From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
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Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#2For the uninitiated, a few bullet points I stitched together from Wikipedia and freedesktop.org:
The Mali GPUs are IP Core GPUs produced by ARM Holding[0].
Midgard and Bifrost are architecture code names[1].
Panfrost is a FOSS driver for Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs[2].
An older effort at reverse engineering exists under the name Lima, targeting older Mali GPUs[3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU)#Variants
[2] https://panfrost.freedesktop.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU)#The_Lima_and_Panfro...
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#3For the uninitiated, a few bullet points I stitched together from Wikipedia and freedesktop.org: The Mali GPUs are IP Core GPUs produced by ARM Holding[0]. Midgard and Bifrost are architecture code names[1]. Panfrost is a FOSS driver for Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs[2]. An older effort at reverse engineering exists under the name Lima, targeting older Mali GPUs[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU) [1] ht…
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#4For the uninitiated, a few bullet points I stitched together from Wikipedia and freedesktop.org: The Mali GPUs are IP Core GPUs produced by ARM Holding[0]. Midgard and Bifrost are architecture code names[1]. Panfrost is a FOSS driver for Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs[2]. An older effort at reverse engineering exists under the name Lima, targeting older Mali GPUs[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU) [1] ht…
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
The Midgard support is quite mature, expect most usecases to work & some to outperform the vendor driver.
Bifrost support is very new, testing this I would expect to run in to show-stoppers and severe issues. But this is the very early days of bifrost support, and support is going to get better at a rapid pace.
As for why people want this; The Vendor driver is inflexible in various ways and ARM stops supporting HW after about 5 years, which makes their driver completely unsuitable for embedded systems.
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#5For the uninitiated, a few bullet points I stitched together from Wikipedia and freedesktop.org: The Mali GPUs are IP Core GPUs produced by ARM Holding[0]. Midgard and Bifrost are architecture code names[1]. Panfrost is a FOSS driver for Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs[2]. An older effort at reverse engineering exists under the name Lima, targeting older Mali GPUs[3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(GPU) [1] ht…
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
Midgard is usable - GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma usable.. even SuperTuxKart with GLES3 usable now: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/02/27/expe...
Bifrost is quite early as you can see from the article this thread is for.
> Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers
Mali is very popular (so many SoCs from Rockchip, Amlogic, Allwinner, etc.) and actually was sort of the last holdout among them.
Etnaviv, VC4, Freedreno all predate Panfrost and (the resurrected and upstreamed version of) Lima.
Now I guess the last holdout would be PowerVR but it's not like there's so many devices with their GPUs. Nokia N900 and early iPhones I think?
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#6I thought initially it was about this https://area.autodesk.com/blogs/the-maya-blog/introducing-bi...
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
Midgard is usable - GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma usable.. even SuperTuxKart with GLES3 usable now: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/02/27/expe... Bifrost is quite early as you can see from the article this thread is for. > Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers Mali is very popular (so many SoCs from Rockchip, Amlogic, Allwinner, etc.) and actually was sort of the last holdout among…
Lots of early androids have powervr gpus with no free support, which is a serious showstopper for pmOS and the like. It even shows up in some low-end x86-based devices, which are not even supported by current Windows 10 as a result.
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
The Midgard support is quite mature, expect most usecases to work & some to outperform the vendor driver. Bifrost support is very new, testing this I would expect to run in to show-stoppers and severe issues. But this is the very early days of bifrost support, and support is going to get better at a rapid pace. As for why people want this; The Vendor driver is inflexible in various ways and ARM stops supporting HW af…
[deleted]
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
Midgard is usable - GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma usable.. even SuperTuxKart with GLES3 usable now: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/02/27/expe... Bifrost is quite early as you can see from the article this thread is for. > Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers Mali is very popular (so many SoCs from Rockchip, Amlogic, Allwinner, etc.) and actually was sort of the last holdout among…
Beaglebone uses PowerVR, unfortunately. This is a very powerful little platform (PRUs For The Win!) held back by closed source graphics drivers.
Re: From Bifrost to Panfrost – deep dive into the first render
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a device with a Mali Midgard or Bifrost GPU. I'm excited about getting HW acceleration on it. Anyone has insight about the usability of the driver at the moment? Alos, why are developers interested in it? Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers.
Midgard is usable - GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma usable.. even SuperTuxKart with GLES3 usable now: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2020/02/27/expe... Bifrost is quite early as you can see from the article this thread is for. > Surely there are loads of GPUs without open source drivers Mali is very popular (so many SoCs from Rockchip, Amlogic, Allwinner, etc.) and actually was sort of the last holdout among…
I spent a while playing with PowerVR trying to reverse it on my beaglebone.
It's a huge pain, they feel like an order of magnitude more effort than Mali cores to get running with free drivers as they run a full RTOS on their GPU cores. They also have tons of bugs they hack around on a per rev basis around the caching and virtual memory systems which means your reversed code will sort of work for a bit, then start mysteriously start failing as you pull your hair out for a month.
Neat design; I just wish Imagination would get their head out of their ass and approach the community. They might still have a viable business if they had done that before now.