ARM Talks Mali Vulkan, Lack Of Open Drivers & More @ Linaro Budapest 17

[starshipeleven]

Okay, let me paraphrase that. "ARM admits that they use stolen IP and won't open up the source because they're afraid of getting caught."

That says the same thing they did, but without all the sugar.

Another possible explanation is that they are using third party stuff under license and this prevents them from opening it up. (this is the usual reason in this field)

Although this is a sensible explanation on its own right, while "afraid of patent trolls" is plain bs, so who knows, maybe that's just the lecturer's own answer under pressure and not ARM's.

[willmore]

they gave bullshit excuse for closed source userspace driver: they are "afraid of patent trolls". somehow amd isn't afraid, intel isn't afraid, broadcom isn't afraid, even arm isn't afraid of patent trolls when writing opensource kernel driver, but with userspace driver they imagine some magic arm-only userspace-only patent trolls.
really people should avoid mali to teach those bastards some clue

Okay, let me paraphrase that. "ARM admits that they use stolen IP and won't open up the source because they're afraid of getting caught."

That says the same thing they did, but without all the sugar.

[starshipeleven]

Making vendor-specific drivers "apt-gettable", as it was called in the video, seems a much more worthwhile enterprise. Let vendors make their drivers open source for the actual benefits it brings, not for pressure.

Distributing them isn't the issue, the issue is that you're stuck with whatever crap driver the device manufactuer publishes, and you can't use newer driver versions from ARM because it's board-specific.

That said, I agree with the second sentence.

[indepe]

Making vendor-specific drivers "apt-gettable", as it was called in the video, seems a much more worthwhile enterprise. Let vendors make their drivers open source for the actual benefits it brings, not for pressure.

[starshipeleven]

nvidia probably just doesn't have many boards

No, but it is a purely technical reason, NVIDIA isn't doing this because they are good.

Mali is an IP core baked in a third-party SoC, so the blob driver needs to be adjusted to work in that particular SoC. (and ARM wants to keep it blobbed so the only way to do this is to have the third party modify it and ship a device-specific blob)

NVIDIA's GPUs are self-contained GPU SoCs communicating over standard interfaces, or integrated in NVIDIA's own embedded device SoC designs. There is no need to do these tricks to keep their sauce secret.

[pal666]

They are basically doing worse than NVIDIA (as NVIDIA driver isn't board specific).

nvidia probably just doesn't have many boards

[starshipeleven]

Do I understand it correctly that the kernel drivers are all open source because of GPL but not mainlined because there is no open source userspace driver and they don't care about mainlining it. The userspace driver from ARM is closed source because some high-paid staff do the wrong decisions. So the community could reuse the kernel driver and write an userspace driver through reverse engineering with strace.

Small addition: the "opensource" kernel drivers are sugarcoat for a precompiled and board-specific blob.

They are basically doing worse than NVIDIA (as NVIDIA driver isn't board specific).

[indepe]

Quote, in response to a question: "I agree, Vulkan is the future."

[pal666]

Do I understand it correctly

yes .

[pal666]

and since all arm soc vendors are switching to risc-v, arm is going to suffer