There's Finally A Device Using Broadcom's VideoCore V GPU

[phoronix]

Phoronix: There's Finally A Device Using Broadcom's VideoCore V GPU

The past year we have been covering the development of the VC5 open-source Linux graphics driver stack for Broadcom's unreleased "VideoCore V" GPU, succeeding the VideoCore IV GPU most notably found on Raspberry Pi boards. Disappointing readers though has been the lack of availability for VC5 hardware, but that's beginning to change...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ComHem-TV-Hub-VC5

[johanb]

Looks like a pretty decent device, it's a shame that you have to pay for a monthly TV subscription to be able to buy it.

[starshipeleven]

Whew, I was thinking it was Smart TV bullcrap. Thankfully it's a screenless media center running Android.

Looks like a pretty decent device, it's a shame that you have to pay for a monthly TV subscription to be able to buy it.

To be fair, that's what most embedded devices are for.

[wizard69]

I kinda doubt we willl see a Raspberry Pi or Odroud running one of these new Broadcom chips anytime soon. Im just left with the impression that both camps are a little frustrated with the time it takes to get fresh hardware and Linux working smoothly together. Raspberry PI does a little better, likely due to corporate support, but i have to believe these new Broadcom chips will be cooking with Linux for a long time before done.

[starshipeleven]

I kinda doubt we willl see a Raspberry Pi or Odroud running one of these new Broadcom chips anytime soon. Im just left with the impression that both camps are a little frustrated with the time it takes to get fresh hardware and Linux working smoothly together. Raspberry PI does a little better, likely due to corporate support, but i have to believe these new Broadcom chips will be cooking with Linux for a long time before done.

FYI, most of the drivers needed to support this SoC are in mainline already. Only thing I'm unsure of is the media decoding acceleration.

What is an open question is the cost for these new "top of the line" SoCs, because it's entirely possible that they would cost too much for a Raspi, while Broadcom refuses to sell them to companies that would try to compete in the small tinkerboards like they did when Solidrun tried to buy some SoCs used in the Raspberry Pi.

[microcode]

One wonders why they chose "profound" background music and "profound" voice acting for this ad.

You'd think they'd go for "fun", "uplifting", or maybe "exciting".

[mum1989]

worse than a very OLD LG G3 or nexus 4:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/4505171

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/7917799

https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx40&did1=54886840&os1=Android&api1=gl&hwtype1=GPU&hwname1=Broadcom+VideoCore+V+HW+%28V3D-520%29&D2=Google+Nexus+4+%28LG+E960%29

[coder]

worse than a very OLD LG G3 or nexus 4:
https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?ben...+%28LG+E960%29

This is the only one that seems to have tested the respective GPUs. And I count 2 wins and 2 losses for Vidcore V.

Also, keep in mind that mobile GPUs can often be deployed at different scales & clocks, though the Pi is likely to get one of the smaller possible configurations.

In any case, the functional improvements (particularly OpenCL and Vulkan) are probably the main selling points. Even if it's not particularly fast, it could unlock a large boost in compute power over what's currently available on the Pi.