VC4 & V3D Open-Source Drivers Continue Maturing At Broadcom

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VC4 & V3D Open-Source Drivers Continue Maturing At Broadcom

Eric Anholt of Broadcom has provided a status update on his efforts around the VC4 open-source driver stack that most notably works with Raspberry Pi devices and also his efforts on the V3D driver as the next-generation Broadcom graphics driver stack for VideoCore V and later...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VC4-V3D-October-2018

[Dr.Nop]

It's for sure good to have an open source driver for the Raspberry Pi, but in my opinion it has a big gap as long as video decoding is not on par with the closed source driver.
A major use-case of this device is HTPC with Kodi, but OpenElec/LibreElec is still using the old driver as the new driver is lacking required functionality.

[dh04000]

Will this driver be ready by feb/march?

[Britoid]

Does Wayland run on the Pi yet?

[starshipeleven]

It's for sure good to have an open source driver for the Raspberry Pi, but in my opinion it has a big gap as long as video decoding is not on par with the closed source driver.
A major use-case of this device is HTPC with Kodi, but OpenElec/LibreElec is still using the old driver as the new driver is lacking required functionality.

Ahem, this device's main usecase is embedded device development and prototyping. Sure you can shoehorn it into HTPC role, but that's not really the main goal of a raspi.

[willmore]

Ahem, this device's main usecase is embedded device development and prototyping. Sure you can shoehorn it into HTPC role, but that's not really the main goal of a raspi.

Agreed. It may be that years ago when H.264 playback at 1080p was all that people needed, an rpi may have made a decent media playback device, but those days have come and past. Pretty much all other boards are better at media plyback than the rpi boards.

[wizard69]

Ahem, this device's main usecase is embedded device development and prototyping. Sure you can shoehorn it into HTPC role, but that's not really the main goal of a raspi.

That doesn’t mean that many of us aren’t looking for a decent ARM based board for HTPC usage. In any event isn’t such aboard embedded by default? I’m just happy to see some progress on the open solution as the weak link for just about every ARM based board out there is the Video (GPU) driver.

[starshipeleven]

That doesn’t mean that many of us aren’t looking for a decent ARM based board for HTPC usage.

You mention "decent ARM based board", so you aren't looking for a Raspi, move along citizen.

The raspi was and is still supposed to be used as a "brain" of some electronic project, not as a media center. Then you can use a screwdriver as a hammer, and it will work to an extent.

[jonwil]

Is any work being done to make open source stuff for the VideoCore side of things on the PI or is it all about open drivers on the ARM side? Do you still need a closed source bootloader just to even boot the PI?