Open-Source ARM Mali Driver Update (Lima)

This weekend at LinuxTag 2012, an update was shared concerning the state of the Lima driver project -- the initiative to create a reverse-engineered, open-source ARM Mali driver.

Phoronix was first to report on this open-source ARM Linux driver project near the beginning of the year and was then first talked about in public at FOSDEM in Brussels back in February. Luc Verhaegen, the lead developer behind the Lima project, spoke this weekend at LinuxTag to provide an update.

Below are Luc's slides from the presentation. Overall, this open-source driver still isn't ready for end-users, but they've made some progress since FOSDEM and do have some small OpenGL ES demos running on the Chinese tablet hardware. With no company officially financing the work, aside from what Codethink has been doing as a consulting company, the progress is quite slow with Luc just being able to work on it in his spare time and then his employer (Codethink) allowing some work to happen from time-to-time.

And now here's a video showing off the Lima driver and the demos it now supports running: