Re: [gNewSense-users] ATI blobs

[Dmitry Samoyloff]

Jason Self wrote:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg00404.html
> 
> That email thread says that this is the microcode for AMD video cards
> which is required in order to have 2D/3D acceleration with otherwise
> free drivers. This text is at the beginning of each of those files.
> 
> /*
>   * Copyright 2008-2009 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
>   * All Rights Reserved.
>   *
>   * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
>   * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
>  "Software"), * to deal in the Software without restriction, including
>  without limitation * the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
>  distribute, sublicense, * and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
>  permit persons to whom the * Software is furnished to do so, subject to
>  the following conditions: *
>   * The above copyright notice and this permission notice (including the
>  next * paragraph) shall be included in all copies or substantial portions
>  of the * Software.
>   *
>   * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
>  OR * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
>  MERCHANTABILITY, * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. 
>  IN NO EVENT SHALL * IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER(S) AND/OR ITS
>  SUPPLIERS BE * LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
>  IN AN ACTION * OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
>  CONNECTION * WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
>  SOFTWARE. *
>   */

I thoroughly looked into the radeon_microcode.h and r600_microcode.h files 
(which are absent in 2.6.32) and I see that they are contain the same 
microcode as "firmware/radeon/*ihex" files in 2.6.32, so they were just moved. 
OK, their license seems to be free.

It would be a good idea to find people willing (and being able) to reverse-
engineer them for a bunch of donations.

> Are we looking at the same one?

Firmwares I pointed to in previous post are R600_rlc.bin and R700_rlc.bin. 
They are needed for interrupt controller (say, for v-sync) (and are not 
essential actually). I mentioned them only for example: they are in use by 
free driver, they are suggested to be included into Linux, they are 
proprietary.

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