Broadcom's VC4/V3D Driver Developer Parts Ways To Join Google

[abott]

*Cough* Nvidia fanboys

At least Nvidia's driver is somewhat usable. It's a hassle when you install a new kernel and have to force dkms, but still, better than every mobile driver blob on the market.

[Baguy]

Blows my mind how any chip maker can make money offering only a shitty proprietary blob.

This should have 3-5 broadcom engineers working on it non-stop.

*Cough* Nvidia fanboys

[Baguy]

They have no market to support the expense. Amlogic won the OTT/Google AndroidTV market and Broadcom can only get scraps.

The raspberry pi is a big market for Broadcom with over 100,000 units manufactured per week (might be even more nowadays, especially with the pi 4). Broadcom has even allowed the raspberry pi company (Notice i said company... Yes, they have a foundation & company) to modify the silicon for the pi 4 since they are buying at such a large scale. It's also safe to say the raspberry pi isn't going anywhere, and they don't have any plans for the long future to switch away from broadcom chips.

That said, yes, it's probably a dead market for them in any other sector, but perhaps the raspberry pi and the new open source drivers can get them into the door.

[abott]

One man for one driver... There are a bunch graphic chips out there It means you need just fifty engineers to cover up all the entire graphic drivers productions...

So should AMD fire driver devs? Your point is illogical that just because some drivers exist they need more engineers, that's not the point as realistically there's only 4-5 3D drivers that actually exist and are used and still engineered today.

The Mali blob was 4x slower than Alyssa's RE'd driver as of the end of last year with glgears. If the Broadcom would have had drivers as good earlier, would it not have been chosen over the crappy Mali driver? Probably.

[Danielsan]

One man for one driver... There are a bunch graphic chips out there It means you need just fifty engineers to cover up all the entire graphic drivers productions...

[abott]

They have no market to support the expense. Amlogic won the OTT/Google AndroidTV market and Broadcom can only get scraps.

Exactly my point. Maybe would have been able to sell chips if their drivers weren't shit. Most brands need to look at themselves and ask what they get from keeping everything proprietary. Nothing.

[LoveRPi]

Blows my mind how any chip maker can make money offering only a shitty proprietary blob.

This should have 3-5 broadcom engineers working on it non-stop.

They have no market to support the expense. Amlogic won the OTT/Google AndroidTV market and Broadcom can only get scraps.

[schmidtbag]

I think you mean Rob Clark there. I had to look in the commit log, because it could be, but I didn't see Eric there.

Huh? Did you not read the article?

[abott]

Blows my mind how any chip maker can make money offering only a shitty proprietary blob.

This should have 3-5 broadcom engineers working on it non-stop.

[andreano]

he's working on Freedreno

I think you mean Rob Clark there. I had to look in the commit log, because it could be, but I didn't see Eric there.