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Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

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Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#31
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, does this mean my family's holy grail of performant Minecraft on a Pi is coming closer?

I actually wish there was a more powerful Raspberry PI. 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…

"The vendor" is a foundation that has education at the center of its charter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation

They are not doing this for profit, although they are self-financing at this point (from what I've read).

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#32
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, does this mean my family's holy grail of performant Minecraft on a Pi is coming closer?

I actually wish there was a more powerful Raspberry PI. 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…

if only there were a bunch of other sbcs that had different performance and price levels available...

oh wait just buy a khadas vim3 or the new tinkerboard etc etc

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing broadcom on that list. But for real, why is Broadcom so bad?

Broadcom is notorious for hiding everything behind very restrictive NDAs. You want a CPU from them? Don't bother contacting them unless you plan buying six figures, is the common sentiment on HN. 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 read…

Thanks for the detailed answer. That is indeed meh. I suppose when RPi started and the quantity they ordered it still made sense.

Hope that more open hardware will come out over time.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wish there was a more powerful Raspberry PI. 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…

if only there were a bunch of other sbcs that had different performance and price levels available... oh wait just buy a khadas vim3 or the new tinkerboard etc etc

Do these support Raspberry Pi hats (e.g. the TV hat) and OSes (e.g. Raspbian)? I've read the software/compatibility part of Raspberry Pi alternatives (incl. those from big brands) is very bad. Perhaps this is not the case with Khadas, I hardly know anything about this brand.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#35
post #2

This is what sets the raspberry pi apart from all other SBCs in my experience: software support. Kudos, this is fantastic stuff! Will love to see the ecosystem of stuff that springs up that takes advantage of this.

I wish there was a multi CPU RPI board with M2 option. Sort of like this one: https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/clearfog-cx-lx2...

we're pretty much there. The new pi 4 compute module breaks out the pcie bus. The official pi4 compute base board routes that to a standard pcie x1 slot instead of USB 3.0 which is a massive win in my book (hello more ethernet/sata/fpga/nvme/etc). It's a baby Arm mobo with pci and I'm a little excited :-)

I have a pi4 compute + base board on pre-order plus I just bought a pcie x1 m.2 M-key card off amazon. I plan to use the SD card (emmc on my model) to boot a kernel and use the m.2 card for storage.

I think the pi foundation finally realizes that the pi has the potential of becoming an affordable and accessible SoM (system on Module) with a huge community behind it.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#36
post #27
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing broadcom on that list. But for real, why is Broadcom so bad?

For first year(s?), Broadcom RPi components (GPU) were closed source (opaque binary blob) and need RE work. For a hardware supposed to be "open to hack", it was considered a non-sense. I suspect things have changed regarding RPi situation.

Is there an "open" SBC by your definition?

Intel has ME/AMT, and requires an opaque, PK-signed-and-only-intel-and-NSA-have-the-key blob. AMD is the same with PSP.

I'm not up to date, there might be a RISC-V core available today that is blob free, but in 2012 when RasPi was introduced I wasn't aware of anything blobless.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to note that competitive x86 SBC do exist, and have the typical, full, x86 support. Of course, the downside is that the price is higher (around twice as much for a full system). A downside of ARM SBCs is that they pretty much all have an expiry date. Due to their closed nature, when the community pulls the plug, they're gone (SW-wise). x86 boards last virtually forever. While they're somewhat compatibl…

Which x86 boards would you recommend?

odroid h2+

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#38
post #2

This is what sets the raspberry pi apart from all other SBCs in my experience: software support. Kudos, this is fantastic stuff! Will love to see the ecosystem of stuff that springs up that takes advantage of this.

It's important to note that competitive x86 SBC do exist, and have the typical, full, x86 support. Of course, the downside is that the price is higher (around twice as much for a full system). A downside of ARM SBCs is that they pretty much all have an expiry date. Due to their closed nature, when the community pulls the plug, they're gone (SW-wise). x86 boards last virtually forever. While they're somewhat compatibl…

There's quite a bit more to it than that, though.

