14 DAY TRIAL // AMD is reported to have released the programming specifications of the M76 and RS690 graphics processors. Once the information is widely available, it will help the free software community to figure out the inner mechanisms of the two graphics processors. Until now, only the RadeonHD developers were to receive this type of documentation, but AMD decided to encourage the open-source driver development for its products.
AMD has previously released more than 900 pages of technical specifications made up of register reference guides for the RV630 and M56 GPUs. The documentation was only partial, but proved vital in for further developments in the open-source Avivo driver.
There have been no other technical papers published since September 2007, as AMD has brought some other developers to the project. One of them is Alex Deucher, who has a long history in developing the open-source xf86-video-ati driver. He recently joined the company and will focus on his open-source involvement as well as on preparing further documentation that the company will release to the open-source community.
Another factor that results in delays is related to legal advising, as the company's employees and their legal advisors are reviewing the internal documentation in order to determine what should be released and what should be kept off to protect the corporate patents. The company is also facing documentation gaps that need to be filled in before releasing a new specifications set.
The open-source development groups that are working on replacement Radeon drivers will surely welcome the next set of specifications. The newly released set covers the display output options, which would allow developers to write more robust drivers. Hopefully, the next release will focus on the 2D engine and the methods of achieving hardware acceleration from within the driver.
"This documentation drop contains LVTMA and i2c information. This information was originally missing with the RV630 drop for covering the Radeon HD 2000 series. LVTMA is the second digital output block on the ATI R500/600 series and can handle TMDS and LVDS for DVI/HDMI and LCD panels, respectively. Only the first TMDS block was documented in the previous documentation release," the report reads.
The new drop of technical documentation can be downloaded from the x.org website.