"Chai" As An Effort For Reverse-Engineered ARM Mali T-Series Graphics

[phoronix]

Phoronix: "Chai" As An Effort For Reverse-Engineered ARM Mali T-Series Graphics

A Phoronix reader this week sent in notice of a new Git repository seeking to provide a reverse-engineered driver for ARM's Mali T-Series graphics...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ARM-Mali-Chai-T-Series-Driver

[FastCode]

<spoiler>The joke at the end of README.md is that the word "chai" means tea in many languages. e.g. Persian</spoiler>

[rene]

The more reversing the better! However, the vendors should just publish proper register specs, the amount of wasted time for everyone involved is just ridiculous; and it hurts their own market share in the long run (look at Imagination / PowerVR ;-).

[notgonnasay]

Not sure I see the point. The T-series is already outdated and is not found in any useful dev boards, with the new G-series being in the latest vendor hardware, including samsung phones and the hikey960 dev board.

[simburde]

Meanwhile Lima resurrection project sees constant activity https://github.com/yuq/mesa-lima.

[starshipeleven]

The more reversing the better! However, the vendors should just publish proper register specs, the amount of wasted time for everyone involved is just ridiculous; and it hurts their own market share in the long run (look at Imagination / PowerVR ;-).

When most of their market is companies buying a SDK with blobs, not publishing anything is not hurting them at all.

[starshipeleven]

Not sure I see the point. The T-series is already outdated and is not found in any useful dev boards, with the new G-series being in the latest vendor hardware, including samsung phones and the hikey960 dev board.

Latest Mali are improvements over the older ones not total redesigns.
So once they can get support for a generation the work of developing drivers for the next one is easier.

There is a large amount of media-center-ish devices with Mali T-series, with Rockchip and Amlogic SoCs for example.

[notgonnasay]

Latest Mali are improvements over the older ones not total redesigns.
So once they can get support for a generation the work of developing drivers for the next one is easier.

The ISA is completely redesigned. See https://www.anandtech.com/show/10375...t-and-mali-g71

There is a large amount of media-center-ish devices with Mali T-series, with Rockchip and Amlogic SoCs for example.

Not by the time a driver is done, there won't be. The T-series looks like a dead end. The 400-series never seems to die, and hopefully the G-series might have a longer shelf-life. So probably makes more sense to target 400 and G-series, than the T-series.

[wizard69]

The more reversing the better! However, the vendors should just publish proper register specs, the amount of wasted time for everyone involved is just ridiculous; and it hurts their own market share in the long run (look at Imagination / PowerVR ;-).

i have to wonder if Imaginations new owners will change the attitude at the company with respect to device specs. Seems like a fresh approach is need to recover from the Apple departures.

[Djhg2000]

Not sure I see the point. The T-series is already outdated and is not found in any useful dev boards, with the new G-series being in the latest vendor hardware, including samsung phones and the hikey960 dev board.

The RK3288 SoC is pretty popular though, it can be found in the ASUS Tinker Board and Pine64 among a whole pile of other less known boards out of China. IIRC even their new RK3399 uses T-series graphics.