Ageing Radeon HD 2000 through 6000 series graphics cards just got a new lease of life, following changes to the AMD R600 Gallium 3D driver, which arrive with a surprise touch of artificial intelligence. The firmware, developed and maintained by third-party developers via Mesa, an open-source implementation of popular graphics APIs, now includes sign-offs from both a human developer and an assistance declaration from GitHub Copilot.
In the merge request, developer Gert Wollny comments that they made changes to the driver to clean up shader compiler code. Wollny highlights that they used Copilot to assist with code refactoring, but the extent of the artificial intelligence’s influence on the 59 commits is unclear.
AI-assisted software development is becoming more commonplace by the day, and the likes of GitHub Copilot naturally hold large appeal to small teams of voluntary developers to speed up deployments, as is the case here. After all, we’re talking about a driver that services the near-20-year-old Radeon HD 2000 through 6000 series.
For those who don’t remember, or dare I say weren’t even alive at the time, the ATi Radeon HD 2000 series debuted all the way back in 2007. These graphics cards marked the first to hit store shelves under the stewardship of ATi’s relatively new owner, AMD, which retired support for this GPU family many years ago.
I have no problem with developers deploying drivers, new or old, with the assistance of artificial intelligence, particularly in niche cases like this. However, I believe it’s reasonable to request any use remains documented, as well as performing due diligence through conducting quality checks. After all, no one wants sloppy vibe-coded software.
In any case, regardless of AI involvement, developments like this keep me thankful that we have open-source developers to help keep retro hardware alive. Even if, in this case, it gave me an uncomfortable reminder that we last saw the ATi brand over 15 years ago on the Radeon HD 5610.
