VC5 Driver Development Continues, Raspbian Performance Still Being Tuned

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VC5 Driver Development Continues, Raspbian Performance Still Being Tuned

Earlier this month the VC5 open-source driver was announced as a new driver for Broadcom's next-generation graphics processor. This has already led to speculation this much more powerful GPU will be found in future Raspberry Pi hardware. Work on this driver has continued while not forgetting about the VC4 driver for current-gen Raspberry Pi devices...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VC5-Development-Continues

[Hadrian]

"This has already led to speculation this much more powerful GPU will be found in future Raspberry Pi hardware."

My thoughts, too, but is there more information available about the speculation?

Thanks for running your great site.

[Jabberwocky]

Is his driver even used? How can he "tune" it (sounds like performance improvement) while it's not in a usable state due to constant crashes and lack of completeness.

I have only tested it on fedberry 25, no issues yet. I would not be surprised if the issues were related to raspbian.

I was really annoyed at how long it took to get working drivers, let alone it being enabled by default... so many workarounds needed due to the bad graphics drivers support. The device is more than 5 years old and the NGO sold over 14 million of them. One would think that they would have made more effort to get open source software running on it by default. I understand that the intention of the device was for research projects like the Macrobert-award 2017-finalist-raspberry-pi and PA’s Raspberry Pi competition 2017 - Innovation For All however a lot of people are using the devices for cheap desktops as learning platforms. It's not only for a "Linux Gamer" or "already educated desktop user" that would appreciate good open source drivers.

Looking forward to hear what VC5 is about...

[libv]

Maybe if Anholt reinstated Paintwindow again?

This was once removed in https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xs...?id=e4d11e58ce, which not only made EXA more competitive with XAA, by slowing down XAA. It also broke XAA by falling into previously unused paths: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xs...?id=59f9fb4b8c.

[libv]

I was really annoyed at how long it took to get working drivers, let alone it being enabled by default... so many workarounds needed due to the bad graphics drivers support. The device is more than 5 years old and the NGO sold over 14 million of them. One would think that they would have made more effort to get open source software running on it by default. I understand that the intention of the device was for research projects like the Macrobert-award 2017-finalist-raspberry-pi and PA’s Raspberry Pi competition 2017 - Innovation For All however a lot of people are using the devices for cheap desktops as learning platforms. It's not only for a "Linux Gamer" or "already educated desktop user" that would appreciate good open source drivers.

I'm still quite annoyed that one of the original premises, namely, getting people to play with assembler again, is/was totally ignored. The people REing the videocore have seen very little support, and the RPiF or Broadcom are not too helpful in getting rid of the blob running on the videocore, and now that the videocore people have reached an early milestone in getting a free bootloader, people have given up. Seems like the RPiF is happy with people not maximising the use of the hardware, or with poking at its innards.

[Jabberwocky]

I'm still quite annoyed that one of the original premises, namely, getting people to play with assembler again, is/was totally ignored. The people REing the videocore have seen very little support, and the RPiF or Broadcom are not too helpful in getting rid of the blob running on the videocore, and now that the videocore people have reached an early milestone in getting a free bootloader, people have given up. Seems like the RPiF is happy with people not maximising the use of the hardware, or with poking at its innards.

It's very sad to hear about this.