Raspberry Pi "VC4" DRM Driver Sees 10/12 BPC Color Depth With Linux 5.12

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi "VC4" DRM Driver Sees 10/12 BPC Color Depth With Linux 5.12

With Linux 5.12 the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC used by the Raspberry Pi 4 will see 10 and 12-bit color support with the VC4 Direct Rendering Manager driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-VC4-10-12-BPC

[Random_Jerk]

Might be an unrelated comment, but how far away are we to get HDR 10/12 bit color support on AMD GPU's on Linux? If Broadcom can do it on Pi, I'm sure AMD can do it too.

[coder]

Wow! I mean, why not? But, it certainly seems to diverge from the Pi's core mission.

It's a good thing deep color has been around since the early days of HDMI (does anyone remember the big fuss around the PS3 getting a firmware update to enable it, shortly after launch?), or else the HDMI folks would probably be trying to shut it down.

[Viki Ai]

Wow! I mean, why not? But, it certainly seems to diverge from the Pi's core mission.

It's a good thing deep color has been around since the early days of HDMI (does anyone remember the big fuss around the PS3 getting a firmware update to enable it, shortly after launch?), or else the HDMI folks would probably be trying to shut it down.

Next time I'm bored, I should pull the data sheets and check if the Broadcom chip used in the pi4 supports DisplayPort output as an alt mode! Not much use on a generic Pi4 board, but I am more interested in the CM4 on a custom break-out board, if only for the eMMC options (though pushing the PCIe to a connector rather than a useless-to-me-YMMV USB-3 controller would be nlce too).

So Pi4 hardware/software/support ecosystem (the primary strength of the Pi platform), with eMMC, an M.2-PCIe slot and a DP connector.... And a DC barrel connector for power (5-30V in to an efficient DC-DC converter) and an actual power+reset button! .... That sounds like a pretty sweet low-end/experimenters system, to me!

[ed31337]

pushing the PCIe to a connector rather than a useless-to-me-YMMV USB-3 controller would be nlce too

Yes, this. After using the Pi4 for a while now, I'm thinking I really don't need USB 3. The only thing I'm using USB 3 for is to connect a portable HDD. If it had an M.2 PCIe SSD slot instead of the USB 3, that would actually be a lot more portable, faster, and just all the way around better for me. I can still use my portable HDD's on USB 2, and I really don't care about the speed loss in that case, since HDD's aren't all that fast anyway.

Not only that, but it would likely be cheaper too. Today, SSD's with a USB3 interface tend to cost about $20 extra over a bare SATA SSD or M.2 SSD. I don't know what the Raspberry Pi Foundation is paying for their USB 3 interface chip, but seems like it could be more than the corresponding M.2 connector might be.

And a DC barrel connector for power (5-30V in to an efficient DC-DC converter) and an actual power+reset button!

Not so sure I'm on board with those ideas though. Everything is moving towards the USB C connector for everything, so I think the Raspberry Pi 4 got that about right in my opinion.

And I'm really not sold on a power+reset button. Those soft power on/off buttons require power circuitry, adding to cost. It's not a necessary feature by any means. And I've had serious issues with soft power on/off failing to work right in so many of my past AMD/Intel desktop motherboards. My last AMD system got so bad that I stopped using a perfectly good machine because I was afraid I'd never be able to get it to power back on again after the soft power-on circuitry degraded to the point where it would take an extremely long time holding the button down and still not power on, only to spontaneously power on a few minutes later, by itself.

I love the RPi's hard power connection actually. A power strip with it's own hard switch works great and never goes bad. Or get a UPS -- that'll give you a soft power on/off button.

[Danny3]

Amazing, but come on... Raspberry Pi will have high bit depth faster than AMD GPUs ??? WTF!
How can they do it and AMD, a GPU manufacturer, cannot ???
And AMD developers said that they don't want to invest their time to make a control panel because they want to work on the driver and even there they are not so good.
I bet the HDMI-CEC that Raspberry Pi has and AMD GPUs doesn't is similar to this.

[microcode]

Amazing, but come on... Raspberry Pi will have high bit depth faster than AMD GPUs ??? WTF!
How can they do it and AMD, a GPU manufacturer, cannot ???
And AMD developers said that they don't want to invest their time to make a control panel because they want to work on the driver and even there they are not so good.
I bet the HDMI-CEC that Raspberry Pi has and AMD GPUs doesn't is similar to this.

Honestly it's not that big of a feature, and the general support for it up the software stack really isn't there.

[Viki Ai]

Yes, this. After using the Pi4 for a while now, I'm thinking I really don't need USB 3. The only thing I'm using USB 3 for is to connect a portable HDD. If it had an M.2 PCIe SSD slot instead of the USB 3, that would actually be a lot more portable, faster, and just all the way around better for me. I can still use my portable HDD's on USB 2, and I really don't care about the speed loss in that case, since HDD's aren't all that fast anyway.

Not only that, but it would likely be cheaper too. Today, SSD's with a USB3 interface tend to cost about $20 extra over a bare SATA SSD or M.2 SSD. I don't know what the Raspberry Pi Foundation is paying for their USB 3 interface chip, but seems like it could be more than the corresponding M.2 connector might be.



Not so sure I'm on board with those ideas though. Everything is moving towards the USB C connector for everything, so I think the Raspberry Pi 4 got that about right in my opinion.

And I'm really not sold on a power+reset button. Those soft power on/off buttons require power circuitry, adding to cost. It's not a necessary feature by any means. And I've had serious issues with soft power on/off failing to work right in so many of my past AMD/Intel desktop motherboards. My last AMD system got so bad that I stopped using a perfectly good machine because I was afraid I'd never be able to get it to power back on again after the soft power-on circuitry degraded to the point where it would take an extremely long time holding the button down and still not power on, only to spontaneously power on a few minutes later, by itself.

I love the RPi's hard power connection actually. A power strip with it's own hard switch works great and never goes bad. Or get a UPS -- that'll give you a soft power on/off button.

Some good points. Thanks.

Yes, you are probably right re: the power button, though a proper reset button to avoid unnecessary power cycling would still be nice, particularly since this type of board is specifically intended for experimentation.

TBH: I have yet to find a use for USB-3/C in any of my compute world. Gigabit Ethernet to a NAS is more than sufficient for my storage needs (especially, as you noted, there is a decent-speed local option via an M.2 card or equivalent) and USB2 speeds have proven fine for emergency sneakernet. As always, of course, YMMV.

(That is the big benefit of the Pi CMs and the CM4 in particular - defining your own baseboard with the specific IO you want is bought into the realms of possibility, both technically and financially, for hardware hobbyists).