Raspberry Pi's Vulkan Driver Likely To See Better Performance This Year

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi's Vulkan Driver Likely To See Better Performance This Year

V3DV as the open-source Vulkan driver within Mesa for Broadcom VideoCore hardware is most notably used by the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer. This Vulkan driver continues improving with likely this year to bring more performance optimizations and possibly work on Vulkan 1.2 conformance...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=V3DV-Vulkan-RPi-2022

[monkeynut]

Really need a respin of the Pi 4 now since it's been out so long. Driver improvements are welcome but will only go so far. Addressing the shortcomings of the VC6 to enable newer OpenGL versions would be welcome.

[coder]

Really need a respin of the Pi 4 now since it's been out so long. Driver improvements are welcome but will only go so far.

Exactly. The sad part is that, no matter how much they optimize its software stack, the Pi's GPU will always be far slower than the iGPU of laptops from even probably 10 years ago.

And the problem with changing that is that it pretty much come down to adding transistors. The Pi's current 28 nm process was the cheapest per transistor, in 2019, and I expect it still is. That wouldn't necessarily be a deal-breaker, since fab costs tend to decrease with time. However, 28 nm was already a fairly mature process and due to the supply crunch, costs have probably gone up!

[brent]

Yeah I'm sure Raspberry Pi Trading are in no real hurry to release a new Raspberry Pi due to the manufacturing and supply chain issues. Look at the prices of the Pi 4 - they've only gone up in the last year...

[sykobee]

Yeah, the next viable process tech is 12nm, which is still very popular and more costly - however it is a decent transistor density improvement.
I agree for the desktop/media users of the RPi that the GPU needs to be dragged forward significantly. For others it's irrelevant... OTOH there's a few 22nm processes around, GlobalFoundries FDSOI one for example.

[caligula]

Yeah, the next viable process tech is 12nm, which is still very popular and more costly - however it is a decent transistor density improvement.
I agree for the desktop/media users of the RPi that the GPU needs to be dragged forward significantly. For others it's irrelevant... OTOH there's a few 22nm processes around, GlobalFoundries FDSOI one for example.

Rpi has so many limitations, need 8 cores, 64 GB of RAM like on NUCs, 16x PCIe 5.0, USB 4, 10 Gbps ethernet, Wifi 6E. The dual 4k/60hz outputs are nice.

[kwinz]

The biggest missing items on the Pi4 have always been:

• an exposed PCIe slot. Pi5 should come with PCIe3.0x4 in m.2 or something.
• And 4k H.264/VP9/AV1 hardware decoding. The Pi4 is not good for websurfing and video watching because it's missing VP9.

The Pi Foundation is very keen to emphasize that they are not chasing the best specs because their focus is *education*.
But IMHO being able to watch the latest Youtube videos in decent resolution is very high on the education priority list. And PCI could solve both the expandability and the SD card dying problem at once.

[blackshard]

Rpi has so many limitations, need 8 cores, 64 GB of RAM like on NUCs, 16x PCIe 5.0, USB 4, 10 Gbps ethernet, Wifi 6E. The dual 4k/60hz outputs are nice.

Then it would cost 350€, not 35. What's the point of this? If you want an SBC you take an SBC, if you want a PC you buy a PC...

[qarium]

o please release the 8GB version of the pi4 400...

with the newest 64bit cpu performance and now improved vulkan performance this would be nice.

[caligula]

Then it would cost 350€, not 35. What's the point of this? If you want an SBC you take an SBC, if you want a PC you buy a PC...

The Mini STX / 5x5 form factor is kind of ok, but you don't necessarily need to replace the CPU. Just solder it on board as well as the 2 x 32 GB SO-DIMM memory modules. Those boards often also contain unnecessary ports like M2, SATA, VGA, serial. 4 x USB, ethernet and 2 x DP/HDMI is sufficient.

Here's a great example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgkzLayauA but this could use the 5700G APU. This is also pretty neat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGoqc2NyhYc

BTW just look at the comments in the second video:
- Sadly, only one DP output. If it had used all 4 outputs, it would see much more use.
- Also, 10G Ethernet would be nice. If there are all those PCIe lanes free, why not put some of them to good use?
- Thanks for making this video! I ordered this exact unit with 64gigs of ram two weeks ago
-Now imagine RDNA2 and DDR5 + VRAM cache. That will be the dream.
- This is too old. I can't wait to see a mini PC with really powerfull and more affordable APU like Ryzen 7 6800H.
- Exactly the thing I am looking for. supersmall, 2xLAN, 2xM.2 SSD and 32GB Ram with low power. That is my new proxmox server right there
- With a 4 TB classic drive (+100€) a second SSD of 1 TB for games, big files or software, a speed SSD for C:/ of 500 GB. perfect !