Linux 4.6 To Offer Faster Raspberry Pi 3D Performance

[LoveRPi]

They need working device trees first. We can't even get Linux 4.5 with 3D graphics loaded properly. It just turns to a black screen whenever we enable the overlay.

[slacka]

Any chance we could get another GLAMOR, SNA, UXA benchmark? I don't think the pi has any other options, but It would be interesting to see if GLAMOR has closed the gap in terms of performance and/or power usage on Intel systems.

[bnolsen]

For *general software use*, an Asus chromebox with 2 filled sodimm slots (4GB), 16GB msata ssd, usb3 ports and celery 2955u goes for 100usd refurbished. Remove a screw and install whatever OS you like. Power supply is 65W, but reports are it runs ~11W under full load (cpu + gpu) without peripherals. Yup, still costs almost 2x as much as on outfitted rpi, but you get more than 2x features with it.

Raspberry pi, odroid, etc are getting there but for *general purpose sofware* use its hard to argue with one of these proven intel platforms.
Sometimes its fun to be a part of the journey of these sbc's though.

[leiptrstormr]

I would rather see them continue to make the Raspberry Pi as open as possible than have them add more bells and whistles. Raspberry Pi 3 was a mistake. The people wanting bluetooth, wifi, and armv8 will have a new list of demands and move on to something else when the next batch of forgettable ARM single boards come out.

[boxie]

boxie
The NUC consumes considerably more energy and is much more expensive. It is not in the same league as the RPi.
Also it comes with way more proprietary baggage attached. While for the VideoCore people are getting close to replace blobs with free software, Intel is moving into the other direction.

It sure does consume more energy (but not by a lot). The NUC is also considerably more supported (Intel's open source team does a lot of good work!). It even does all the things you want. right now. No waiting for future tech to make it cheaper.

As for the firmware blobs, you have a point (I personally do not care all that much about firmware blobs) in that VC4 is going to be much more open.

The cost is an obvious downside

The performance of the SBC is steadily going up at a given price point. in the future your current wishlist will be met, but your future wishlist may not be

[chithanh]

boxie
The NUC consumes considerably more energy and is much more expensive. It is not in the same league as the RPi.
Also it comes with way more proprietary baggage attached. While for the VideoCore people are getting close to replace blobs with free software, Intel is moving into the other direction.

[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

[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...

[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).

[deivid__]

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