Talk Of An ARM Vendor Open-Sourcing Their 3D Driver?

[AndyChow]

Mali would be a very interesting one, since it is also found in some INTEL chips....

You're talking about SoFIA? I think that's only available in China.

[ids1024]

I really don't get why they don't open-source gpu drivers. It's not like the competition, with different hardware, will reuse code. If they own hardware architecture patents, the competition is automatically locked out. And if another company would try to reuse some code, well, lol, ever try to reuse code? It's always longer than starting from scratch.

My understanding is that it's not about the code itself, but rather that the driver reveals certain details about how the hardware works.

[M@yeulC]

IIRC, PowerVR were ones of the ones who worked on vulkan closely with the khronos group. It wouldn't surprise me if it was them. Plus, I am under the impression that we might see more of their devices in the future.

Please let it be ARM / Mali. That would be wonderful. I actually have a device with that one here. PowerVR / ImgTec. will be of limited use since afaik their chips are modified even within a series for each vendor. Would be a good bunch of work. But ARM's own approach, yeah, that would be a nice start. Question still is - since ARM just licenses IP cores and stuff - how far actual HW implementers might have bent the matter.

Mali would be really great, yeah. But even if they provided a reference OSS (GPL! GPL is VERY important here) driver, we would likely see a lot more of open drivers from the various implementers out there.

Note that I insisted on the GPL for obvious reasons, but that might actually refrain _dumb_ companies from buying their tech if there is a GPL driver, especially if that's the only one available. A BSD license might work here as well, even though companies are less likely to release their modified drivers.

[caligula]

My understanding is that it's not about the code itself, but rather that the driver reveals certain details about how the hardware works.

Also most of the other vendors don't really want competition from Allwinner. They simply can't win. Orange Pi boards are half the price of Raspberries, but have more I/O bandwidth and fast CPUs. Now imagine if they also had accessible graphics. Imagine the same for tablets, phones, set-top boxes. Nobody can compete if your stuff costs $15 per SBC and the other vendors charge $30 or more.

[caligula]

Does anyone know how much the RPi Uptons are paying ARM for withholding the Mali docs and drivers? I smell a conspiracy.

[chithanh]

You're talking about SoFIA? I think that's only available in China.

Well, ASUS has been selling quite a selection of Atom x3 tablets in Europe.
Plus some smaller European vendors like Odys or Point of View also offer such devices.