Originally posted by robclark
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The State Of ARM SoC GPU Linux Drivers
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Originally posted by libv View PostWhat makes you believe that we are not working on the most friendly GPUs?
I picked the Mali early 2011 as i assumed this had the most promising future ahead of itself, being ARMs own GPU. Rob Clark, working for Ti and Linaro at the time, chose Adreno, as his legal position towards Mali was questionable (linaro being largely sponsored by ARM), and he, like me for my N9 work, had access to the PowerVR source and then some. Both Erik Faye-Lund and Wladimir J Van Der Laan first approached me with the intent to work on PowerVR. I successfully convinced them to look elsewhere. Erik was first, and the Tegra was the best candidate then. When Wladimir came round, Vivante was simply waiting for him.
Yes, we might seem to be spreading resources around, but at the same time we are limiting ourselves to the 4 sane GPUs, and ignoring PowerVR and other implementations. What happened for Videocore happened outside my sphere of influence, i personally would never have touched that hw with a 10ft pole, and i must applaud the fearless Videocore guys for undertaking a job which is even an order of magnitude harder than what we have to deal with on the 4 normal GPUs.
Why 4 and not 1? Well, each of the people tackling each of those GPUs wanted to take this insane task from start to finish, not just finish what someone else already did. Plus, these 4 GPUs all have decent positions in the market, and they are sane and nice and each worthy of an open source driver. By spreading around across just those 4, we have a good chance of some degree of success on some. The way things are looking now means that we will be successful on all 4, but that we just need a bit of time to finish the massive task that is REing a GPU, and then writing a proper driver for it.
So don't blame us for being slow on delivering, we are tackling an unbelievably time-consuming task, in our spare time. Don't be impatient if all you intend to do is talk about us not having delivered yet.
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Originally posted by GreatEmerald View PostAnd Lima, well, it was first, I believe. And it got lucky with the whole optimised hardware deal.
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Interesting that the most popular embedded GPU (PowerVR) is also the one with the least amount of open-source work done on it. I do wonder why that is... Fear of being sued by Imagination Technologies? The people who are most qualified to do embedded GPU work all having worked with PowerVR chips and are covered by NDAs? Something about the way the PowerVR hardware works? Lack of people interested in "scratching the itch" and working on it? (If I had any skills in GPU driver development I would definatly be interested in contributing to a 100% open driver for the PowerVR GPU in my Nokia N900 but unfortunately I lack the skills)
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