Linux 4.6 To Offer Faster Raspberry Pi 3D Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 4.6 To Offer Faster Raspberry Pi 3D Performance

Broadcom's Eric Anholt sent in the VC4 DRM driver updates today for DRM-Next merging to in turn get into the Linux 4.6 kernel merge window...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.6-RPi-Faster-3D

[dh04000]

20%-30% improvement in the opensource driver or the proprietary driver from broadcom?

[WebMac]

So does that mean the N64 emulation will run perfectly now?

[FLHerne]

20%-30% improvement in the opensource driver or the proprietary driver from broadcom?

Broadcom's Eric Anholt sent in the VC4 DRM driver updates today...

VC4 is the open-source one, the proprietary blob isn't in the kernel and doesn't use the DRM stack.

[tessio]

VideoCore4 as announced back in 2009.. Broadcom has any plans for a VideoCore5 with OpenglES3.1/Vulkan support?

[geoffrey]

20%-30% improvement in the opensource driver or the proprietary driver from broadcom?

The opensauce driver

[deivid__]

Does anyone know if "raspicam" (transcoding the camera to h264) works with this driver? Or are they unrelated?

[riklaunim]

VideoCore4 as announced back in 2009.. Broadcom has any plans for a VideoCore5 with OpenglES3.1/Vulkan support?

That would be backward incompatible and they seems to be scared of doing incompatible changes But likely it would be easier to get a Intel or AMD low power SoC with OpenGL/Vulkan/DX GPU and x86 CPU (or ARM as AMD has some things too).

[ravyne]

VideoCore4 as announced back in 2009.. Broadcom has any plans for a VideoCore5 with OpenglES3.1/Vulkan support?

I would love to see something like that too but I don't know how likely it is -- The chip used in the original Pi was built essentially as a display processor, and VideoCore IV was way overpowered for the original, meager single ARM core. The popularity of the Raspberry Pi and its expanded interest/uses in industry that resulted from that have driven them to tack on more-powerful CPU cores over time (as in the Pi2 and now the Pi3) but the VideoCoreIV has remained the same, only clockspeed has increased.

These SOCs are kind of an odd duck in the respect that its actually VideoCore IV that boots first, and is responsible for bringing up the ARM side of things -- and that summarizes pretty well that VCIV is prime, not the CPU.

That said, VCIV is really only capable of ~1080p video playback / and general use, and heavier 3D workloads probably want to stick to 720p. Its showing its age in a world where 4k displays are more and more common, and where even embedded UIs can make heavy use of 3D. A new GPU that supports 4k video playback with latest codec support, enough oomph for desktop use at 4k and reasonable 3D at 1080p (say, PS3/Xbox 360-level, or close would be awesome -- current VCIV is certainly more competent than PS2 or original XBox was with about the same timespan between console and SOC, so that seems not unreasonable).

And while we're making a wishlist -- how about support for at least 4GB RAM, DDR4 with a decently-wide bus and/or dedicated high-bandwidth framebuffer on-die or in-package. A guy can dream...

[boxie]

I would love to see something like that too but I don't know how likely it is -- The chip used in the original Pi was built essentially as a display processor, and VideoCore IV was way overpowered for the original, meager single ARM core. The popularity of the Raspberry Pi and its expanded interest/uses in industry that resulted from that have driven them to tack on more-powerful CPU cores over time (as in the Pi2 and now the Pi3) but the VideoCoreIV has remained the same, only clockspeed has increased.

These SOCs are kind of an odd duck in the respect that its actually VideoCore IV that boots first, and is responsible for bringing up the ARM side of things -- and that summarizes pretty well that VCIV is prime, not the CPU.

That said, VCIV is really only capable of ~1080p video playback / and general use, and heavier 3D workloads probably want to stick to 720p. Its showing its age in a world where 4k displays are more and more common, and where even embedded UIs can make heavy use of 3D. A new GPU that supports 4k video playback with latest codec support, enough oomph for desktop use at 4k and reasonable 3D at 1080p (say, PS3/Xbox 360-level, or close would be awesome -- current VCIV is certainly more competent than PS2 or original XBox was with about the same timespan between console and SOC, so that seems not unreasonable).

And while we're making a wishlist -- how about support for at least 4GB RAM, DDR4 with a decently-wide bus and/or dedicated high-bandwidth framebuffer on-die or in-package. A guy can dream...

What you are after is called an Intel NUC