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Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

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Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#61

Post by megous »

ynnn wrote: post #59
robert_foss wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this trolling or are you serious? Proprietary drivers are shipped with many distributions. For example nvidia drivers are shipped with Ubuntu. If the repo drivers don't suit you, you can (just like on all other platforms) download drivers from the vendors website. Proprietary drivers are allowed and are shipped in many distros (just like in Android), but they cannot be included in the kernel upstream (then they wo…

Welcomed and encouraged to submit their driver for consideration . I would guess that the vast majority of vendor-proprietary drivers would get rejected from upstream, so for most cases the viable options for vendors wishing have an driver in mainline are to improve an existing reverse-engineered driver or rewrite the driver to fit the kernel standards.

If they accounted for mainlining from the start and not just as an afterthought, they would not have this issue.

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#62

Post by gravypod »

robert_foss wrote: post #53
stefan_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking the kernel drivers for the ARM Malis are all open-source and GPL licensed (they need to be, since their customers want to ship Linux to consumers). They are also entirely useless without the userland software that is doing all the actual work. The kernel drivers are just glorified task and memory managers.

While the kernel driver is Open Source, they have decided to implement a driver that can _never_ be submitted upstream for Kernel inclusion.

Could you expand on this? I don't follow kernel development closely. Why can't it be upstreamed? Is there something the community can do to modify their code for inclusion?

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#63

Post by faissaloo »

codedokode wrote: post #54

Linux still is not friendly to proprietary code. To install third-party software user often has either to run a bash script with root privileges that can potentially break the system, or add a proprietary repository (which allows its owner to replace any software on user's machine). Before flatpack and snapcraft there was no sane way to install third-party software. The same problem is with drivers. Maybe there is a…

Linux isn't supposed to be friendly to developers wanting to rob people of their rights.

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#64

Post by megous »

simcop2387 wrote: post #43
ddtaylor wrote: post #6

This should help a bit with the wave of new Pi-based emulation boards that are being used.

Won't affect any raspberry pi based systems. the Broadcom chip there isn't Mali based. For that you need a VC4/V3D chip driver, but that's also being developed. https://anholt.github.io/twivc4/2018/10/30/twiv/

There are many more '* Pi' boards than just Raspberry Pi. A lot (most) of them have ARM GPU.

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#65

Post by anonymousDan »

robert_foss wrote: post #51
anonymousDan wrote: post #47

Do any of the Mali GPUs support GPGPU (e.g. OpenCL), and are those drivers being open sourced? In fact, if I wanted to do GPGPU on something like a Raspberry Pi, what are the best options currently (open source drivers or not)?

The ARM Mali T-series and G-series of GPUs do support compute (OpenCL), the drivers are a different story. Let's just start out by saying that the GPU designer, ARM, does not support the Open Source driver. Most likely due to their IP-licensing scheme relying on charging customers for the hardware IP and then again charging them for the drivers that they are going to need. Previously the rumors went that they charged…

Thanks for the detailed comment! Regarding OpenCL on RPi, what about something like this: https://hackaday.com/2019/01/24/running-opencl-on-a-raspberr... Do you think it could support ML training/inference on a Pi GPU (albeit very slowly obviously), or even OpenCV?

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#66

Post by JoshuaRLi »

Jonnax wrote: post #2

What devices can be used with these drivers? The message says there's two drivers: "Lima covers the older t4xx and panfrost the newer 6xx/7xx series" My perception is that Mali GPUs were just in Android phones where running where it's generally not possible to run a vanilla kernel or the bootloader is locked. Any dev boards?

Lots of SoCs on low cost hobbyist SBCs use Mali GPUs, including those made by Allwinner and Rockchip. In particular the RK3399, which IMO is the best value SoC at the moment with a really decent SBC selection (and the upcoming pinebook pro!). Panfrost is icing on the cake and extremely welcomed.

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#68

Post by NullPrefix »

codedokode wrote: post #54

Linux still is not friendly to proprietary code. To install third-party software user often has either to run a bash script with root privileges that can potentially break the system, or add a proprietary repository (which allows its owner to replace any software on user's machine). Before flatpack and snapcraft there was no sane way to install third-party software. The same problem is with drivers. Maybe there is a…

> Installing proprietary code requires adding proprietary repositories

How is this unexpected?

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#69

Post by stefan_ »

gravypod wrote: post #62
robert_foss wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the kernel driver is Open Source, they have decided to implement a driver that can _never_ be submitted upstream for Kernel inclusion.

Could you expand on this? I don't follow kernel development closely. Why can't it be upstreamed? Is there something the community can do to modify their code for inclusion?

The DRM subsystem where the graphics drivers live in Linux has a strict open source userland policy - every new kernel interface needs a corresponding real userland implementation that exercises it. So a graphics driver that is only used by a closed source userland blob has no chance of being upstreamed.

And of course just generally vendor kernel code tends to have superfluous middle layers or abuse kernel interfaces in unintended ways.

Re: Open source Mali GPU drivers merged

#70

Post by stefan_ »

rjsw wrote: post #50
stefan_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking the kernel drivers for the ARM Malis are all open-source and GPL licensed (they need to be, since their customers want to ship Linux to consumers). They are also entirely useless without the userland software that is doing all the actual work. The kernel drivers are just glorified task and memory managers.

It would be nice if they had been dual-licenced like the radeon, intel and nouveau kernel drivers. I thought that the Lima and Panfrost projects included an open-source userland component too.

They do, the userland part is in Mesa:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa

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