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It's somewhat sad that AMD bet on open source over proprietary and then approximately zero people stepped up to help. Easier to use cuda and complain I suppose.

It's somewhat sad that AMD bet on open source over proprietary and then approximately zero people stepped up to help. Easier to use cuda and complain I suppose. Fortunately they've stuck with the open source plan anyway and just written it themselves.

wmf 3y ago
Open source people would rather spend their time reverse engineering Nvidia, Mali, and Apple GPUs than helping AMD.
- striking 3y ago
  Look, I love AMD, but there are different groups of open source people here. One group is trying to broaden the support for desktop Linux across all hardware, and the other group is trying to crunch numbers with GPUs and build support for that. There isn't a super strong overlap, and I think the former group is currently larger than the latter.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  AMD's paid linux driver team is moving relatively quickly using some documentation and tools (simulators) under NDA. It is difficult to contribute usefully to the core of that effort without getting hired by AMD. AFAIK, that is why not many hobbyists are contributing.
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    I would guess the documentation is something of a hindrance. I'm in compilers rather than drivers, where the public docs are essentially the pdfs at https://gpuopen.com/amd-isa-documentation/ https://gpuopen.com/amd-isa-documentation/. It's a lot better than the nvidia equivalent but it would also be rough going implementing a compiler based on those alone; too many instructions with names but unspecified semantics. The driver / firmware story is probably similar.
    - ahartmetz 3y ago
      Oh, I thought I was missing something, maybe another document with more explanations. Thanks for clearing that up. I was actually motivated to contribute to the AMD drivers at some point and did land a couple of patches, but wasn't looking to switch career paths. The drivers have become quite good without me anyway, so no regrets :)
- kcb 3y ago
  The highest performing open source graphics driver available anywhere is RADV.

wmf 3y ago

Open source people would rather spend their time reverse engineering Nvidia, Mali, and Apple GPUs than helping AMD.

striking 3y ago
Look, I love AMD, but there are different groups of open source people here. One group is trying to broaden the support for desktop Linux across all hardware, and the other group is trying to crunch numbers with GPUs and build support for that. There isn't a super strong overlap, and I think the former group is currently larger than the latter.
ahartmetz 3y ago
AMD's paid linux driver team is moving relatively quickly using some documentation and tools (simulators) under NDA. It is difficult to contribute usefully to the core of that effort without getting hired by AMD. AFAIK, that is why not many hobbyists are contributing.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  I would guess the documentation is something of a hindrance. I'm in compilers rather than drivers, where the public docs are essentially the pdfs at https://gpuopen.com/amd-isa-documentation/ https://gpuopen.com/amd-isa-documentation/. It's a lot better than the nvidia equivalent but it would also be rough going implementing a compiler based on those alone; too many instructions with names but unspecified semantics. The driver / firmware story is probably similar.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    Oh, I thought I was missing something, maybe another document with more explanations. Thanks for clearing that up. I was actually motivated to contribute to the AMD drivers at some point and did land a couple of patches, but wasn't looking to switch career paths. The drivers have become quite good without me anyway, so no regrets :)
kcb 3y ago
The highest performing open source graphics driver available anywhere is RADV.