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A birthday present from Broadcom

raspberrypi.org

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Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#31

Post by Narishma »

marincounty wrote: post #26
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #4

> "Earlier today, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. The source release targets the BCM21553 cellphone chip, but it should be reasonably straightforward to port this to the BCM2835, allowing access to the graphics core without using the blob. As an incentive to do this work, we will…

Just $10,000? Nice gesture, but they can afford to dig a little deeper. Their card running Quake III at reasonable frame rate on a Pi is a big deal, and these cheap skates know it. (I hope the person who figures it out, doesn't give them the code; just show them and collect $10,000 (A years rent in a bad part of Oakland).

Q3 is already running on the Pi using the proprietary drivers. This competition is for porting these new open sourced drivers to the Pi and using them to run Q3.

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#32

Post by stingraycharles »

ebenupton wrote: post #11
patrickyeon wrote: post #5

That's really a surprise. Broadcom is cemented in my mind as one of the hardest companies to get even basic datasheets out of. I know the saying is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", but could it be that their graphics cores are not competitive in pure technical capabilities, so they've decided to compete on open-ness? I'm not really involved in that area of hardware/software.

Nope (though note, I'm biased for several reasons). In terms of performance per unit area and performance per Watt, VideoCore IV is about as good as you're going to get. There are chips with higher performance GPUs out there, but they get there by brute force: throwing area (and therefore cost) and/or power at the problem.

This is confirmed by the recent move of AMD towards extremely hot GPUs. You already see that in the most recent 290x, but they're talking about making hardware that is comfortable running at >100C.

I'm not sure how relevant that is with regards to performance per watt, but I do know that heat is one of the most expensive (by-)products of electricity.

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#33

Post by pbhjpbhj »

davexunit wrote: post #8

This is a step in the right direction. Does this mean that the RaspberryPi can run blob-free now or with one less blob? I don't know what else is needed for the SoC to operate.

Will running without relying on blobs mean that processing can be further optimised or is it more of a moral victory than a technical progression.

I'm assuming doing away with the shim means that there is some gain but in practical terms is it likely to be quite minimal? Will there be routines accessible that weren't accessible via the shim?

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#34

Post by rdb »

I remember how satisfying it was to get that demo to work back in 2011 (thanks to the help of Dave Emett). Feels like an incredibly long time ago now! I wonder what framerate people will be able to achieve...

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#35

Post by AceJohnny2 »

ebenupton wrote: post #11
patrickyeon wrote: post #5

That's really a surprise. Broadcom is cemented in my mind as one of the hardest companies to get even basic datasheets out of. I know the saying is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", but could it be that their graphics cores are not competitive in pure technical capabilities, so they've decided to compete on open-ness? I'm not really involved in that area of hardware/software.

Nope (though note, I'm biased for several reasons). In terms of performance per unit area and performance per Watt, VideoCore IV is about as good as you're going to get. There are chips with higher performance GPUs out there, but they get there by brute force: throwing area (and therefore cost) and/or power at the problem.

Two years ago (or whenever the BCM2835 itself came out on the market), sure, but surely things have improved since? We've at least jumped a technology node, and hasn't nVidia improved?

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#36

Post by rwg »

But we’re incredibly proud that VideoCore IV is the first publicly documented mobile graphics core

Wasn't Intel first by virtue of using their in-house "HD Graphics" hardware in Silvermont (Bay Trail-M and -T)? Regardless, this is a huge thing in the ARM world, and I hope other vendors will begin to open up documentation.

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#37

Post by samolang »

tejbirwason wrote: post #25

Proud to have worked on this during my 8-month internship at Broadcom. It remains one of the toughest and rewarding projects to tackle within the company. I am pleasantly surprised to see Broadcom open up like this and release the full documentation. A step in the right direction for a grossly under-rated company.

I've never heard of an 8-month internship. What sort of program is that? Like a semester+summer?

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#38

Post by simcop2387 »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #19
ebenupton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite yet. We're hoping to be able to provide a minimum-functionality blobless world fairly soon.

I think this is another example of how Raspberry Pi Foundation's decision not to move forward with a gazillion different boards, but rather to stick with A and B and let the software evolve, was a good one. I'm very excited to see what the next year brings.

Yea with this happening I think what I would love is a bit more cpu power on the pi. Not even the new 64bit arm cores or anything but an A-15 or A-9 at double the MHz of the existing PI would put it in a huge sweetspot for embedded performance and make it far more usable for a desktop (with ideally more ram too but that's always good).

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#39

Post by bliti »

tejbirwason wrote: post #25

Proud to have worked on this during my 8-month internship at Broadcom. It remains one of the toughest and rewarding projects to tackle within the company. I am pleasantly surprised to see Broadcom open up like this and release the full documentation. A step in the right direction for a grossly under-rated company.

Well done, mate. This is some great work that you did.

Re: A birthday present from Broadcom

#40

Post by ansimionescu »

jxf wrote: post #21

If you want to go straight to the horse's mouth and just start hacking (this is Hacker News, after all!), the Broadcom downloads are here: * BCM21553 VideoCore IV graphics driver source: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/support/videocore/Brcm_Android_... * BCM21553 VideoCore IV documentation: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/support/videocore/VideoCoreIV-A...

Good ol' gzip download, because fuck source control.

edit: FWIW, a friend who works there told me flat-out to just avoid them (I'm job-hunting)

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