Freedreno Driver Begins Work On Adreno A320

The open-source Freedreno driver that seeks to provide a fully open-source Qualcomm Adreno graphics driver for Linux with OpenGL ES acceleration by a Gallium3D driver, is beginning to support the Qualcomm GPU found within the Google Nexus 4.

Rob Clark, the principal developer behind the Freedreno graphics driver, has begun working on support for the Qualcomm Adreno A320, the graphics processor found within the Google Nexus 4 smart-phone. The Adreno 320 is also found within mobile devices like the LG Optimus G, HTC J Butterfly, Sony Xperia ZL, and HTC Droid DNA.

Over the Adreno 200 series that already has a working Freedreno Gallium3D driver, the A320 has a new shader ISA and the registers for the new GPU are also rather different compared to its predecessor. On a positive note, at least the new instruction set architecture of the A320 is more flexible and has benefits over the older Adrenos.

In terms of where the Adreno 320 support is now at within the Freedreno driver, Rob Clark has written some simple tests running on the hardware but he hasn't yet brought up support within a Gallium3D driver. Rob says "things are progressing well."

More details on the current state of this new open-source reverse-engineered graphics driver enablement can be found from Rob's blog post.