[davinci]

Gestern fand ein recht interessanter Chat mit ATI-Leuten zum Thema Linux-Treiber statt. Falls es jemand interessiert:

ATI Linux Chat

November 11th, 2004 at 4pm EST

Guests for this chat were:

* Terry Makedon - Senior Product Manager
* Jon Carvill - Public Relations Manager
* Matthew Tippett - Linux Software Manager


Q: Anandtech recently did a comparison of linux performance between ATI and Nvidia cards. They reported they needed several kernel-recompiles, a lot of tweaking, and general problems. They ended up with inferior performance for ATI products at all fronts, aswell as being unable to run many of the benchmarks, what is ATI's response to that?

A: Our current focus is on stability and features. We are getting incremental performance increases as they become available. So it was no surprise about the performance in the review. Our drivers are primarily targetted at Red Hat, and we work with SuSE to repackage our drivers, and so AnandTech got off to the wrong start by not using those. Once the SuSE packages where used, the issues about tweaking and general problems were not present.


Q: GLSL has been in the Windows CATALYST OpenGL for about a year now, while it is currently abscent in the Linux OpenGL implementation. This suggests to me that the two do not share the same codebase. Are there plans to take a more unified approach so that developers can gain access to new OpenGL improvements and extensions at roughly
the same time for either platform?

A: Since 3.9, the code has been tracking the windows codebase for each release. In upcoming releases we will match the Windows version number (December will be a 8.08 release. A feature disparity may in some cases (GLSL for example) may be absent since the code is not stabilised or there are technology restrictions for Linux. As we have opportunity we will bring features on par with windows.


Q: Some volunteers are starting to work on a nice GTK based control panel. Is there any way they(we) could get some detailed information or some api (the docs under NDA if wanted) to further work on that panel? Perferably via a direct channel and not the developer program on the ATi site that gets you no response?

A: Since our control panel is currently QT, we have sources shipped. We are working through some licensing issues in accepting patches. We have accepted patches from various people since I made the comment 'that we hadn't received anything for the control panel'. An idea that I am playing with (there are a few technical prerequisites before we can do this). Is that the control panel is developed in part by ATI and in part by the community - Rage3DTweaker is an example of some of the things that may be exposed. There may be some ATI only extensions that will be included in the released ones in binary forms, but I have no fundamental problems with working with the user community to build up channel. On the QT vs GTK, currently we have some code in QT, and so GTK would be a reset in the control panel.


Q: From your As it looks to be a priority for ATI to get support done right on the 'business' linux platforms, especially since you at the moment only seem to focus on the RedHat/SuSe enviornments. What can the average enthouiast expect from ATI in the near future?

A: Our primary focus is commercial GL customers. Enthusiasts and gamers can expect high value fixes such as the doom3 fix as they are needed. Keep in mind that a lot of the commercial customers are focused on performance as well and that will be available immeadiately for the enthusiasts. A benefit of OpenGL as the 3D subsystem for Linux is that the Workstation development becomes available immediately for the enthusiast gamer. Under Windows, the work involves OpenGL for workstation, DirectX for Gamers (as a general rule - ignoring doom3).


Q: What is the number of developers working over linux drivers?

A: I do know but for competitive reasons we dont give direct numbers. All I can say is its roughly proportional to the size of the Linux market.


Q: On the control pannel subject, the open-source drivers have a standard XML based interface for exposing tunable options. Will ATI support that interface in their drivers?

A: As indicated before, there are some technical pre-requisites, one of these would be considering the DRI configuration infrastructure (which is XML). No promises that it will be that though. URL -> http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/m...nfrastructure. We haven't finished our analysis on what is needed.


Q: AMD64 users are generally forced to use cards from a competitor to have decent 3D support on 64-bit Linux systems. Are there any (at least) beta drivers for AMD64 Linux, and if so, are there plans on making them public as the Windows beta drivers?

A: We are planning our first release of AMD64 with the next release.


Q: Given ATI's business focus, The priority seems to be on 2d performance and functionality. Does ATI have any plans to support new desktop developments such as the X.org Composite extention?

A: As the technology becomes deployed in the market, we will respond to what is needed. Currently there is minimal requirements for Composite and so on, until some fundamental architectural changes are made.


Q: Back in Mid-August, 2004, at http://freedesktop.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1085#c4 , Ati stated that they would be re-releasing driver 3.12 with X.org 6.8 support in a few weeks. What is the status on this re-release?

A: That was a leak from beta program mailing list... It was 'planning' and not a definite statement. (I didn't say it, Stefan from SuSE did). We had other important things to work with that delayed that work. ATI did not state... Stefan did. Anyway, 6.8 is going to be in the next release.


Q: Is there any focus on implementing AIW features under linux?

A: Currently there is no focus.