VC4 Raspberry Pi 3D Driver Development Has Been Busy This Spring

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VC4 Raspberry Pi 3D Driver Development Has Been Busy This Spring

Broadcom developer Eric Anholt has been busy this spring leading the charge on advancing the VC4 DRM+Gallium3D driver stack that most notably is used by Raspberry Pi devices for a fully-open graphics driver stack...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VC4-Busy-Spring

[boxie]

The fully open RPi stack is coming along quite nicely and is quite full featured!

[sverris]

The fully open RPi stack is coming along quite nicely and is quite full featured!

Yet there is not that much news from the firmware...: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware

[jernej]

Here is a IRC log where Christina explained why she is not interested in developing it anymore:

https://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2017-04-02#19158376;

[dungeon]

Here is a IRC log where Christina explained why she is not interested in developing it anymore:
https://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-...4-02#19158376;

I knew there would be some shit So, why don't we cite interesting fragments where word 'shit' appear, as 'shit' usually explain everything

<kristina> so you can see why i dislike the rpi, it's such a horrid pile of shit.

<kristina> MoeIcenowy: i mean bottom line i could get it to work, i just kind of lost interest since rpi is shit and same could be said of rpi foundation (my personal opinion).

well i mean we use their IP, but in general it's nowhere near as bad as the VC4 shit, no wonder it's going under.

So we have 3 'shit' from her in tha tlog... basically not need to read everything else I knew some shit is the reason

[sverris]

Here is a IRC log where Christina explained why she is not interested in developing it anymore:
https://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-...4-02#19158376;

Thanks.... too bad. I don't understand tough what kristina expects - pretty much the whole industry is horrible - and RPI is not so bad after all - and the RPI-foundation is not in the position to tell Broadcom what to do with their products.

[riklaunim]

RPI-foundation is not in the position to tell Broadcom what to do with their products.

Still, they can change the platform.

[sverris]

Still, they can change the platform.

Yes, but to which one? I do not know any real open hardware SoC...

[sykobee]

And get different 'shit' - possibly a lot worse. Developers - even very good developers - can get massive NIH syndrome when they hit very different architectures, and a VC4 SoC with add-on ARM cores could be seen like that.

But if Broadcom aren't updating this line of SoCs in the future, they'll have to change. There's no VC5 coming along, and it seems unlikely that even this current SoC line will be updated now, beyond the quad-A53. Maybe they have something going on internally at Broadcom...

[riklaunim]

Yes, but to which one? I do not know any real open hardware SoC...

AMD, Intel x86 low power parts. There is no such thing as open hardware at the moment, but at least AMD and Intel have upstream drivers and there are no problems with installing whatever distro you want on x86... plus you can even get coreboot too if they wanted to. Desktop works, Linux works, Windows works, can have USB3, native Ethernet, SATA, even PCIe. There is a flood of Chinese x86 Windows tablets, there is plenty of cheap miniITX boards with those CPUs so the parts are there too.

When all those SBC race with octa/omg-cores SoC with problematic ARM non-upstream solutions just put a quad Intel/AMD part and be over with. And for low power low cost electronics and stuff just use a Micro:bit or alike.

Raspberry related project like Kano that started with the idea of Raspberry 2 as a "functional" desktop now with RPi 3 costs more than entry level x86 all-in-one or laptop with Win 10, yet offering small and limited ecosystem.