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New ARM Board Support In Linux 4.14: Raspberry Pi Zero W, Banana Pi & More

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  • New ARM Board Support In Linux 4.14: Raspberry Pi Zero W, Banana Pi & More

    Phoronix: New ARM Board Support In Linux 4.14: Raspberry Pi Zero W, Banana Pi & More

    Olof Johansson has submitted the pull requests of ARM/ARM64 board/SoC updates for the Linux 4.14 merge window...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Nice to have more ARMs supported but for most of us, Raspberry's open GPU is the game changer. Nobody wants an IoT platform without truly open GPU and HDMI 1080p support.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by caligula View Post
      Nice to have more ARMs supported but for most of us, Raspberry's open GPU is the game changer. Nobody wants an IoT platform without truly open GPU and HDMI 1080p support.
      GPU support woukd be a game changer on any of the ARM solutions out there. Hopefully the likes of Imagination and others will realize that being a slave to a specific platform is not a good thing. Sadly with many chips these days the GPU is just a waste of transistors.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by caligula View Post
        Nice to have more ARMs supported but for most of us, Raspberry's open GPU is the game changer. Nobody wants an IoT platform without truly open GPU and HDMI 1080p support.
        That statement is woefully self-centered. I personally have worked with 6 different ARM devices, none of which were a RPi, and for some of them I'd have been happy if I had any GPU support at all.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by wizard69 View Post

          GPU support woukd be a game changer on any of the ARM solutions out there. Hopefully the likes of Imagination and others will realize that being a slave to a specific platform is not a good thing. Sadly with many chips these days the GPU is just a waste of transistors.
          As I see it, only two vendors are still dragging their feet: ARM (with the MALI platform) and Imagination (with the Power VR platform). Other GPU drivers are now (at least) in the process of being open-sourced, some of them being mainlined and fully functionnal (Broadcom's VC4 (vc4, mainlined), Qualcomm's Adreno (freedreno, mainlined), Vivante (etnaviv, mainlined), and GeForce ULP (tegra, 3D part might not be mainlined yet but is under development)).

          I Hope that at least ARM will see the light - that would put a lot of pressure on Imagination.

          Anyway, if you're working on a new device that need to be able to display 3D on a HD screen, please ask for mainlined, open-source GPU drivers. Ask for the user-space driver to be compilable with both the glibc, bionic and musl. Don't settlle for a blob that you cannot control. If you vendor don't want to provide it to you, ask for freed documentation (i.e. not covered by an NDA). If you can't get at least these, chose another SoC

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Emmanuel Deloget View Post
            As I see it, only two vendors are still dragging their feet: ARM (with the MALI platform) and Imagination (with the Power VR platform). Other GPU drivers are now (at least) in the process of being open-sourced, some of them being mainlined and fully functionnal (Broadcom's VC4 (vc4, mainlined), Qualcomm's Adreno (freedreno, mainlined), Vivante (etnaviv, mainlined), and GeForce ULP (tegra, 3D part might not be mainlined yet but is under development)).

            I Hope that at least ARM will see the light - that would put a lot of pressure on Imagination.
            Yeah, I really don't understand why ARM hasn't put more effort toward the Linux Mali drivers. I feel like ARM as a whole is missing out on a huge market because their video drivers are sub-par. ARM (especially v7) is already a bit rough to get into for newbies, and having mediocre video drivers can prevent them from attempting to get any further, and may deter others from trying. The hardware is decent, but the software isn't good enough, and I don't think anyone cares enough to commit to reverse-engineering it.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Emmanuel Deloget View Post
              3D part might not be mainlined yet but is under development
              Where nVidia said they are going to mainline it?

              Originally posted by schmidtbag View Post
              Yeah, I really don't understand why ARM hasn't put more effort toward the Linux Mali drivers.
              Because they selling not only licenses to Mali itself but also GPU driver build and it's support. (bugfixes, updates for newer OS releases). If hardware vendor wants just GLES - he pay just for GLES. If hardware vendor wants, for example, OpenGL on top of GLX (like on ASUS Eee PC 1225C) or Direct3D support - vendor pay premium for this additional code. If vendor want newer driver for newer Android BSP - he pay once again. (I have no idea about OpenMAX, DXVA, VA-API, OpenCL, Vulkan, etc. but I guess they are selling this stuff too, because why not?) So ARM doesn't want to give up on working business model that make them money. And, by they way, AFAIK there is no other vendor of low-power SoC who deliver 3D drivers for their GPU besides Intel and Broadcom. Freedreno and etnaviv is community efforts.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by RussianNeuroMancer View Post
                So ARM doesn't want to give up on working business model that make them money. And, by they way, AFAIK there is no other vendor of low-power SoC who deliver 3D drivers for their GPU besides Intel and Broadcom. Freedreno and etnaviv is community efforts.
                My point is if there were good Mali drivers for Linux, that would open up an entire new market for them, that would rake in a bunch of cash. One of the nice things about Linux is how most of the software isn't limited to a specific architecture, so basically anyone who doesn't game or depend on Wine would [mostly] have a smooth experience on ARM. They'd get a very energy-efficient platform with decent performance. The first RPi is enough proof that Linux is a profitable market on Linux.

                Also to my knowledge, Nvidia's GPU drivers work pretty great on ARM. Sure, they're not fully open-source, but at least they keep their drivers up-to-date. My main gripe with closed drivers is when the parent company doesn't/won't update the drivers, even if there is a community willing to take responsibility. Otherwise, I really don't care if they're closed, as long as they work properly. The closed Mali drivers aren't that great.

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                • #9
                  Does this mean the end of Armbian?

                  Linux for custom hardware

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Emmanuel Deloget View Post
                    (Broadcom's VC4 (vc4, mainlined), Qualcomm's Adreno (freedreno, mainlined), Vivante (etnaviv, mainlined), and GeForce ULP (tegra, 3D part might not be mainlined yet but is under development)).
                    only broadcom does open driver. everything else is community re

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