Freedreno GPU Driver Still Being Actively Developed

While there hasn't been much to report on with the open-source Freedreno driver in recent months -- a reverse-engineered attempt at creating a free 3D driver for Qualcomm's Adreno/Snapdragon graphics processor -- it's still being developed with new Git commits continuing to be common.

Freedreno is the open-source graphics driver that Phoronix exclusively announced in April as being the pet project of Rob Clark, the Texas Instruments developer working on the OMAP graphics stack but decided to start reverse-engineering the Qualcomm Linux graphics driver in his spare time. The last news to report on for Freedreno was late October when Rob began eyeing up a Gallium3D driver for Freedreno.

There isn't yet any magical Gallium3D driver for this ARM hardware, but Freedreno is still an active project. There's the Git commit history with the most recent activity being just days old. This month already Rob has committed some fixes, a new 3D test case, support for running with X11/Mesa, and support for GEM buffers. The xf86-video-freedreno DDX driver meanwhile hasn't been touched since late October when it received DRI2 support (its Git repository).

Expect more out of the Freedreno driver in 2013. There's also a Lima (ARM Mali) open-source graphics driver announcement that's imminent. We're also still waiting to see the PowerVR open surprise. For those wanting to become involved with the open-source Freedreno project, visit its GitHub project page.