Intel Releases Programmers Reference Manual
The Intel Graphics Development Group and Intel Open Source Technology Center are pleased to announce the release of the Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family and Intel® G35 Express Chipset Graphics Controller Programmers Reference Manual under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This four volume set of manuals documents all portions of the hardware necessary to produce and maintain a complete driver, including accelerated media encoding and decoding, 2D and 3D graphics.Containing over 1600 pages of text and figures, the Programmers Reference Manual includes everything from low level register definitions and discussions on how each functional hardware block works through descriptions about the hardware architecture. Each documented feature includes a discussion on how the hardware works and how the hardware designers expected the software to operate.
The manual was written to support external software developers, allowing them to work independently of Intel support resources. The availability of this manual enables the free software community to develop and maintain software related to Intel graphics hardware for many applications and operating systems. This release demonstrates Intel's continued commitment to supporting the free software community using the best practices of open source software development.
"This announcement underlines how forward thinking companies like Intel establish themselves as leaders supporting legal sharing of needed specifications in the free and open source software communities which in turn helps their overall core business. This move is crucial to bridge the gap between the sharing and the commercial economies and should be emulated by more companies."
Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons
"Congratulations to Intel for releasing a set of comprehensive documents that ensures that Linux will work wonderfully on their hardware with open and supportable drivers."
Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux Driver Project