Advanced Micro Devices this week said it expects to release some of its 2-D and 3-D graphic drivers to the open source community to allow for improved graphics on Linux.

The news is welcome in the gaming community, where rival graphics chipmaker Nvidia had been leading graphics acceleration hardware and drivers for open source operating systems.

AMD said it had been working with various open source groups to enhance the compatibility for its ATI Radeon graphics chips for consumer Linux users. The releases, which are planned for early September, would also include subsequent versions of ATI's Catalyst developer software package.

"As client computing on Linux continues to grow so has our support and focus on delivering best-in-class performance and compatibility for our products," Ben Bar-Haim, an AMD VP of software, said in a statement. "In the second half of 2007, we plan to deliver the most significant enhancements for ATI Radeon graphics ever for Linux and reaffirm our commitment to consumer users and the community as a whole."

With an anticipated Catalyst 7.9 software release in September, AMD said it will add Linux support for its ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics processors. The chips support AMD's unified shader architecture, which is expected to improve gameplay in such popular titles as Doom 3 and Quake 4.

Later this year, AMD said its Catalyst software package for Linux will add support for Accelerated Indirect GLX -- or AIGLX -- which powers visual 3-D user interfaces.

AMD's open source moves follow in the footsteps of its rival Intel, which submitted its Threading Building Blocks developer software as an open source project back in July.