OSDev.org

Posted: **Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:07 pm**

Brendan wrote:Also, hopefully someone creates a suitable open source compiler for this (e.g. something that complies with OpenGL's "GLSL" language and is licenced under a BSD style licence).

Mesa seems to have a GLSL compiler, released under the MIT licence. I don't know anything about it, though.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:20 am**

We could be tricky and send someone around and claim NVidia and AMD are open-sourcing their drivers. Once this spreads they may end up doing so because;

- They may think their competition is open sourcing their drivers and they need to follow (sort of like how VirtualPC and VMWare both became free at the same time).
- If enough of the public is expecting it to happen, then they may need to so they don't disappoint their customers and risk a drop in sales.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 1:35 am**

Mwahahaha!

Devious plan but I doubt they will lose enough sales to worry about it

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:44 pm**

We may not be all building a single cooperative OS here at osdev

-- but I think a small number of us would be willing to build some mutual video driver code together, if we had a set of full-up specs to work with. Two man-years of work is a lot, when you are building an OS by yourself. But it's not so bad if you have 10 good hackers bashing something together cooperatively.

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:13 pm**

The first set of Non-NDA encumbered specifications have been released.. for the RV630 and M56 chips apparently..

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/

Announcements..
http://www.osnews.com/story.php/18604/F ... -Published
http://www.fooishbar.org/blog/tech/x/am ... 16-36.html

*Drools*.. more!!

From eyeballing the docs, They look highly informative.. real deal? I suspect so!

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:32 pm**

It seems like 2D specifications will be released first, 3D after some legal stuff is cleared up.. and then docs for the r3xx chips.. eventually.

Still, I was hoping for a community site of some sort.. with nice clear text.. "Card Series #here -> Specifications (2D/3D)".. but this should suffice?

Phoronix wrote:Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off ATI's GPU specifications to David Airlie on a CD (as reported by Daniel Stone). However, the specifications are also now available on the Internet! At http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ is the location of the documentation where you can freely download the files. Right now there is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide. The RV630 Reference Guide is 434 pages long while the M56 Guide is 460 pages. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next week. More information to come soon. Tell us what you think. For more information, read our ATI/AMD's New Open-Source Strategy Explained article.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=NjA1Mw

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:07 pm**

Hi,

AMD have started releasing documentation already!

So far there's 2 docs, one for RV630 (Radeon HD 2400 series) and one for M56 (Radeon X1600 series).

The first one (for RV630) seem to include full documentation needed for video mode setup, 2D acceleration, hardware cursors, etc, but none of the 3D/GPU information. I'm still downloading the second one (the server seems to be under some load at the moment).

Anyway, the web site is http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/.

Cheers,

Brendan

Posted: **Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:13 pm**

Brendan wrote:Hi,

AMD have started releasing documentation already!

I noticed

.. I'm hoping for some older chipsets.. hopefully for some of their AGP cards.. (I'm cheap..)

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 5:46 am**

how can we tell which cards exactly these docs cover?

how did you know that RV630 is for the Radeon HD 2400 series and M56 is for the Radeon X1600 series?

(Am asking so I can follow the situation more intelligently while developing code)

Posted: **Thu Sep 13, 2007 6:10 am**

bewing wrote:We may not be all building a single cooperative OS here at osdev -- but I think a small number of us would be willing to build some mutual video driver code together, if we had a set of full-up specs to work with. Two man-years of work is a lot, when you are building an OS by yourself. But it's not so bad if you have 10 good hackers bashing something together cooperatively.

Or steal the MESA or X drivers. I remember reading MESA has hardware accelerated support for popular 3D cards. If this is true, then it'd be easiest to port MESA and then write all your GUI code in OpenGL. Having designed OpenGL GUI-systems before, it'd be a breeze for me

Posted: **Fri Jan 04, 2008 2:13 pm**

AMD just released two doc's (for M76 and RS690).
Link is the same (http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/).

Posted: **Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:18 pm**

It seems there're no any acceleration references inside in these 4 pdf, besides 2d.
But you can see a Blit operation in introduction, keyword 0x158C.

Is there anyone willing to work out some codes to start the engine, I am interested in 2D acceleration now.

Posted: **Fri Jan 04, 2008 9:21 pm**

They haven't released documentation for 3D acceleration yet, but they plan on releasing more documentation this year.

You just have to wait... I'm guessing they have to run it through their legal department..

They plan on mirroring those documents next week, according to a Phoronix article.. perhaps that'll speed up documentation releases.

Posted: **Sat Jan 12, 2008 8:48 am**

blackoil wrote:It seems there're no any acceleration references inside in these 4 pdf, besides 2d.
But you can see a Blit operation in introduction, keyword 0x158C.

Is there anyone willing to work out some codes to start the engine, I am interested in 2D acceleration now.

The rs690 includes the x1250 (mobility) right? If so, that's what I've got in my laptop so i'll probably be doing some testing in the not to distant future. I would check out the radeonhd drivers though, they are open source and might be a good starting point for developing a driver. If you need help with developing something, i'd be interested, just make sure we don't do anything specific towards one OS vs. another, since a lot of people develop non-standard OS's.

Posted: **Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:09 pm**

Hi Read4dis, I am interested, pm me please.

OSDev.org

AMD to open up graphics specs

It seems there're no any acceleration references inside

Re: It seems there're no any acceleration references inside