Version 2.4 of the driver was announced and released a while ago, so this post is on the late side. In fact, I almost forgot to write it (I did the work for this release a while ago). However, adding composited video is a major milestone so this development log wouldn't be complete without at least mentioning it.

Yes, it's official; the AmigaOS 4.x Radeon HD driver is no longer in beta. As announced in A-EON Technology's press release, version 1.0 has been released. This milestone marks the end of years of hard work and extensive testing.

Occasionally I see comments on AmigaOS related forums asking what advantage Radeon HD cards have right now (NOTE: When writing this, 3D drivers were still not available). While this question will soon be irrelevant when the Warp3D drivers arrive, it is a legitimate question. Well, today I was sent a link to a youtube video that gives a pretty clear answer to that question:

I'm pleased to announce (together with A-EON Technology) that the RadeonHD driver for AmigaOS 4.x now fully supports the Radeon HD 7000 series (Southern Islands chipsets). Full 2D acceleration including compositing has been implemented. This is another major milestone as the driver now supports the very latest graphics cards in the Radeon HD range. You can't get newer or more cutting edge than that. The RadeonHD_RM.resource also supports the 7000 series (a necessity for 2D acceleration too), which means that this latest series is also ready for its 3D drivers. This completes everything that was planned for version 1 of the driver.

A-EON Technology has just released version 0.53 of the RadeonHD driver for AmigaOS 4.x to registered users. This version adds the following:

I hope that people are enjoying the updated RadeonHD driver with Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series support. While most of the feedback has been good, there have been a few reports of problems with a few specific graphics card models. Given that the driver supports such a wide range of cards (from the Radeon X1000 series through to the Radeon HD 6000 series), it is inevitable that some specific models will have trouble.

The news is already all over the AmigaOS community; with funding from A-Eon Technology, I'm pleased to deliver 2D support for Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series cards. Support for the Radeon HD 7000 series is also in the works. This is probably the biggest milestone yet in the RadeonHD driver project.

Thanks to accelerated development, Vertical Blanking (VBlank) interrupt support for Radeon HD 2000-4000 cards (R600/R700 chipsets) is now done. If development pace had continued at the old "spare-time project" rate, then this would still be a work-in-progress. VBlank interrupts are used to achieve smooth double-buffered animation. According to one beta tester, "the 3DCompositeDemo runs a lot more smoothly now with interrupts enabled."

I am pleased to announce that Trevor Dickinson (A-EON Technology) and I have concluded an agreement for continued development of the RadeonHD driver for AmigaOS. I am currently working to get the driver fully ready for 3D, and to release quality (i.e., to version 1). Thanks to the support of Trevor Dickinson (A-EON Technology), I will be able to devote more time to RadeonHD driver development over the next few months, and achieve this goal much sooner than would otherwise have been the case.

The features being worked on are:

If you've been keeping up-to-date with AmigaOS news, you have no doubt heard that AmigaONE X1000 First Contact machines are now shipping to customers, and that Sam460ex owners (including people with AmigaOne 500s) have received an updated RadeonHD driver. Both groups are using version 0.32 of the RadeonHD.chip driver. This marks another milestone; one that I like to call, fully working 2D.