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HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

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Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#31

Post by taneliv »

shiroiushi wrote: post #20
preisschild wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they were to do that, it wouldn't really be a long term fix. Who would maintain this "unofficial" GPU driver? AMD themselves can't.

If it has that much interest, someone will put it on GitHub and maintain it. Of course, it'd be unofficial, but so was support for MP3s in Linux distros for many years: you had to download software from outside the US to make it work.

Incompatible licenses would mean that no distribution would have kernels that support it, though. It would be a second class citizen, compiled via DKMS or something, and often broken on a lot of hardware.

The difference to broken MP3 support is that if your music file does not play, you can still browse the Internet and write emails and play games, but if your graphics driver is busted, you can do none of those things from GRUB menu. In the worst case recovery mode does not work either, and you just converted your laptop into a headless server.

Troubleshooting it by browsing instructions on the mobile is no fun.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#32

Post by Kon5ole »

Bummer - some TV's are tremendous value for money as computer monitors (Small 8K tv's that sometimes sell for sub-1000 usd) but they tend to only have HDMI.

I got 8k/60 working in Linux using an nvidia card and a dp-to-hdmi adapter cable, but I have a feeling it's not meant to be supported (the same cable does not work in windows).

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#34

Post by shiroiushi »

taneliv wrote: post #31
shiroiushi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it has that much interest, someone will put it on GitHub and maintain it. Of course, it'd be unofficial, but so was support for MP3s in Linux distros for many years: you had to download software from outside the US to make it work.

Incompatible licenses would mean that no distribution would have kernels that support it, though. It would be a second class citizen, compiled via DKMS or something, and often broken on a lot of hardware. The difference to broken MP3 support is that if your music file does not play, you can still browse the Internet and write emails and play games, but if your graphics driver is busted, you can do none of those thing…

Why would the licenses be incompatible? AMD owns the code, so they can release it under whatever license they want, including GPL or BSD. They could even put into the public domain if they wanted. AFAICT, the code has not been released at all, so this point about licenses is simply wrong: it doesn't have a license at all right now.

As for a broken driver, that's an easy fix I think. From my reading of the article, there's already an existing driver, but it doesn't support HDMI 2.1 features. So it's simple: provide a fall-back driver, and require users to separately download the new driver (or maybe distros can package it themselves, I'm not sure about the legality). If something goes wrong with the unsupported driver, leave an option in the boot menu to boot in a "safe mode" that uses the old driver. So they won't get 4K @ 120Hz, but I'm sure they can live with that.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#35

Post by somat »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #19
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it though? Does it really? Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. > I don't understand this move from HDMI Forum. They're handing a win to DisplayPort. I don't think so, at least at this point. Most people don't have hardware that requires HDMI 2.1 in order to get full use out of them, and of those who do, not all of them use Linux and/or care about open source drivers. Sure, that situation m…

>Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. Don't know why you're being downvoted but it's true. Especially when you see that the HDMI standard was developed by the cartel of TV manufacturers and major movie studios[1] when DVI and Display Port already existed but those didn't generate royalties or have DRM. Despicable standard. There wasn't even a standards "war" like in VHS vs Betamax, or SD vs Memory…

To be fair, and note that I think of the hdmi foundation as the bad guys.

hdmi was not an alternative to display port, display port did not exist yet. it was an alternative to dvi, really hdmi is dvi with a sound channel and drm. And as much as I dislike the hdmi foundation I can see the benefit here.

as to hdmi vs display port... I have no idea why you don't see more display port, VESA has a proven track record as the nicer standards body, display port is a better system. probably just inertia at this point.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#38

Post by ThatPlayer »

vzaliva wrote: post #33

There was a post here on HN some time ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36681814 ), basically explaining that HDMI is terrible and DisplayPort is a much better technical solution. So, perhaps people should favour DP instead of HDMI and gradually switch?

I don't think it's quite that simple. DP is still missing HDMI features like ARC and CEC, which are important for TVs. Even on my personal computer setup, I use the HDMI 2.1 ports on my monitor/GPU over the DP 1.4 ports because the DP port just doesn't have the bandwidth for 2560x1440 @ 240hz with 10-bit colour. That requires ~30 Gbit/s, more than DP1.4's ~26 Gbit/s.

Neither my monitor nor my GPU support DP2.0 which does have enough bandwidth. So until I upgrade both, I'm using HDMI. My computer is not outdated either, there's just nothing to upgrade to. None of Nvidia's consumer GPUs support DP2.0, and I can only find 2 monitors that support DP2.0. Anyone getting new hardware now will be in a similar situation to use HDMI2.1 over DP1.4 until their next upgrade.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#39

Post by KeplerBoy »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #23
kelnos wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it though? Does it really? Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. > I don't understand this move from HDMI Forum. They're handing a win to DisplayPort. I don't think so, at least at this point. Most people don't have hardware that requires HDMI 2.1 in order to get full use out of them, and of those who do, not all of them use Linux and/or care about open source drivers. Sure, that situation m…

I have fewer display port devices now than 8 years ago.

Don't forget about usb-c. Video over usb-c is almost always display port in disguise.

Re: HDMI Forum rejects AMD's HDMI 2.1 open-source driver

#40

Post by drchaos »

trilbyglens wrote: post #27
Rinzler89 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course not. It's just protectionism and rent-seeking. Don't know why you're being downvoted but it's true. Especially when you see that the HDMI standard was developed by the cartel of TV manufacturers and major movie studios[1] when DVI and Display Port already existed but those didn't generate royalties or have DRM. Despicable standard. There wasn't even a standards "war" like in VHS vs Betamax, or SD vs Memory…

Works exactly as a free market is designed to. The strong and coercive win. That's what market dynamics are really about. Monopolies form easily and naturally unless regulation stops them.

One could argue that at least this specific tactic would not be possible without the state granting a monopoly on "intellectual property". Without that, nothing would hinder AMD from just shipping their already existing implementation.
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