The HDMI Forum has rejected AMD’s request to make driver support for HDMI 2.1 open-source thus continuing limited display options for the GPU manufacturer. AMD’s engineers have been working for over three years to try and include driver support for HDMI 2.1+ in its open-source Linux kernel driver but continue to run into a roadblock with the HDMI Forum which will not grant them open-source implementation options. The topic has been ongoing and was revisited by AMD Linux Engineer Alex Deucher who explained the current lack of progress.
Comment on Gitlab (via Phoronix):
“The HDMI Forum has rejected our proposal unfortunately. At this time an open source HDMI 2.1 implementation is not possible without running afoul of the HDMI Forum requirements.”
Phoronix reports that bug reports spanning from resolution/refresh rates such as 4K@120 Hz and 5K@240 Hz not being available via the AMD Linux drivers. Other AMD graphics cards users on Gitlab have also reported issues with color depths and resolution/refresh rates when connecting multiple displays when using HDMI. They have requested that AMD add additional disclaimers to its product descriptions indicating limitations related to its drivers and HDMI usage. Most users on the forum are supportive of team red’s efforts but since the HDMI Forum has rejected its requests there is a growing number expressing sentiment that AMD should take further steps to inform consumers about the limited display options their GPUs currently have due to this issue.
Phoronix updated its report to add that AMD had been hard at work to create its own code to add HDMI 2.1+ features to its Linux driver but that seems to have now been done in vain.
Per Phoronix:
“Update for added context [20:30 EST]: Further insult to the injury is also that it sounds like AMD spent months of engineering time prototyping code for showing HDMI 2.1+ features within their internal open-source AMDGPU codebase to provide for review to the HDMI Forum. If that never sees the light of day now, it’s all a largely wasted effort of significant resources.”
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →Yeah I saw this article the other day on Phoronix and I was very surprised. I had no idea that you couldn't get HDMI 2.1with open-source drivers! One of the best things about Intel and AMD GPUs is how well they work with everything in Linux because the drivers are open-source. nVidia's closed-source proprietary drivers are very good, but also a real pain in the @ss. They don't work very well within the Linux ecosystem. I'm suffering with them on Linux, stuck on X11 with a whole host of limitations and unable to use Wayland (among a bunch of other issues). But on my laptop with Intel iGPU I can use Wayland just fine. I'm wondering if Intel GPUs also can't use HDMI 2.1 since their drivers are also open-source. I guess this is the one time where nVidia drivers give you an advantage in Linux.
F*ck the HDMI Forum, buncha asshats.
Yeah, somewhere in the gitlab forum threads someone said that NVIDIA is a member of HDMI Forum so it makes sense if they're a shareholder.
Aaahhh, is that so?
[URL unfurl="true"]https://hdmiforum.org/members/[/URL]
Yupz, I don't see AMD or Intel in there.
;)
Interesting who's who on that list.
That's so weird as I have the exact opposite experience. Other than closed hardware that comes with AMD GPUs (Like the Steam Deck for example) I have way better experience with getting Nvidia GPUs working on Linux for my needs than I do AMD. I don't mess with Intel GPUs (iGPU or their discrete GPUs).
I purposely don't buy AMD GPUs simply because nearly all of my hosts with GPUs run Linux.
This isn't to say that it's easy, as Nvidia can be a pain sometimes too, but I've had far better luck with getting Nvidia working than AMD.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-Firmware-Blobs-HDMI-2.1[/URL]
Not that anyone uses the Nouveau drivers because they are sh1t for anything that is Maxwell generation or newer.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Explicit-Sync-Week[/URL]
"KWin explicit sync support was merged to much excitement. Wayland explicit sync support is coming together in the ecosystem for improving the NVIDIA proprietary driver support and making Wayland more robust in general."
[URL unfurl="true"]https://pointieststick.com/2024/04/12/this-week-in-kde-explicit-sync/[/URL]
"In a nutshell it allows apps to tell the compositor when to display frames on the screen, reducing latency and graphical glitches. The effect should be particularly noticeable with NVIDIA GPUs, which only support this rendering style, and not having support for it on Wayland was the most common source of random graphical glitches and slowdowns."
[URL unfurl="true"]https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync.html[/URL]
"...The proprietary NVidia driver doesn’t support implicit sync at all, and neither commonly used compositors nor the NVidia driver support the first explicit sync protocol, which means on Wayland you get significant flickering and frame pacing issues. The driver also ships with some workarounds, but they don’t exactly fix the problem either..."
"With the explicit sync protocol being implemented in compositors and very soon in Xwayland and the proprietary NVidia driver, all those problems will finally be a thing of the past, and the biggest remaining blocker for NVidia users to switch to Wayland will be gone."
Well, we'll see what happens...