[PATCH v1 05/11] FSF: hardware: graphics-card: Update AMD status.

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

Signed-off-by: Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>
---
 sviki/fsf/hardware/graphics-cards.mdwn | 48 +++++++++++++++++++++-----
 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/sviki/fsf/hardware/graphics-cards.mdwn 
b/sviki/fsf/hardware/graphics-cards.mdwn
index e41b2c4..185d99e 100644
--- a/sviki/fsf/hardware/graphics-cards.mdwn
+++ b/sviki/fsf/hardware/graphics-cards.mdwn
@@ -69,11 +69,43 @@ submodels don't have decent support, whereas others do.
 
 ## AMD
 
-After 2023, most cards work with trisquel 11, and they are more stable
-than nvidia cards. They rely much more on cpu for graphic intensive
-tasks.
-
-Before 2023 we could not these, because at least the ones we tested
-required loading a non-free firmware blob into the graphics card before
-it will do anything. Maybe there is a specific model that has some
-functionality before firmware is loaded.
+AMD graphics card or chip require nonfree software to work:
+
+  * If the display works during the boot (in GRUB for instance) it
+    means that the boot software (the BIOS/UEFI, etc) ran the nonfree
+    video BIOS that is stored on a memory chip inside the graphic card. If
+    the radeon/amdgpu driver doesn't work, the Linux kernel is also
+    able to talk to this nonfree software to make the display work.
+
+  * The Radeon and amdgpu Linux drivers need to load and run some
+    bytecode (called AtomBIOS) that is also stored somewhere in the
+    memory chip of the graphic card.
+
+Beside the video BIOS issue, another question is if these cards works
+in free distros.
+
+After 2023, most cards compatible with the radeon driver work with
+trisquel 11, and they are more stable than nvidia cards.
+
+While many feature work like multi-display, there is no GPU
+acceleration at all, so the computer will rely on the CPU instead for
+graphic intensive tasks.
+
+See the [radeon
+article](https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Components/GPUs/radeon)
+on the hardware section of the LibrePlanet wiki for more details and
+for how to add the missing cards to linux-libre (if you know how to
+compile and run a custom kernel, this should be easy for you to do).
+
+Before 2023 we could not use these, because at least the ones we
+tested required loading a non-free firmware blob into the graphics
+card before it will do anything.
+
+Some newer cards compatible with the amdgpu driver instead were not
+tested either but if they work they might have serious limitations (no
+multi display support) because no one made the amdgpu driver work in
+linux-libre yet, so the only option is to try use the BIOS/UEFI video
+BIOS instead. The same [radeon
+article](https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Components/GPUs/radeon)
+and/or the linux-libre mailing list has pointers on how to add support
+for the amdgpu driver in linux-libre.
\ No newline at end of file
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