News - AMD lists more information about Specs.

[Saist]

Story is here, by Phoronix : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=955&num=1

Source is somewhere in the IRC logs contained here : http://www.radeonhd.org/

Basically, the story is that AMD will be releasing the information needed to enable hardware accelerated Video-Playback on the R300, R400, and R500 series graphics processors. Specifically, the IDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform) and MC (Motion Compensation) information. Reading between the lines, R200 GPU's might also be included, as well as information on how to use the original Radeon to accelerate videos.

However... R600 users... and R700 users... might be left out in the cold outside of reverse engineering. The hardware video support in these chips is an integrated design, which according to Phoronix, it features a Unified Video Decoder (UVD) unit for H.264 and VC-1 video decoding. Unfortunately, releasing the UVD information means exposing how the Digital Rights Management works... which could be used to engineer a DRM-by-passing solution under Microsoft Windows... Yes, my gut reaction is somewhere along the lines of, "So?"

While AMD doesn't have the time to break up the UVD into separate portions in time for the R700 spins, future GPU's down the line, such as the R800's and R900's, have a requirement that video acceleration and Digital Rights Management must be split. One cannot depend upon the other.

This leads into AMD's work with DisplayPort, which came up before in another thread. Yes, AMD did develop DHCP, which is a DRM encryption for the DisplayPort transmission. However, usage of DisplayPort does not require usage of DHCP. They are separate. The result is that Open-Source supporters should be able to have their high-resolution hardware video playback on AMD hardware... eventually... using Open-Source software.

The catch is, the R800 chips are probably over a year away. Actually implementing OSS support is also a significant length of time after that... Also, as Phoronix notes, Once the 3D acceleration is in place, there should be accelerated video playback for the R500 series through the open-source RadeonHD driver, but that too is a ways out.

There was.. however... one comment before that...

but the fruits of that will not be present until at least the R800 or R900 generations (unless of course DRM were to get thrown out altogether)

I wonder... what... would it take... to convince AMD that they could drop DRM all-together...

[Saist]

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

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/42590_m76_rrg_1.01o.pdf

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/43372_rs690_rrg_3.00o.pdf

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need I say more?

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actually... there is more to say. Phoronix has this to report: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=960&num=1

There was a chance that AMD would also be releasing the "tcore" sample code today as well, but due to the holidays, this code isn't yet ready for release. AMD engineers use "tcore" internally for software work, prior to the availability of the silicon for future GPUs. Once released, this tcore code will help establish the open-source 3D support within DRM for the ATI R500 and R600 series. The tcore code should also help in 2D R600 acceleration. In addition, AMD will be open-sourcing part of their new proprietary OpenGL driver and will be in a state so that it can be patched into the existing R300+ Mesa driver.

... That's one of those, wait, woah, hold up, rewind moments... and I'm not sure how to comment on it... not without more information about what "part" is being opened up.

[m_pav]

Wow, that is so exciting.

I've already told nvidia my next GPU will have to be an ATI because they have stepped up. Now ATI is looking better than I ever expected. My next laptop should be about 1 year away.

Mike P