ATi Catayst Development

[PurSuiT]

Well looking for a better video card for my linux box I came across a write up on how when AMD merged with ATi they decided to start releasing the linux catayst's at the same times as the Windows driver. Since that time I nocticed that the driver was delayed a few times and once almost did not make it before months end. Some of you my find this interesting as I doubt it is writen up on an Windows site.

 

The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

 

This article has been in the works for several months now and these slides covering their Linux development overview for the AMD Graphics Products Group were finalized in April of 2007.

 

AMD provides updated display Catalyst drivers on a monthly basis for both their Windows and Linux customers, but these monthly drivers actually take about 11 weeks, or close to three months, to put together. Each release consists of pure development time for roughly one month, creating a branch for that specific release, and then carrying out quality assurance. After development has ended there is three weeks of validation, three weeks of beta testing, and then one week to bake. Any and all new features or fixes that AMD engineers would like in the release must be completed during the development stage. Granted, however, there are exceptions to that development rule for fixing any serious regressions as well as for the inclusion of distribution-specific packaging scripts. Community members with AMD's internal beta testing program maintain these packaging scripts and thus the scripts for each release are generally all updated during the beta testing stage. The bake stage in the development of the Catalyst driver is merely a buffer of time to ensure that the Windows and Linux drivers are completed and launched on the same day.

 

A regular automated build process is able to shorten the testing time since it provides a history for managing regressions and providing greater consistency between builds while removing developer tweaks from any build. Installing the driver no matter the platform is also carried out in just one step as opposed to manually installing everything.