First, the "closed nature" thing is just as true about x86 as it is about ARM; you don't get full specs for any machine these days, Broadcom or not. Rather, from the perspective of "Linux developers who write code on and deploy to Linux" — or maybe "Linux Desktop Users" — the difference is in peripheral discovery and setup, of which x86 has ACPI and UEFI to dynamically discover and configure devices upon every boot, while ARM boards use device tree, which is static and requires up front, BSP-specific descriptions.

Userspace binaries for AArch64 Linux will work across most devices. A RPi4 running Ubuntu and a RockPro64 running Ubuntu will use the same binaries just fine. The problem is when vendors have kernel patches or workarounds that make booting harder. But it's not like literally all software stops working on a specific date. If you have the kernel and dtb, you can make it work and keep your system booting. It's definitely less than ideal, if you think of it like a desktop, where timely updates are common and easy. But it's doable. And more devices seem to be moving towards an upstream-first model, so this seems like less of a problem anyway. I'll also note it's not actually hard to package a device tree blob with a userspace+kernel, it's just that most "desktop" distros make spinning custom variants unreasonably hard, IMO, so you need Buildroot/Yocto or whatever to build custom images. And again, "Linux users" like, say, most people reading this comment, don't actually want Yocto — they want Arch or Debian or whatever. A bit chicken and egg.

Furthermore, the RPi4 also supports ACPI and UEFI (upstream Tianocore) which is continuously improving, so it can support generic Linux distros. I have a "generic" Fedora 33 install working on my RPi4, with UEFI boot, all from a USB3 stick. It even installed using an ISO, and I configured the install using Anaconda, identically to x86. The Pi4 also has a production date of at least 2026, and almost the entire userspace software stack is completely upstreamed now, including kernel, graphics drivers, and peripherals. So from the perspective of someone who treats the RPi as a kind of "mini Linux Desktop", most of your complaints don't really apply at all. But...

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The actual biggest problems with the lack of specs/dtb shit/"closed stuff" isn't when you want to treat it like a normal Linux machine with keyboard/usb/ethernet. That's easy and works today. You can get most of the desktop Raspberry Pi experience, including generic distro boot, today! It's when you want to treat it like an actual "embedded device" where you write custom drivers or poke GPIOs or use hardware features, or whatever. That's where the closedness sucks, but in that case, even if it sucks or there's no specs, there's normally no realistic x86 alternatives.

Sure, you can buy a $100 x86 device in an RPi form factor with RAM and plug a keyboard into it, and it's OK if it uses 2x as much power at load, if you just want a mini desktop that is cool. But where's the $20 x86 device that has a shitload of I/Os I can use to interface with various peripherals of my choosing, with all the accompanying good stuff like good DAC/ADCs, GPIOs, camera support, eMMC? And where can I buy them? Where's the $5 RPi Zero alternative? Because the ODROID-H2+ is $120 USD, and doesn't even have GPIOs!

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#39
post #2

This is what sets the raspberry pi apart from all other SBCs in my experience: software support. Kudos, this is fantastic stuff! Will love to see the ecosystem of stuff that springs up that takes advantage of this.

It's important to note that competitive x86 SBC do exist, and have the typical, full, x86 support. Of course, the downside is that the price is higher (around twice as much for a full system). A downside of ARM SBCs is that they pretty much all have an expiry date. Due to their closed nature, when the community pulls the plug, they're gone (SW-wise). x86 boards last virtually forever. While they're somewhat compatibl…

With pi's that last point is at least somewhat mitigated. The foundation has committed to supporting specific hardware for several years.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV graphics driver achieves Vulkan 1.0 conformance

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a multi CPU RPI board with M2 option. Sort of like this one: https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/clearfog-cx-lx2...

we're pretty much there. The new pi 4 compute module breaks out the pcie bus. The official pi4 compute base board routes that to a standard pcie x1 slot instead of USB 3.0 which is a massive win in my book (hello more ethernet/sata/fpga/nvme/etc). It's a baby Arm mobo with pci and I'm a little excited :-) I have a pi4 compute + base board on pre-order plus I just bought a pcie x1 m.2 M-key card off amazon. I plan to…

Almost! :) Not sure about the IO performance of this solution.

> The official pi4 compute base board routes that to a standard pcie x1 slot instead of USB 3.0

Do you have more info on this? I am not sure how it works.

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