Is that documentation sufficient for a full-featured open-source driver on par with their proprietary ones?
I ask so because, for the past decade or so, I've been using Intel CPUs and GPUs exclusively for their excellent Linux support. If AMD can provide the same or better level of support, I'd consider switching.
These new chips aren't supported in their Mesa driver, no. They probably will be in a few months, albeit in a buggy state where some display outs may not work and the HSA isn't in use at all.
And since its radeonSI based, you don't have opengl past 3.1 or opencl, and you won't likely ever see the bulleted features like Mantle or TrueAudio.
Though, on the other side of the isle, Intel just got support for opengl 3.3 in their driver, and they don't support opencl at all on their IGP parts.
The only real toss between them when comparing gpu freedom is that Intel uses wholly foss drivers while AMD ships proprietary boot firmware that they have staunchly opposed getting rid of.
Then again, AMD supports coreboot on all their chipsets and don't use proprietary signed microcode payloads on their cpus. And even in the driver space, Intel ships firmware blobs for their wireless NICs, so they aren't saints there either.
And Intel pushed uefi, which is such a colossal PITA that makes me angry on any board I've dealt with it on. And even when Google pressures them into coreboot support on some boards only for Chromebooks, they still use firmware blobs so obfuscate the chipset anyway.
Though Intel is pushing Wayland forward, mostly for Tizen, but still they are paying a lot of Wayland devs, which is a good thing. AMD participates in kernel development, but not nearly as much as Intel. Then again, Intel is a magnitude larger company and has wiggle room on their budgeting since they are dominate the industry so much with their ISA stranglehold, so I have to give AMD some credence there.
In the end neither company is "great' for open source while the other is bad. They both do good and evil in the ecosystem (unlike Nvidia, where publishing 2d documentation is supposed to be good enough). I try to support amd when I can, if I have just an "A or B without preference" choice, since they are the underdog. Also, they produce a lot more open standards - they pushed opencl, they are supporting edp for variable refresh screens, etc - whereas Intel keeps making proprietary technologies only for their stuff like smartconnect or rapid storage.
Though some recent AMD technologies like TrueAudio and Mantle haven't been open at all, so once again, it is a toss.
[1] http://developer.amd.com/community/blog/2013/10/18/amd-gpu-3...