Raspberry Pi V3DV Driver Nearing Vulkan 1.1 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi V3DV Driver Nearing Vulkan 1.1 Support

The open-source V3DV driver living within Mesa for providing Vulkan API support for modern Broadcom VideoCore graphics -- most notably found in the Raspberry Pi 4 and newer -- is nearing Vulkan 1.1 compliance...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=V3DV-Nears-Vulkan-1.1

[Quackdoc]

This is really cool, RaspPI is slowly becoming an actually serious alternative to desktops. slowly but surely, as more vulkan support is fleshed out, it will go a long way to help.

[mangeek]

RaspPI is slowly becoming an actually serious alternative to desktops.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's great to have open-source API coverage on this oddball hardware.

I use a Pi 4 for focused coding sessions because it's just too painful to use as a daily driver (no distractions when a web page takes fifteen seconds to load or a YouTube video can't play smoothly). For desktop use, it starts painfully slow and goes downhill from there. They make great little servers though, I have two acting as Samba DCs and file servers, and one that runs Docker for things like Minecraft Server, security tools, and build hosts.

[brad0]

This is really cool, RaspPI is slowly becoming an actually serious alternative to desktops. slowly but surely, as more vulkan support is fleshed out, it will go a long way to help.

I'd consider an SBC for a desktop when it has at least 8 cores, 16GB of RAM, NVMe SSD and bump up the clock speed of the cores to at least 2 GHz.

[jaxa]

I'd consider an SBC for a desktop when it has at least 8 cores, 16GB of RAM, NVMe SSD and bump up the clock speed of the cores to at least 2 GHz.

Pi 4 overclocks easily to 2 GHz with updated firmware. That doesn't stop it feeling as slow as molasses, with its 4x A72 cores feeling slower than an MT8173C with 2x A72 + 2x A53 for example. The weak GPU and spotty hardware acceleration is probably the culprit.

You won't see 8 cores on a Pi until they move off of 28nm, which would happen with Pi 6 or later.

Elsewhere, the Rockchip RK3588 has 8 cores and supports up to 32 GB of RAM, but has been massively delayed by the pandemic or other factors. The Amlogic S908X should also qualify, but is also nowhere to be found.

[Quackdoc]

I'd consider an SBC for a desktop when it has at least 8 cores, 16GB of RAM, NVMe SSD and bump up the clock speed of the cores to at least 2 GHz.

Okay, but thousands of people don't care. dual cores is enough for 90% of people. the main issues the raspi 4 has now are mostly software.

I wouldn't go that far, but it's great to have open-source API coverage on this oddball hardware.

I use a Pi 4 for focused coding sessions because it's just too painful to use as a daily driver (no distractions when a web page takes fifteen seconds to load or a YouTube video can't play smoothly). For desktop use, it starts painfully slow and goes downhill from there. They make great little servers though, I have two acting as Samba DCs and file servers, and one that runs Docker for things like Minecraft Server, security tools, and build hosts.

It is still a little bit too slow, but vulkan can help for a lot of stuff, using vulkan backend in MPV plays videos far better than opengl for instance. computationally speaking the raspberry pi is... fine. storage speed is the biggest bottleneck. YT vids and webpages are an issue on all slow hardware, its not only raspi, I have multiple laptops and chromebooks that using linux on is an absolute chore. Min works good on them for general browsing, no idea if it works on raspi. (Still no video accel)

watching YT is particularily bad on linux because firefox Video accel is buggy, chromes is also buggy, and not enabled by default, and installing brave browser is a chore, but IMO works the best. things like vulkan helps on things with vulkan support, which isn't much, but is slowly increasing

[mangeek]

I spend a lot of time looking at 'top', and I think two cores that can get great IPC, solid memory bandwidth, and snappy storage are what most desktop users need. On my Raspberry Pi, it's usually waiting on single-threaded stuff. The Apple M1's performance is a testament to high IPC and memory bandwidth.

[arQon]

The Broadcom SoC in the Pi is so abnormal, and v4l2 so awkward, that a Vulkan video decode implementation could probably be started and finished before the attempts to use v4l2 actually get anywhere.

Once video works worth a damn, a Pi4 is very much adequate as a desktop replacement for nearly all home or office users other than gamers. You "need" 8-cores to surf the web and veg out with YouTube? Yeah, no, you don't.

[JackLilhammers]

I'd consider an SBC for a desktop when it has at least 8 cores, 16GB of RAM, NVMe SSD and bump up the clock speed of the cores to at least 2 GHz.

There are quite a few already. eg: lattepanda, udoo bolt
They're just expensive...

arQon
I think it'll be worth considering when the desktop won't tear anymore and it'll have a good option for faster storage (using usb3 is not a great option)

[vb_linux]

The Broadcom SoC in the Pi is so abnormal, and v4l2 so awkward, that a Vulkan video decode implementation could probably be started and finished before the attempts to use v4l2 actually get anywhere.

Once video works worth a damn, a Pi4 is very much adequate as a desktop replacement for nearly all home or office users other than gamers. You "need" 8-cores to surf the web and veg out with YouTube? Yeah, no, you don't.

I have used rpi4 as desktop for 6 months. I used to connect through citrix to office. Mine was running at 2 GHz overclocked.

You can not use it as desktop. It is very very slow. Chrome/Firefox take too much ram. You can't leave browser left open.

Like I suspect, it maybe due to inadequate gpu rather than cpu.

I also use pinepro and somehow pinepro feels much faster.