Linux 5.5 Lands Broadcom BCM2711 / Raspberry Pi 4 Bits

[pal666]

Blob no more with Panfrost kernel driver in place and Mesa state tracker.

again it's not contributed by hardware vendor, unlike support for videocore, so you are barking at wrong vendor again

[archsway]

Blob no more with Panfrost kernel driver in place and Mesa state tracker. Not many good reasons left to use libmali.

I can think of a good reason - you get to learn a lot about the framebuffer, DRM, XDummy, gl4es, software mouse cursors, weird bugs where you need to call eglSwapBuffers three times in a row with a vsync in the middle etc. and when you discover Mesa only takes 20 minutes to build rather than the 3 hours you were expecting, you realise just how much better it is than the blob driver.

Now distro's should just target GLES instead of GL for ARM64.

Why GLES and not just "desktop" GL?

With Panfrost I've encountered more issues with GLES than with normal GL, though Panfrost is likely to reach GLES 3 before GL 3.

[LoveRPi]

The problem is, they released the Raspberry Pi in 2012 and back when they started the ARM opensource situation was rather dire. There wasn't *any* opensource solution available at all, and Eben Upton just picked up one of the many closed ones. Getting stuck into proprietary mess was the only existing option.

Le Potato have a little bit more luck, they started their crowdfunding in 2017, at a time when they could pick Amlogic S905X and benefit from the work on Mali - thanks to the Lima reverse engineered driver started in five year earlier (and be then more or less functional already).

(Same for the other SBC that went for Rockchip 3399 chipset and can benefit from the panfrost opensourcing efforts).

Note that Raspberry Pi Foundation hasn't been twiddling their thumbs neither:

GPU-wise, they have sponsored Eric Anholt, which eventually gave rise to the VC4 driver (enabling an opensource mesa solution for older RPi 1-3 on VideoCore IV) and V3D driver (available on the VideoCore VI based RPi 4 from release day).

Architecture wise, they have shifted from a chipset (in RPi 1-3) where the GPU is in charge of bringing up everything (and thus having the same problem as smartphone with "Cell modem works as a northbridge and runs on proprietary blob") (Though Kristina Brooks has posted some minimal reverse engineered opensource firmware that can at least start the chipset in headless mode), to a architecture more typical of other board where the main CPU is responsible for bringing everything up and the GPU is only a peripheral. (If my understanding is correct).

It's going to take some time, but they are on the right track. They just bet on the wrong proprietary horse and are facing a bit steeper challenge until opensourcing everything.



Or try to use gl4es until then ?

That history is not accurate at all.

Raspberry Pi made no effort from 2012 to 2017 to do upstream even when they had plenty of opportunity to.

Lima was stalled and restarted because of Le Potato and yuq (getting kmscube working). Then the community carried off with it.

VC4 is still proprietary and that work only benefits Raspberry Pi since they have the SoC exclusively and you can't get the chip.

The reverse engineering open source firmware is dead because the person doing it says that it is a giant hack.

They have an extremely long track record of doing everything in a closed, proprietary, lock-in way and continue to do so with their peripherals as well.

again it's not contributed by hardware vendor, unlike support for videocore, so you are barking at wrong vendor again

No one said anything about Amlogic or ARM. No one is praising Amlogic or ARM. You can't buy any chips or boards that are not from Raspberry Pi with videocore in it so what's the point?

[pal666]

No one said anything about Amlogic or ARM. No one is praising Amlogic or ARM.

someone is barking at the only arm soc vendor who is developing open driver

You can't buy any chips or boards that are not from Raspberry Pi with videocore in it so what's the point?

the point is that chip vendor has to write its driver. broadcom is good chip vendor, amlogic or arm are bad chip vendors. don't support them with your money and propaganda

[pal666]

(addition to unapproved post above)
and btw if we are talking about "community" supported arm chips, snapdragons have best support and best manpower behind them. probably chinese mali have better board assortment though

[QwertyChouskie]

It is good that enablements are making it to the mainline kernel. It would be better if Broadcom (for the SoC), and the RPi foundation (for the board layout), pushed the enablements many months ahead of release (like some other vendors attempt to do) so that when device ships, the kernel is already ready.

Remember that the RPi 4 was released like a year earlier than the RPi Foundation was planning, they needed multiple fewer iterations on the hardware than they expected to get it into a releasable shape.

[QwertyChouskie]

...
VC4 is still proprietary and that work only benefits Raspberry Pi since they have the SoC exclusively and you can't get the chip.
...

What do you mean? The VC4/V3D drivers are a part of Mesa...

[archsway]

someone is barking at the only arm soc vendor who is developing open driver

At least one person at ARM is contributing to Panfrost.

the point is that chip vendor has to write its driver. broadcom is good chip vendor, amlogic or arm are bad chip vendors. don't support them with your money and propaganda

Broadcom is a good chip vender because they realised the RPi might move to a different vendor if they didn't develop a Free driver?

[ed31337]

Broadcom is a good chip vender because they realised the RPi might move to a different vendor if they didn't develop a Free driver?

I thought Raspberry Pi was the brainchild of current and former Broadcom engineers? Seems unlikely that RPi would move to a different vendor to me. Those guys likely have years of experience and intimate knowledge of the inner workings of these Broadcom parts, not to mention they've probably got some vested Broadcom stock options among them that they'd rather like to see go up in value.

[CommunityMember]

I thought Raspberry Pi was the brainchild of current and former Broadcom engineers?

RPi used Broadcom because Broadcom was willing to provide a SoC at a very cheap price point (under the price point for the equivalent SoC to alternative vendors at the committed volume). So, Broadcom bought their way onto the platform. Nothing wrong with taking that bet of a loss leader to gain some mind share, but it could have gone a different way (and, of course, it is even better when you are a winner).