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Demo Of The Lima Driver On The KDE Spark Tablet

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  • Demo Of The Lima Driver On The KDE Spark Tablet

    Phoronix: Demo Of The Lima Driver On The KDE Spark Tablet

    The recently announced KDE Spark Tablet has an ARM Mali 400 as its graphics processor, which right now is backed by a closed-source user-space driver but that's changing thanks to the Lima driver that's providing a reverse-engineered open-source ARM Mali driver. Here's a demo of the Lima driver's Limare stack running on the KDE Spark Tablet hardware...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    When I buy a tablet it has to replace my phone, so I don't think I'll be buying a Spark as it doesn’t have a sim slot.

    The good thing about this driver (lima) is that it should be able to modified to work with the next GFX chip in the mali-400 family coming in 2013 that is supposed to be massively faster.

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    • #3
      Q: the most important reason why arm is so big these days is because it is hitting performance/watt that x86 cannot get even close to today. Top end performance is of course x86, but bottom end, where battery life matters, arm is unbeatable.

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      • #4
        Not to mention a windpad costs $600 O.o I mean seriously that is way out of the tablet sweetspot of $100-150

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        • #5
          Originally posted by cb88 View Post
          Not to mention a windpad costs $600 O.o I mean seriously that is way out of the tablet sweetspot of $100-150
          I agree. I don't have money problems but I refuse to pay $399+ for a tablet.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Qaridarium
            i don't understand the hype about closed source hardware?

            sure they write opensource drivers now but other hardware do have opensource drivers supported by the hardware company them self.

            for example: MSI WindPad 110W
            What a terrible example. Sure you get to use opensource drivers but you pay the windows tax for that privilege...

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Qaridarium
              i don't understand the hype about closed source hardware?

              sure they write opensource drivers now but other hardware do have opensource drivers supported by the hardware company them self.

              for example a amd-hardware based table. [tablet]

              for example: MSI WindPad 110W

              in the end they only hype the ARM chip based solution only because its "cheap"
              Wrong, show me an Open AMD ARM 3D implementation then we will talk, AMD have Not written any 3D Floss code for their gfx as found inside the so called massive "infotainment" sector, as found inside the freescale ARM A8 i.mx5 device in the years its been available, thats right AMD don't open oss their gfx,bsp,sdk in the ARM space ether.

              ARM routinely measure their SOC on performance/Milliwatt (The milliwatt is equal to one thousandth (10−3) of a watt) not performance/watt , show me any x86 based core SOC (System On a Chip) today that can say the same and mean/show it generally
              Last edited by popper; 11 February 2012, 04:27 PM.

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              • #8
                Missing the point

                The Zenithink C71 is already available -- by default it ships with Google's Android. The Zenithink C71 sells for $180~200 USD in the US, which makes it $80~100 USD less than what the re-branded KDE Spark is set to retail for with its open-source desktop experience. Sure, some of the proceeds of Spark sales benefit the KDE project, but you might as well buy the unimpressive Zenithink hardware that's already available and you can always donate any amount of money independently to the KDE project (or any other worthy free software project) and load the open-source software yourself.
                Sure, you can grab the same hardware and load all the software manually for free. But I hope not many people are actually going to do that. Please support the idea of having an open stack running on tablets by buying them. Don't support the buying of GPL violating hardware. You better believe that lots of people are going to be looking very closely at how well this KDE tablet sells. If it's a flop, you can kiss any chance of linux tablets not running android goodbye. A success could lead to lots more, possibly even bringing in other players like an Ubuntu tablet, e17 tablet, and so on.

                It's kind of like the humble indie bundles - sure, you can buy them for a penny, but if we want things like that to continue we have to make sure they appear to make business sense.

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                • #9
                  @Michael Phoronix
                  OMG, that chocolate thingy makes my brain rush out Dopamine like crazy even from seeing it!


                  Hopefully this KDE tablet will see some working free drivers because that would be finally an inducement to buy a tablet for me. Still the price difference with an extremely similar tablet that is already being offered is somewhat ridiculous. And then having known GPL violations... humph.
                  We just recently had this discussion about a GPL free busybox so "accidental GPL violations" would be a thing of the past. I actually wonder how enterprises that employ more lawyers than engineers (the proposal came from Sony, Tim Bird) can "accidentally" violate any license. You see where this will lead to. I mean, if they were so scared about their crappy code they could still do a cross license agreement with the devs and give them money instead of free code back.

                  The problem is also that fewer companies deliver assemble-yourself computer parts (that is what made x86 PC so great, you had modularity everywhere and could exchange and combine things like you needed) and there is more non-general-purpose stuff that is closed and limited. Because the "willing mindless stupid masses" are buying it without hesitation or thought. Cellphones completely locked and closed, with branding and all kinds of nonsense. Unrepairable, unexchangeable accumulators and so on.

                  I really hope these devs will manage to get a free system running, that would also be worth the extra cost for me.
                  Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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                  • #10
                    Q: you spew quite a lot of nonsense here.

                    First off, i have been running 32bit operating systems for quite a while here. Even on the brandnew laptop i had to install 3 weeks ago. Reason: maemo6 build system was not too happy on 64 bit, and the PowerVR driver shipped for the N9 definitely did not build on a 64 bit system (i am not sure whether they have fixed their buildsystem already). PAE gives me the advantages of 64bit without such disadvantages.

                    Now, as for arm being cheaper... If you take a rather severe mental shortcut, which you definitely do here, then yes, arm is cheap. Others will see this because ARM seems to be the right tool for the job.

                    Advantages of ARM based SoCs versus x86 CPUs + chipsets are:
                    1) Purpose built set of functionality in a single package:
                    * single chip, lessened BOM.
                    * less complex routing: cheaper board, and much, much cheaper manufacturing.
                    2) Lessened power requirements:
                    * less cooling needed.
                    * smaller battery for same battery life.

                    Right tool for the job definitely equals lower price. Your use of the word "cheap" with the "crap" connotation is simply completely off.

                    But, this tablet is cheap as in crap though, it is the bottom end of _useful_ tablets you can buy. And it is useful, it plays a nifty angry birds, youtube videos, just what its target audience needs. It already is lightyears ahead of the previous generation of cheap chinese tablets though, and therefor a nice toy. I might end up buying my 60y old mother one, she seems the perfect user for a tablet like this.

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