Does ATI even test their drivers before they release them? :P I've found two bugs in their GLSL implementation already. One is minor: the #version preprocessor directive isn't supported. On the other hand, supporting #version would be simple. A high school intern could add it. The other one is more serious. I must have started exceeding the instruction limits or something because LinkProgramObjectARB was simply crashing when my program got too long. :o

It's also way too easy to go into software fallback mode. The optimizer kind of sucks -- the following code was throwing me into software: 

float getOffset(int i) {
  float f = vector[i];
  ...
}

void main() {
  float offset = getOffset(0) + getOffset(1) + getOffset(2) + getOffset(3);
  ...
}

Whereas a simple change took me back into hardware: 

float getOffset(float f) {
  ...
}

void main() {
  float offset = getOffset(vector[0]) + getOffset(vector[1]) + getOffset(vector[2]) + getOffset(vector[3]);
  ...
}

Even *I* could write an optimizer better than that. (And I plan to, by the end of next year. More later.) It's not like the GPU is complicated: there's a tiny set of instructions, no (well, limited now) branching, and no stack or function call logic. Linear execution with tons of registers... a compiler's dream!

Meh! I'm standardizing on GLSL nonetheless. Hopefully things start to look up. :)