Lima Driver Merged Into Mesa 19.1, Providing Open-Source OpenGL For Older Mali GPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Lima Driver Merged Into Mesa 19.1, Providing Open-Source OpenGL For Older Mali GPUs

Seven years after Luc Verhaegen started the Lima driver project for open-source Mali graphics -- one of the first reverse-engineered, open-source Arm graphics driver attempts in general -- while he is no longer involved with the initiative, developer Qiang Yu picked it up and has successfully worked it into a functioning open-source OpenGL Gallium3D driver that has been merged into Mesa Git...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-19.1-Picks-Up-Lima

[alpha_one_x86]

The world is not fair, the fully working radv freesync patch is 27 lines and it is not mainlined when this untested lima driver has 17k lines. Wake up x86 mesa developers.

I have another alternative for Mali 400/450 graphics? If not it's better untested than nothing.

[kenren]

The world is not fair, the fully working radv freesync patch is 27 lines and it is not mainlined when this untested lima driver has 17k lines. Wake up x86 mesa developers.

lima driver isn't untested, it's incomplete.
However it's since 5 years that I'm waiting for a mali 400 driver, radv is a Vulkan driver so a newer technology compared to mali 200/300/400/450.
IMHO can't be compared, all the gallium x86 driver are years ahead of the driver arm...
compare radeon gallium driver with freedreno gallium driver (and considers that freedreno is the most complete).

[Veto]

A big thanks to Luc, Qiang and who else participated in bringing this forward.

[FireBurn]

A big thanks to Luc, Qiang and who else participated in bringing this forward.

Didn't Luc give up on this shortly after starting work on it years ago?

[macemoneta]

The GPU may be old, but the A20 (which uses the Mali 400) was very popular. There are many devices still in use.

[starshipeleven]

Didn't Luc give up on this shortly after starting work on it years ago?

Not shortly after starting it, he gave up after a few years. At least off the top of my head

[smitty3268]

Didn't Luc give up on this shortly after starting work on it years ago?

He also said that the project was doomed and that anyone who attempted to work on it would be blacklisted by the industry and have terrible things done to them...

Anyway, I guess the project has changed quite a bit since the initial work. As I recall, Luc was originally trying to do this as a classic driver, so I'm assuming the new developers were the ones to port it to Gallium.

[kenren]

He also said that the project was doomed and that anyone who attempted to work on it would be blacklisted by the industry and have terrible things done to them...

Anyway, I guess the project has changed quite a bit since the initial work. As I recall, Luc was originally trying to do this as a classic driver, so I'm assuming the new developers were the ones to port it to Gallium.

Yes, Luc have started the reverse engineering, the information was used years later for write a totally diferent driver.