Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

On the other hand, there aren't many competitors that are better in terms of accessibility. Sigh. Implementing embedded devices with any sorts of "smarts" beyond some Atmel uC from scratch is a pain - one has to go with ready-made modules (ESPxx, Raspberry Pi compute module, COMexpress) to not go insane.

And it's not just the data sheets where you will run into issues (at least, usually you can find them somewhere pirated to get started). Design guides, layouting rules and certifications are a way bigger pain point... looking at you Thunderbolt.

And when you finally have your first PCB version ready, you'll soon find out that any components more intelligent than a couple transistors have sometimes ridiculous minimum order quantities. Let's take a SI2494 56k modem chip... 45$ apiece at a MOQ of 43 - which means if you want one or two you'll have to shell out about 2k $! And to add insult to injury, it's apparently still profitable to sell them for under 9$ at high quantities. This fucking rip-off is the reason why many hobbyist electronic projects are restricted to using dumbass components.

edit: I totally forgot about the software side with embedded SoCs. Basically, to boot Linux or anything else on a SoC you need firmware blobs (e.g. for the GPU or wireless radio parts) and lots of custom code (e.g. to bootstrap clocks, memory, IO). Usually the SoC vendors have an ancient fork of a Linux kernel and u-boot in which over each new chipset there gets ever more custom cruft and (often shoddily) backported stuff from newer kernels. This conglomerate is called "board support package" or BSP - and is, despite consisting of open source code, often guarded as heavily by NDAs as the data sheets.

Sometimes, especially for Mediatek stuff, these BSPs get leaked on Github... and it's always a wild ride looking into them. It's no surprise that upstream Linux doesn't have the support for whatever specific CPU... because the quality of the code is more often than not so hardcore rotten that it's a wonder you don't hear every day about some compromised IoT device.

Whenever you say you want more powerful the answer is the current way it's primary goal is to be affordable and its primary target audience are schools etc.

E.g. The standard version of the Pi 400 with 4 GB covers most (consumer / school children / students) application purposes. 8 GB are rather needed in the area of video editing / prosumer / server, and would bring the price significantly above the „magic“ 100 € limit.[1]

The vendor just doesn't want to acknowledge the real role of Raspberry Pi is not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board anymore, it has became a standard (for an ARM PC and a hackable set-top-box/console in particular) and a vibrant ecosystem has grown around it - there are plenty reasons to still want a Raspberry Pi original (rather than something the competitors offer) when you don't need it to be so cheap (or even so small) but actually need more power, faster IO, more ports, more GPIO pins etc.

[1] https://pi3g.com/2020/11/04/will-the-raspberry-pi-400-be-ava...

Is there a way this will help with accelerated pygame graphics?

(last I tried, all blits were in software)

> rustrated with heavy dependencies and slow libraries, i’ve been experimenting with some game technology to render raw image pipelines. in particular, i’m using SDL2 and vulkan. to spur some discussion, here is a random collection of bits you may find interesting or not.

> also please note this is just a rough prototype bashed together with very little care and lots of hardcoded things just to demonstrate what’s overall possible or not.

Since that is SDL2/Vulkan based you might get something out of the discussion there

[0] https://discuss.pixls.us/t/processing-that-sucks-less/13016