Defying obsolescence, AMD's 22-12 months-vintage Radeon GPUs get new Linux drivers

For users that also rely on the historical ATI R300 graphics processor collection, open source has come to the rescue all over again. This trendy update became no longer an easy repair to make, the developer says, and customers will have get admission to to it this yr.

The ATI R300 portraits processor series became first added in 2002 with the discharge of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Built on the 150nm technique and featuring an AGP interface – later to be supplanted with the aid of PCIe – the playing cards are not capable of run the modern video games, but the open-source community nonetheless helps them allowing them to run on newer Linux distributions.

Specifically, motive force updates for ATI's R300 thru R500 collection Radeon GPUs might be available this region in Mesa 24.Zero and customers may have get entry to to the update by means of the cease of the 12 months. Open-source developer Pavel Ondracka explains that the Mesa Gallium3D OpenGL driving force replace will focus on NIR decreasing, that is related to the vertex shaders of the GPUs. "The MR movements most of the remaining backend reducing into NIR, specifically ftrunc, fcsel – whilst appropriate – and flrp. The backend lowering paths are eliminated, that is a prerequisite for extra backend cleanups, he says, pointing to a MR he has that is prepared to remove backend DCE for vertex shaders."

There were numerous updates to the motive force over time by way of the open supply network in its support for the pre-R600 collection Radeon hardware, with a current trade being its model to the brand new Mesa interfaces including the transition to NIR intermediate illustration. AMD, for its element, focuses on the whole on cutting-edge technology and destiny hardware.

It is worthwhile to take a better observe the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro because the reality that they are able to nonetheless run a modern-day Linux OS is admirable. The GPU had 110 million transistors, a middle clock speed of 325MHz, 256MB of reminiscence, and 19.8GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth. It changed into the quickest GPU on the time of its release and the primary to completely aid DirectX 9.

Today its competencies are in large part constrained to showing windows and text but thanks to the open-supply community they're nevertheless purposeful. It need to also be mentioned that this current replace become not an smooth repair to make, according to Ondracka, who says he tried to get it proper 5 instances in advance however always didn't make it paintings reasonably until now.