AMD GPUOpen: Doubling Down On Open-Source Development

[gilbadon]

I'd argue against that.

As a software developer, if your hardware doesn't with documentation, examples, and support, I don't really want to deal with it unless this is what my bosses wanted and this was the way forward. Imagine getting a microcontroller from STM or Atmel with zero to poor documentation, no examples, and not even a basic library get even basic peripheral functions to work.

This is the reason why GameWorks is popular, it let's the develoepr focus on the development of the application rather than try to fight with the hardware to get it to work.

I am confused. You are saying that open source will make it more difficult to develop software? AMD is not just going to drop supporting their products. They will continue to write drivers and give best practices and examples. Look at google for example. Yes a lot of OEM's put their own spin on the android OS, but google every year puts out an example phone for other manufacturers to build off of (Nexus) as well as software (stock android).

Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

 

[xenol]

I am confused. You are saying that open source will make it more difficult to develop software? AMD is not just going to drop supporting their products. They will continue to write drivers and give best practices and examples. Look at google for example. Yes a lot of OEM's put their own spin on the android OS, but google every year puts out an example phone for other manufacturers to build off of (Nexus) as well as software (stock android).

Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

I was taking a jab at this piece: "As a hardware company leaving the software side to others is a fantastic idea". I probably was misunderstanding you there, but taking that at face value I see no good coming out of it. Look what happened to Sony. They pushed theoretically great hardware, but they didn't really do much with it on the software side and so nobody cared about it. If you're making hardware, you better be the one who also knows how to make great software to go with that hardware and not leave it up to the community to do that for you.

Also taking your example, look at the state of the Android ecosystem now. It's a mess. Especially in regards to security issues that need to be fixed. Since Google has decentralized distribution of patches and whatnot and left it in the hands of OEMs who want nothing more than to force obsolescence of your handset even harder, you're left with scenarios like Stage Fright where billions of devices, many that aren't even a few years old, will go heavily used, but vulnerable. So if you were thinking about that, then I'd still be kind of against it. There needs to be one standard, but it should be open so that improvements can be made upon it.

 

[spentshells]

I am confused. You are saying that open source will make it more difficult to develop software? AMD is not just going to drop supporting their products. They will continue to write drivers and give best practices and examples. Look at google for example. Yes a lot of OEM's put their own spin on the android OS, but google every year puts out an example phone for other manufacturers to build off of (Nexus) as well as software (stock android).

Maybe I am misunderstanding you.

I was taking a jab at this piece: "As a hardware company leaving the software side to others is a fantastic idea". I probably was misunderstanding you there, but taking that at face value I see no good coming out of it. Look what happened to Sony. They pushed theoretically great hardware, but they didn't really do much with it on the software side and so nobody cared about it. If you're making hardware, you better be the one who also knows how to make great software to go with that hardware and not leave it up to the community to do that for you.

Also taking your example, look at the state of the Android ecosystem now. It's a mess. Especially in regards to security issues that need to be fixed. Since Google has decentralized distribution of patches and whatnot and left it in the hands of OEMs who want nothing more than to force obsolescence of your handset even harder, you're left with scenarios like Stage Fright where billions of devices, many that aren't even a few years old, will go heavily used, but vulnerable. So if you were thinking about that, then I'd still be kind of against it. There needs to be one standard, but it should be open so that improvements can be made upon it.

Oh I agree completely with you about sony and their lack of use of that amazing NVOIDIA gpu in the ps3... if only the developers could have had access to proprietary technology in a way that would allow full access to all of it's featrues in a way that prevented restriction.......


See where I am going with that? I am kidding of course and I can see your point as well that cell processor was indeed wasted.

 

[George Phillips]

The issue is that does AMD's new approach can generate cash and create a new ecosystem? If there is no any financial benefits for developers, who want to work free for a open source project? People may like it, but who's gonna stand up to do it personally for free?

 

[spentshells]

The issue is that does AMD's new approach can generate cash and create a new ecosystem? If there is no any financial benefits for developers, who want to work free for a open source project? People may like it, but who's gonna stand up to do it personally for free?

No you sell what you make from it, the open of the system is there to promote using AMD rather than Nvidia

 

[bit_user]

AMD has a grand scheme to arm game developers with open source tools, effects, libraries and SDKs. ...

Thanks for the detailed, yet concise writeup, Chris. When I first heard about Boltzman, it took me a bit to work out exactly what it was. I wish it had been described as clearly as you've done, here.

Of everything here, the CUDA conversion tool probably surprised me most. I wonder if anyone has tried it on a big project, like OpenCV.

 

[juanoxx]

good move!!!

 

[dE_logics]

Skeptical of what unixes will get from this.

 

[bane0of0god]

hmmm no mention of "media sdk" on any of the amd GPUOpen announcement