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AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

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Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#151

Post by sheepscreek »

Aurornis wrote: post #108
sheepscreek wrote: post #74

> “Until now, it has been available for free on both Windows and Linux” If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t and still isn’t available on macOS. Also the part about Linux having a “small user base” made me chuckle. That’s the opposite of what I’m observing. If they wanted to save costs, they would have dropped Linux support altogether. But instead, they are making it a paid benefit. It can only mean that their Linux us…

There’s a lot of misinformation in this thread from people who didn’t know about Vivado until this controversy. > But instead, they are making it a paid benefit. It can only mean that their Linux user base is growing, ie. more commercial operators are turning to Linux. Vivado has always been primarily a paid product, including on Linux. The free tier has been a limited version useful for small projects or as a trial,…

> They aren’t making new paid products for a growing user base. They are continuing to support their paid Linux user base.

I never said, or even implied that they are creating a new product. They are dropping the “free tier” or licence, if you will, because either a) they are starting to see this tier being used for commercial applications b) they are maintaining a completely separate code base/product for free users and don’t want to support its development anymore.

If it was b) they could have chosen to open-source it.

Any other reason that I can think of is probable but unlikely - like, there’s a non-zero chance they could be trying to beef up the revenue on paper, before selling off the FPGA unit, to focus on servers and GPUs.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#152

Post by thayne »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #127
liendolucas wrote: post #111

AMD business should be selling FPGA hardware. The software suite should come for free. If it doesn't then people should not purchase AMD FPGAs. It is absurd that in 2026 you have to pay for such tools. It feels like buying a propietary compiler in 80's or 90's. No one wants that anymore.

FPGAs are mostly used for small series and custom hardware. If you add the software price to the FPGA unit price, it becomes more expensive if you buy, lets say, 1000 FPGAs to ship in your product. Even though you might only license the software once. It is a trade off, and I have no idea about the state and quality of Vivado. Back in the day I was tinkering with FPGAs, the Xilinx software stack was horrible.

But on the flip side, someone who buys say 50, might not buy your product at all if they have to also buy some expensive software in order to use it.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#154

Post by yencabulator »

tardedmeme wrote: post #96
sph wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how many idiotic ideas are ‘patched’ or worked around in software, it’s probably pretty easy. Especially in the world of modern GPUs when only a handful of people at the factory are able to write drivers for it. Hardware vendors lost the plot in the Winmodem era.

Winmodems are a very sensible idea. You know software-defined radio? They are that, but for modems. Expandable to support any current or future protocol, at the cost of CPU time. Why do we like SDRs but hate SDMs? That's an irrational position. The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit. Nothing stops…

> The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit.

I think you misspelled "winmodems were completely proprietary and prevented Linux community from writing their own drivers for the hardware".

Winmodems were the beginning of the era of "you cannot be allowed to use the hardware".

(As a technical solution, SDR makes perfect sense. The obstacle isn't technical.)

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#155

Post by tardedmeme »

danhor wrote: post #115
tardedmeme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winmodems are a very sensible idea. You know software-defined radio? They are that, but for modems. Expandable to support any current or future protocol, at the cost of CPU time. Why do we like SDRs but hate SDMs? That's an irrational position. The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit. Nothing stops…

> Nothing stops someone from taking the free Windows Vivado and making it run on Linux The EULA and the fact that the linux versior runs faster & has fewer bugs. > just the device-dependent backend would be a major improvement and the frontend and optimizer could be shared with other toolchains That's yosys and it's used by smaller commercial vendors. > or reverse engineering then bitstream format for these FPGAs Get…

You can just ignore the EULA. Nobody is coming to get you.

Sounds like yosys is good. Why is nobody using it? Why are we all hoping for Vivado instead of just using Yosys?

You can extract the timing information from Vivado. Such information is not copyrightable. You should be able to extract timing data and connectivity data from anything supported by the free version. You could also collaborate with someone with a really fast oscilloscope to gather some timing yourself, though that'll be extremely tedious.

Even if you just get the connectivity data and bitstream format and no timing, that's massively useful for less-than-high-speed projects. A single open source developer just has to make a contribution, doesn't have to do the whole thing in one go. The reverse engineering parts are often the most valuable, especially if they require access to hardware.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#157

Post by chrsw »

rolandog wrote: post #75
chrsw wrote: post #68

Imagine if AMD focused on making their tools better instead of resorting to sleazy tactics. Imagine if the whole industry made interoperable tools that worked on open data formats and competed on merit instead of customer lock-in. Imagine the world we could have.

We shouldn't wait for them to get their act together, as it's in the best interest of a cartel to not have competitors, compatibility, and transparency. It should be required after a certain amount of time that schematics and code be open sourced and that anti-walled-garden measures are prevalent so we get compatibility and extensibility right out of the box.

I agree. But this will be fought tooth and nail.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#158

Post by tardedmeme »

yencabulator wrote: post #154
tardedmeme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winmodems are a very sensible idea. You know software-defined radio? They are that, but for modems. Expandable to support any current or future protocol, at the cost of CPU time. Why do we like SDRs but hate SDMs? That's an irrational position. The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit. Nothing stops…

> The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit. I think you misspelled "winmodems were completely proprietary and prevented Linux community from writing their own drivers for the hardware". Winmodems were the beginning of the era of "you cannot be allowed to use the hardware". (As a technical solution, S…

Nothing about a winmodem prevented you writing a Linux driver. The problem is that nobody did write one.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#159

Post by yencabulator »

tardedmeme wrote: post #158
yencabulator wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual problem with winmodems was them breaking the established software/hardware boundary, and the Linux community not having the resources to follow suit. I think you misspelled "winmodems were completely proprietary and prevented Linux community from writing their own drivers for the hardware". Winmodems were the beginning of the era of "you cannot be allowed to use the hardware". (As a technical solution, S…

Nothing about a winmodem prevented you writing a Linux driver. The problem is that nobody did write one.

Details of the hardware were kept proprietary.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#160

Post by techcode »

rob_c wrote: post #45
techcode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that particular line of thinking applies when: 1) They continue to have a free version for Windows 2) They continue to have a version for Linux I just can't see that cost of having a free Linux version (on top having a paid Linux version) is big?

Think academic and small companies who don't pay for support opening corner case issues all the time publicly. They want none of the complex support unless you pay (reasonable imo). And for those who forget RHEL for instance has to pay salaries to back port fixes and such and the same logic applies here.

Again that reasoning falls apart because they offer free Windows version. So basically those academic/small companies are incentivised to switch to Windows (or use Wine/Proton) to use this software?

And that's aside the fact that if support cases are the actual issue - they could (and probably already do that) just not allow free users to open/submit bug/support cases.

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