done in Markham-Canada, as AFAIK, the modern Radeon architecture stems from ATI's acquisition of ArtX[1], a US-based spin-ff of SGI, which was responsible for the GPUs in the Nintendo GameCube, Wii and many other innovations like programable shaders, later found in ATI/AMD GPUs. >Much of that team is European now though from what I hear, and they’re generally a good bunch. I didn't know AMD has a GPU design team in Europe. Where? I know they had a fab in Germany and they have an office for the Ryzen and Infinity Fabric R&D in Romania, but I had no idea they do GPU stuff as well in Europe. Where is that office? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArtX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArtX
    - ahartmetz 3y ago
      >I didn't know AMD has a GPU design team in Europe AFAIK they don't, but the Linux driver guys seem to be mostly German and Polish and such. And yeah, they are doing good work. I half-expect AMD to reboot their Windows driver from the Linux driver code base at some point.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - happycube 3y ago
      They had Bitboys but sold them onto Qualcomm a while ago.
- trollied 3y ago
  There's bound to be some tcl in there too...
SXX 3y ago
> AMD maintains it but do we know how they are generated? Probably not. Basically those files are generated from AMD GPU register data files where majorify of registers are documented, but there of course bunch of magic numbers as well probably because they belong to HDCP or other cases where documentation only available under NDA. There been a number of leaks of AMD internal documentation so anyone who is into GPU drivers can really find a lot of information on their GPU internal workings. I've archieved some of it many years ago and it's was never DMCA*ed: https://github.com/ArseniyShestakov/rai-bonaire https://github.com/ArseniyShestakov/rai-bonaire Source was a talk on CCC.