Etnaviv NPU Support Coming Together, Mesa Upstreaming Next

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Etnaviv NPU Support Coming Together, Mesa Upstreaming Next

The Etnaviv Gallium3D driver within Mesa has long been focused on reverse engineering and supporting Vivante graphics IP found in various SoCs. That driver has worked out well for open-source OpenGL support for Vivante graphics while more recently Etnaviv has begun tackling Vivante neural processing unit (NPU) support that is beginning to be found in various SoCs...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Etnaviv-NPU-Comes-Together

[tildearrow]

Typos:

Recently there's been work with the Etnaviv DRM kernel driver and Etnaviv Mesa code for enalbing VeriSilicon Vivante NPU cores. Fortunately, enabling the NPU support hasn't been too daunting with the architecture close to existing Vivante graphis cores.

[LoveRPi]

There was a lightning talk at XDC2023 with more information:

https://www.youtube.com/live/qK2Emqp9t0g?t=29471&si=zWFb3O8Rf1ePVdgk

[dkasak]

Ah, Etnaviv ... <shudder> ... I still have flashbacks of my many failed attempts to bring up 3D acceleration for their underwhelming, unsupported garbage. I bought myself a Cubox ( https://www.solid-run.com/fanless-computers/cubox/ ) many years back, and ran it as my home server for about 4 years, until a lightning strike finally took it out. I would personally avoid further Vivante hardware like the plague.

[jf33]

Which API does the driver expose to client applications, so that they can use the NPU acceleration?