VC5 Gallium3D Driver Close To Merging To Mainline Mesa

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VC5 Gallium3D Driver Close To Merging To Mainline Mesa

Broadcom's shiny new VC5 Gallium3D driver for supporting more modern graphics on future SoCs is close to merging to mainline Mesa...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VC5-Gallium3D-Review

[dh04000]

Mike: Does the VC5 driver give any hints on the specs of the gpu it will be driving?

[Deavir]

I thought the next Rpi wasn't expected till at least 2019? Should be a pretty mature driver by then.

[boxie]

I thought the next Rpi wasn't expected till at least 2019? Should be a pretty mature driver by then.

was there actually timeline given? i thought that Eben had been cagey about any new RPi's

Edit: Cagey is right "feels like a 3 year product" ~Eben - that makes Feb 2019 from the RPi3 introduction

[M@yeulC]

To be fair, there hasn't been any hint at the fact that this GPU has anything to do with the Rpi foundation (unless Eric is still paid by/working for them, which I didn't bother looking up).
On the other hand, he didn't deny it, so there's that

But it could also be a request from Broadcom, or a hint at a completely different product.

I say that, but of course, I was the first to run with speculation on the next Rpi following VC5's announcement https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...-source-driver

dh04000, you might be interested in this thread, the linked article and Eric's blog post. At this point, this is just speculation as for the exact specs.

[microcode]

To be fair, there hasn't been any hint at the fact that this GPU has anything to do with the Rpi foundation (unless Eric is still paid by/working for them, which I didn't bother looking up).
On the other hand, he didn't deny it, so there's that

But it could also be a request from Broadcom, or a hint at a completely different product.

I say that, but of course, I was the first to run with speculation on the next Rpi following VC5's announcement https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...-source-driver

dh04000, you might be interested in this thread, the linked article and Eric's blog post. At this point, this is just speculation as for the exact specs.

Broadcom switched to suggesting their set top customers use the Mesa driver on VC4, it's possible that this will just be their ongoing strategy for new products since it seems to have gone so well for VC4.

[starshipeleven]

Broadcom switched to suggesting their set top customers use the Mesa driver on VC4, it's possible that this will just be their ongoing strategy for new products since it seems to have gone so well for VC4.

That's impressive, Broadcom must have found a brain and started using it.

Btw, you have some sources for that?

[Deavir]

That's impressive, Broadcom must have found a brain and started using it.

Btw, you have some sources for that?

I was thinking that too. If they were wouldn't there be commits from multiple developers as they would be moving the closed source developers over to mesa?

[starshipeleven]

If they were wouldn't there be commits from multiple developers as they would be moving the closed source developers over to mesa?

Afaik they already released the docs and drivers as opensource (BSD license) back in 2014, but that source was not terribly useful.

Mesa is a framework to make graphics drivers (this is a simplification), Broadcom's driver was not using it in any way, so large parts of that driver were duplicating (probably badly) stuff that was done better in Mesa already.

As you can see from the description of the first commit of the VC4 driver, it was based off Freedreno and an older reverse-engineered driver (as both were using Mesa) https://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/me...e2c634f667d853

Also don't expect massive teams appearing. The main reason to switch to opensource is saving on development cost, so it's more likely that they fired (or re-purposed) their closed source graphics team and now their main/only dev for this product is Eric.

But the driver would still rock because there is no way in hell that Broadcom can make anything resembling Mesa with the usual budget allocated to embedded device drivers.

EDIT: which is why I said that Broadcom must have found a brain. In this case going opensource is win-win.

[e_tank]

was there actually timeline given? i thought that Eben had been cagey about any new RPi's

Edit: Cagey is right "feels like a 3 year product" ~Eben - that makes Feb 2019 from the RPi3 introduction

and that's pretty much exactly what Eben said about the rpi2 less than 6 months prior to the release of the rpi3. there's really no telling when we'll see an rpi4, and they certainly aren't going to tell us ahead of time b/c they don't want to piss of their resellers.