Work Begins On Kernel DRM Driver For BCM7268 With VC5

Eric Anholt of Broadcom has been working on a new VC5 Gallium3D driver for supporting a new generation of Broadcom 3D graphics hardware that goes beyond the "VC4" 3D notably used by the current Raspberry Pi boards. So far he's been working on this new VC5 Gallium3D driver but now he's beginning work on the related Direct Rendering Manager kernel driver for this next-gen hardware.

Anholt confirmed he received a development board for the Broadcom BCM7268, the SoC to first feature VC5 graphics. Details on the BCM7268 remain very scarce with it not officially launching yet by Broadcom and the details about the new 3D graphics processor and hardware capabilities being scant. But we're excited for it with VC5 being capable of OpenCL and Vulkan along with later OpenGL features.

Eric does note that with VC5, there is now an MMU! He also commented that he started the new kernel module work by building off a copied version of the VC4 DRM driver. Another interesting detail revealed is that there is no display component to the VC5 DRM driver but any display components are to be supported by their own kernel driver communicating with the VC5 DRM via DMA-BUFs.

No word yet on when we may begin seeing Broadcom BCM7268, but it might still be a ways out given Anholt is still in the early stages of hardware enablement for the new 3D graphics processor.

These latest details on the VC5 effort via the VC4/VC5 weekly development update.