back to article AMD emits fresh open-source GPU tools for HPC, game devs

AMD has fleshed out its notion of an openly defined GPU architecture, GPUOpen, with the launch of a bunch of open-source tools on GitHub plus a shiny new website. The move has been welcomed by the gaming press, but GPUOpen is not all about blasting people in 3D death matches – AMD also has the high performance computing (HPC) …

  1. John Pombrio

    New cover on an old book?

    There is a ton of links on the new website but as for actual new code? Not so much. The site lists blog posts that seem to offer new tools for the developers but most links lead to a newer version (and some not so new versions) of tools that have been around for a few years now.

    It is a nice and well laid out website and hopefully will grow into a good open source site for developers (and more hardware agnostic tools I hope). For now, it's just another coating on the same tools that were there before. Reminds me a lot of Crimson, right down to the same old interface once you dig down far enough but with a few new and slightly useful apps sitting on top.

    If nothing else, AMD is getting some decent web page designers online.

    1. Greg D

      Re: New cover on an old book?

      A bit like AMD's last 3 "generations" of GPU then....

      HD7900 series

      R9200 series

      R9300 series

      All the same damn GPU.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New cover on an old book?

      Nothing against AMD but their consumer website is just horrible to try and find any technical information on their products. The have added "developer" and "AMD partner" sections but as far as I can see they just don't care or know how to build an end user friendly website. They frequently ask for website feedback but ignore the recommendations suggested to make life easier for AMD customers. I'm pretty sure the actual website and AMDs end user support is farmed out to other folks.

  2. DropBear

    This stuff flies miles above my head, so I'll just get to the obvious question - will this likely mean better Linux drivers for AMD? Anyone with half a clue please do chime in... (...anyone? Bueller?)

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Bueller took the day of, I think.

    2. CFWhitman

      Better Linux drivers for AMD?

      "Will this likely mean better Linux drivers for AMD?"

      Theoretically, this will mean better open source drivers for Linux, possibly making them better than the proprietary ones at some point (in some ways they already are better, but they tend not to support the newest cards and newest features as quickly). Better collaboration between all the coders could even improve the proprietary driver. However, this is all theoretical. It doesn't mean it will necessarily work out that way in practice. AMD's previous efforts in the direction have certainly helped with the open source drivers, but it would be nice if this had a more dramatic effect. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm adopting a 'wait and see' attitude.

  3. Bronek Kozicki
    Mushroom

    All nice, but ...

    ... AMD, you really should bother about PCIe compliance of your GPUs because as they are right now, they are unusable to me because they are not doing reset properly, which makes it quite inconvenient to use from within virtual machine (with vfio passthrough). C'mon you knew how to do it for FirePro V5900 some four years ago, but this knowledge seem to have walked out of the doors in the rounds of layoffs since. Come to think of it, perhaps that's the reason there had been no new FirePro V or S series cards for some years now ...

    Anyway as the things stand, I am so fed up with reset issues with your cards, AMD, that I am going to move to "fuck you" nVidia despite their abysmal price gouging on Quadro cards and even worse "close all your code" practices. Yeah I know it's off topic, just had to blow my steam somewhere.

    AMD, you are making steps in the right direction but please do not forget the hardware side - it's the foundation on which this software will run, not the other way around!

  4. Pseudonymous Diehard

    Ok Cool...

    But can they stop dicking about and fix the image tearing problems on Linux now?

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