Raspberry Pi VC4 DRM Changes For Linux 4.8

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi VC4 DRM Changes For Linux 4.8

Eric Anholt at Broadcom has sent in his VC4 DRM driver changes of material for DRM-Next to in turn land with the Linux 4.8 kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-VC4-Linux-4.8-DRM

[monkeynut]

Does the driver support ETC compressed textures yet?

[amp3030]

Exactly which part of the RPi software stack needs to be mainlined so that it can boot without blobs?

[starshipeleven]

Exactly which part of the RPi software stack needs to be mainlined so that it can boot without blobs?

the GPU firmware. Or someone has to make a different low-level firmware that runs on CPU so it can initialize the board on its own.

[amp3030]

the GPU firmware. Or someone has to make a different low-level firmware that runs on CPU so it can initialize the board on its own.

And the latter would be part of the kernel? My point is, which existing software project should I ask/support/donate to get this done?

[starshipeleven]

And the latter would be part of the kernel? My point is, which existing software project should I ask/support/donate to get this done?

The boot firmware is a binary file loaded by the chip's boot ROM, it then runs on bare metal to initialize the hardware, then goes and boots the kernel.

It's similar to a BIOS.

There was a phoronix article about a WIP open implementation of that... lemme search....

here it is:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-Pi-Bootloader

It's still a WIP as it does not initialize video ports and other things, and is highly experimental, but it does boot and it is opensource.

[amp3030]

The boot firmware is a binary file loaded by the chip's boot ROM (that cannot be changed) runs on bare metal before the kernel.
There was a phoronix article about a WIP open implementation of that... lemme search....

here it is:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-Pi-Bootloader

I was very curious about this and I didn't know where to look. Thank you very much!

[pal666]

Exactly which part of the RPi software stack needs to be mainlined so that it can boot without blobs?

it already boots without blobs

[amp3030]

it already boots without blobs

My bad. I meant, "[...] so that RPi is actually usable as a desktop/server/IoT device." It seems we are not quite there yet.