NVIDIA TX2 / Tegra186 Display Support Isn't Ready For Linux 4.15

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA TX2 / Tegra186 Display Support Isn't Ready For Linux 4.15

While the Jetson TX2 has been out since this past March and it's a phenomenal ARM development board, sadly the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) driver support for it still isn't ready with the mainline Linux kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Tegra186-DRM-Still-WIP

[schmidtbag]

Yknow what'd be great? A laptop based on newer Tegras or Snapdragons. We only get crappy laptops made with underwhelming CPUs, GPUs with unusable drivers, or only 1GB of RAM. I'd buy a TX2 laptop if one existed.

[chimpy]

Yknow what'd be great? A laptop based on newer Tegras or Snapdragons. We only get crappy laptops made with underwhelming CPUs, GPUs with unusable drivers, or only 1GB of RAM. I'd buy a TX2 laptop if one existed.

Totally agree. There are Intel based Chromebooks with i3 or even i5(Acer 15 inch) processors, but when it comes to ARM we're stuck with crappy Rockchip/Mediatek SOCs which have underwhelming performance, bad drivers/Linux support, or both.

Edit: The Samsung Chromebook plus(Rockchip OP1) seems like a good performer, but I doubt decent Linux support.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

Reding commented that there is prepatory work for the TX2

[schmidtbag]

Edit: The Samsung Chromebook plus(Rockchip OP1) seems like a good performer, but I doubt decent Linux support.

In my experience, exynos has crappy GPU support (they use Mali drivers). Otherwise, their CPUs offer great performance for the price.

[starshipeleven]

Yknow what'd be great? A laptop based on newer Tegras or Snapdragons.

Yeah it would be great.
It would also be Apple-grade expensive.
The Jetson TX2 SoM alone (the main board with SoC, RAM, flash) costs like 450 euros if you buy "in bulk" http://www.siliconhighwaydirect.co.u...0-0001-000.htm

Maybe Snapdragon SoMs are cheaper, but not by much.

EDIT: but still, it would be worth it at least. Decent hardware with decent opensource support (neither is perfect but much better than the usual Alwinner crap)

[deppman]

Yknow what'd be great? A laptop based on newer Tegras or Snapdragons. We only get crappy laptops made with underwhelming CPUs, GPUs with unusable drivers, or only 1GB of RAM. I'd buy a TX2 laptop if one existed.

We got the Acer CB 13 back in 2014 with the Tegra K1, and it's been great. Excellent graphics performance, good CPU, and great battery life (11 hours) @ 1080p. It sure would be nice to see an update.

[schmidtbag]

We got the Acer CB 13 back in 2014 with the Tegra K1, and it's been great. Excellent graphics performance, good CPU, and great battery life (11 hours) @ 1080p. It sure would be nice to see an update.

I remember hearing about that, but what really turned me off about it was the fact it was made by Acer (a company that tends to make pretty low-quality products), I wanted more RAM, and from what I recall, it was difficult to get Linux to run on it natively. But otherwise, that is pretty much what I'm looking for.

[torsionbar28]

Yeah it would be great.
It would also be Apple-grade expensive.
The Jetson TX2 SoM alone (the main board with SoC, RAM, flash) costs like 450 euros if you buy "in bulk"

Why shouldn't it be? TX2 is king of the ARM boards, nothing else even comes close. In recent years AMD has hinted at wanting to advance the ARM platform, but that was effectively on hold pending the successful launch of Zen. Once they've got a few solid quarters of Zen revenue in the bank, hopefully they will reinvigorate their ARM aspirations and start providing some competition in the high-end ARM market.

[grok]

Nvidia de-emphasized mobile hardware like tablets, got out of phones, don't have a replacement for Shield K1. The Tegra X2 and follow ups are more for embedded and automobile and so there's no Tegra X2 laptop to expect, it's mostly on the evaluation board or something you might find one day on the cockpit of a light aircraft.

It's likely we'll see a Nintendo Switch die shrink or a Switch 2, but that would be a one off Tegra product. Tegra could have been on Windows ARM laptop but that is dead. (dead for good this time)
At worst the same could happen with AMD ARM : losing engineering and business resources etc. competing with rockchip, mediatek and hisense (and ... and ...) would be a poor move, death of Windows on ARM (there was an interval period between death of Windows RT i.e. Windows 8 on ARM, and Windows 10 mobile where Windows on ARM died a first time). I wager AMD doesn't even need ARM on servers since they can easily make a 15W or 20W Zen for servers would there be a need to. So AMD ARM SoCs would be for specific embedded as well and not found anywhere on mobile, lapop, desktop, server