Lourens Veen wrote:
On Monday 14 August 2006 06:38, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
Lourens Veen wrote:
Now, AMD creates x86 processors, and the x86 instruction set
changes once every couple of years when some new instructions are
added. Graphics cards are evolving much more quickly. I wonder if
AMD will be willing to spend the resources to publish a new set of
documentation for three products every 6-8 months, to serve a
platform that is a niche market for 3D (obviously a chicken-and-egg
problem).
They do it with their CPU chips.
Yes, but my point was that the economics are completely different. If
they make their CPU docs proprietary then they have to write their own
compiler and probably their own OS kernel. They'd lose their entire
market, which wants to run Windows, Linux, or perhaps BSD. The cost
would be enormous. The risk of relying on external suppliers is
negligible; external implementations have proven their worth. Also, the
CPU provides a generic abstraction; the coupling between the CPU and
the OS is not at all specific (hence Linux runs on a whole lot of CPU
architectures, and GCC can compile for them), so it is technically easy
to separate the two.
In contrast, the coupling between a video card and its driver is much
tighter, the driver is essentially one half of the product. They
already write drivers, and will have to keep doing so because the board
producers aren't going to buy half a product, and open source
developers aren't going to write Windows drivers. Opening up the
drivers, or properly supporting various OSes other than Windows, only
costs more money, increases (perceived) risk, and yields hardly any
rewards, because anything other than Windows is a niche market for 3D.
Sorry but your argument doesn't make sense. Compare the cost of writing
a driver (which they do) with the cost of converting the internal
documentation to a book (which they would sell at a profit).
Currently the documentation isn't published because it would contain
trade secrets; it really is that simple.
--
JRT
_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
