BCMV Driver Begins Development: Vulkan Driver For Broadcom VC5

Broadcom developer Eric Anholt who has long been working on the VC4 open-source graphics driver stack most well known for being used by the Raspberry Pi has begun working on a new driver stack, VC5, for a next-generation of Broadcom graphics hardware.

For months now Eric has been working on a new VC5 Gallium3D driver and more recently began work on the VC5 DRM driver. Details on this new 3D graphics processor have remained light but we know it will feature more up-to-date OpenGL capabilities and the first Broadcom hardware with proper OpenCL and Vulkan support.

Interestingly, Eric has begun work on the VC5 Vulkan driver while it's being named BCMV. Eric mentioned in his latest "weekly update" that he has begun work on this VC5 Vulkan driver called "BCMV" and it originated as a fork of Intel's ANV Vulkan driver. This isn't the first time Eric has forked Intel open-source driver code to be used by the VC4/VC5 driver stack, as he's been accustomed to Intel's driver design/infrastructure with being a longtime developer there prior to joining Broadcom. He will be sharing more details on VC5/BCMV later this month at XDC17.

Eric also shares he got the MMU almost working for VC5, each process will now have a separate address space with this new hardware, and next he will be tackling GPU reset support. More details via this GitHub post.