AMD Releases UVD Engine Source Code 79
An anonymous reader writes "Years of desire by AMD Linux users to have open source video playback support by their graphics driver is now over. AMD has released open-source UVD support for their Linux driver so users can have hardware-accelerated video playback of H.264, VC-1, and MPEG video formats. UVD support on years old graphics cards was delayed because AMD feared open-source support could kill their Digital Rights Management abilities for other platforms."
Re:Yay? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes the AMD platform much more appealing for low power media boxes.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Silly AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
HDCP was not the issue here, that is the link between the DVI/HDMI port and the monitor. This was about AACS/CSS that is used by BluRay/DVD and the Windows DRM requirements, under the license agreements AMD must protect the video between it is sent to the binary driver as compressed video and is output through the DVI/HDMI port as decoded video. By exposing the hardware API they feared you may be able to snoop on the binary driver on Windows and intercept protected data, worst case it couldn't be fixed in software and AMD would lose all their certifications, all licensed software would update to refuse to play on AMD hardware and it couldn't be used by OEMs that want the "Made for Windows" stickers plus some incredibly ugly contract penalties. So yeah DRM, but not that DRM.
Re:Someone explain this to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed it is. People are getting their knickers in a twist over microcode for the GPU (which is probably just a microcode update) that probably target a custom architecture, compiled by a custom compiler, and which in themselves provide the advertised functionality (decoding h.264, etc). It's firmware, it's conjoined to the hardware (which is also closed-source) to make the hardware do something useful. By having firmware, you can add features down the line (e.g., VP8, H.265) as well, that you couldn't do with totally fixed hardware.
Note that many CPUs include lots of microcode themselves, where the advertised ISA instructions are actually small microcode programs. Of course they're less complex than video decode microcode, but they're the same thing overall. The CPU microcode is probably also generated via a custom assembler/compiler or hand-written.