Nvidia, ATI and AMD
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cjcox Jul 28, 2006 9:18 AM EDT |
Neither ATI nor Nvidia WANT to open source their drivers. There's a plethora of reasons. It isn't at all about, who's Linux friendly or not. Please, please, please don't expect AMD+ATI to spell "Linux friendly" in some way. It has NOTHING to do with that, and isn't even in the top ten list of reasons why the acquisition happenned. Now... if ATI+AMD did result in ATI "open sourcing" their drivers (unlikely)... sure.. Nvidia would do the same, because there is nothing more to lose. ATI and Nvidia are merely waiting for the first person to drop their pants. However, it's pretty obvious that ATI's driver implementation is either "clean room" different from their Windows driver, or somehow devoid of the "things" that would cause "issues" if they were to "open source". My guess is that Nvidia's driver implementation on Linux (and I'm pretty sure of this) is very close to the Windows version. This is why the Nvidia driver performs so much better (the ATI Linux version stinks... bad). I wish we lived in a world where businesses cared about the customer... but I totally disagree with anyone who believes the AMD+ATI is a good deal for Linux... not saying that it won't be a good deal... but it would purely accidental. The only reason that AMD has faired well is because of the Nvidia chipset... and well.. they've pretty much just nuked that relationship. Intel's roadmap looks a lot better than AMD right now... ATI chipsets stink (historically especially where Linux is concerned)... ATI has owned the majority of installations GPU wise. Much more successful than Nvidia. However, Nvidia's chipset, especially on AMD, has ruled the roost. But Nvidia started supporting Intel (very wise considering what has happened). ATI's dominance, especially with Intel and Supermicro, stands to diminish (greatly) due to the huge conflicts of interests this joining creates. IMHO, AMD+ATI, is bad for AMD (probably deadly), bad for ATI and ... as weird as it sounds, bad for Nvidia. What a mess. Ruiz may have just done the stupidest thing ever... I keep looking for an upside. Unless AMD has some sort of trick up its sleeve.... I think we're looking at the death of AMD within 2 years. |
| grouch Jul 28, 2006 9:28 AM EDT |
>"My guess is that Nvidia's driver implementation on Linux (and I'm pretty sure of this) is very close to the Windows version. This is why the Nvidia driver performs so much better (the ATI Linux version stinks... bad)." That would be a real miracle, considering Linux is quite a bit different than the MS Windows kernel. |
| jimf Jul 28, 2006 9:32 AM EDT |
> Neither ATI nor Nvidia WANT to open source their drivers. There's a plethora of reasons. It isn't at all about, who's Linux friendly or not. Yes, this has already been discussed at length in another thread. > Please, please, please don't expect AMD+ATI to spell "Linux friendly" in some way. It has NOTHING to do with that, and isn't even in the top ten list of reasons why the acquisition happenned. I don't think anyone is saying that. > I think we're looking at the death of AMD within 2 years. I agree with you that the situation is a mess, but, now you're into crystal ball territory... personally, I doubt it, but only time will tell. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 28, 2006 9:32 AM EDT |
It's true actually. It's been discussed often at gamedev.net and has been said by the nvidia guys too. Their driver is an enviroment agnostic blob with an OS specific glue layer around it. On Linux they then put an extra GPL'ed glue layer around the inner OS glue so they can sorta legally interface it with the kernel. I say sorta because nobody has sued them yet so no-one knows for sure. FSF and many kernel devs think that if it would go to court, nvidia would loose. |
| cjcox Jul 28, 2006 7:58 PM EDT |
jimf: The author of the article seemed to believe it. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!