An Open-Source GLES Driver For Samsung's Galaxy GPU

[phoronix]

Phoronix: An Open-Source GLES Driver For Samsung's Galaxy GPU

Embedded Linux GPU driver support is a great big mess. There's no doubt about it. There's some partial open-source driver code, but nothing that's been quite popular or welcomed for integration into the mainline Linux kernel. There might be an open-source PowerVR SGX driver later in the year, but that's still months out. However, with more mobile Linux devices emerging that utilize these closed-up ARM GPUs, clean-room reverse engineering to write open-source drivers is going to be inevitable unless the vendors step up their Linux support game...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTAzNg

[JeanPaul145]

Meh

Meh, if it had been for the Galaxy S I might've become excited on a personal level, not to mention the fact it would almost certainly reach more people.
But the Spica is just a horrible little wannabe-smartphone.

[popper]

more to the point , why start with the obscure Samsung S3C6410 GPU ?
why not do the far better long term OSS thing and do a current MALI 400 3D as probably found in 90 % of all ARM cortex device's this year! and be far better off later.

id advocate MALI today for the simple fact that half your job is done.

as MALI today seems to be already open in the 2D parts, so only the 3D provided in binary format is a problem right now.

and you kind of imply this yourself Michael
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODc3NA ,
"ARM Mali-T604 Arrives, But With What Kind Of Driver?

Posted by Michael Larabel on November 11, 2010

It would be nice if the situation would improve where there was an open-source 3D driver (ideally based upon the Gallium3D architecture) with an open-source DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) module with aims towards mainline Linux kernel integration, but it doesn't look like we will see that for the Mali-T604 or at least not immediately. This is pretty much the same situation across the embedded graphics world where the Linux graphics drivers are largely dependent upon binary blobs for all but basic 2D/X.Org support. "

[popper]

and lets also not forget that Samsung now backs ARM's souped-up graphics platform
Mali T604 will support HD and 3D in low power devices, says ARM 11 November, 2010

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/print.asp?article_id=3942

"The new Mali T604 platform, unveiled at ARM's developer conference this week, aims to bring high performance applications like 3D imaging and gaming to smartphones, without sacrificing battery life.

The upgraded graphics processor will accelerate video applications while drawing less power, said marketing director Ian Smythe, and will handle 3D imaging and full HD video. Performance is up fivefold on the previous Mali, and when included in a chip, the core consumes less than 850 milliwatts.
Mali is designed to work with ARM's latest CPU core, the Cortex-A15, which targets smartphones, tablets and even servers. Up to 16 2.5GHz cores can work together for these larger systems.

Mali T604 will be compatible with Microsoft's DirectX 11 and with OpenCL 1.1, both programming frameworks for parallel processing over multiple cores. The inclusion of DirectX 11 aroused speculation that this programming technology would soon be supported fully in Windows Phone 7. Currently, full compatibility with DirectX 11 is only seen in Windows 7, but that does not run on ARM processors (though its ties to the Intel x86 design may be broken at last if ARM moves up to servers).

OpenCL is a C-like programming language with APIs for parallel execution and is supported by many heavyweights including IBM, Apple, Intel and Nvidia."

MALI's not to shabby today even for the old 200 and current 400

http://forums.malideveloper.com/demos/user-interface/home-entertainment-interface-concept-by-arm.php

"The Canvas demo by ARM?s Demo Team is a Multi-touch interactive screen for media-centre applications written for the OpenGL ES 2.0 API. With a built-in physics engine for collision effects and other cool fun animations, Canvas is an advanced technical and entertaining demo in full HD on a wide screen TV. It can scale down to WVGA resolutions on portable devices as well. Canvas is build to show that 2D and 3D objects can live in the same application, for real media center-like use cases as well as casual gaming, or simply something to keep your kids busy at home. "

http://forums.malideveloper.com/developer-resources/drivers/index.php

[popper]

if you have a quick look you can even find ARM provide free OpenGL ES-20 and ES1.1 emulator's for both windows and Linux plus other interesting thing's to make your development easier.

http://www.malideveloper.com/developer-resources/tools/opengl-es-20-emulator.php

[popper]

damn edit
people Might find the ARM message board interesting reading to

http://forums.arm.com/index.php?/topic/13792-mali-gpu-development-boards/page__p__32979#entry32979

[tom3q]

Hi,

My name is Tomasz Figa and I'm the (only) person responsible for the GLES6410 project.

The news about my project on Phoronix has really surprised me. Seeing that such a great site is interested in it is really nice. (I'm not new to Phoronix, I visit it regularly.)

My project is just a personal initiative started after seeing how bad the original OpenGL libs of my Samsung Android-based cell phone perform. I study IT at Warsaw University of Technology in Poland and I'm pretty interested in low level programming, so I thought I could get some more experience and new knowledge (along with a better working phone). And this is how and why it started.

What's also important, I always had interest in Free Software and that's why this is a purely open source project, without any proprietary bits. (I'm still being irritated by proprietary AMD or Nvidia drivers from time to time...)

Thanks for your interest in my project, best regards, Tom3q.

[V!NCENT]

Interesting. So this Mali+A15 is going into Android 3.0 Tablets and smartphones. Makes me wonder if there will be smartphone distros one day. That is if Google has open API's for things like navigation (Google Maps) and synchronisation with Google servers, otherwise there would be little point for an Androied flavour.

[kernelOfTruth]

Hi,

My name is Tomasz Figa and I'm the (only) person responsible for the GLES6410 project.

The news about my project on Phoronix has really surprised me. Seeing that such a great site is interested in it is really nice. (I'm not new to Phoronix, I visit it regularly.)

My project is just a personal initiative started after seeing how bad the original OpenGL libs of my Samsung Android-based cell phone perform. I study IT at Warsaw University of Technology in Poland and I'm pretty interested in low level programming, so I thought I could get some more experience and new knowledge (along with a better working phone). And this is how and why it started.

What's also important, I always had interest in Free Software and that's why this is a purely open source project, without any proprietary bits. (I'm still being irritated by proprietary AMD or Nvidia drivers from time to time...)

Thanks for your interest in my project, best regards, Tom3q.

Hi Tomasz,

thanks a lot for taking initiative in that regard

I'm sure if you'd also post in the Android Development subforum for the Galaxy S I9000 over at forum.xda-developers.com (link inside)

there would be more devs helping you with the development or they could also help you with learning programming in that area

Cheers !

(I'm also an owner of this excellent phone, btw.)

[?John?]

Thanks, man!

What's also important, I always had interest in Free Software and that's why this is a purely open source project, without any proprietary bits. (I'm still being irritated by proprietary AMD or Nvidia drivers from time to time...)

Thanks for your interest in my project, best regards, Tom3q.

Hi, Tom.
You're quite welcome because as our beloved Michael already noted on many occasions, GPU support (not only) on embedded Linux is a huge mess. I was becoming quite desperate with my smartphone choices being slim to none because of that. That's why I really appreciate what you're doing and wish you well. You literally pulled my ass out of the fire. Let me know if there's something I can do to help.