171–180 of 201 posts
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Why has open source been so successful on the CPU then? Branch prediction, say, is no less a patent minefield than GPU framebuffer tiling. Yet gcc and LLVM have no trouble shopping optimizers. This is an excuse, basically. They just don't want to because they fear revenue lost to compatible implementations.
Those are compilers. What open source CPU is there?
Finally a software company makes a GPU.
Everybody who has programmed in VHDL or Verilog knows that building hardware is very close to writing software actually. It's just a level of abstraction lower, and there is a lot more parallelism, but the concepts are very similar.
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Source? That's a huge architectural change for them.
http://www.realworldtech.com/tile-based-rasterization-nvidia...
EDIT: Also, I don't think his test is proving what he thinks it is.
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> If ARM really cared, GPU stuff would be open source. The fact it isn't pretty strong indication they don't. Don't just accept it when lawyers say no. Easy for you to say, harder when millions to hundreds of millions are at stake.
Its always easier to be an armchair critic, but I bet there are more than hundreds of millions waiting for whoever can de-crappify the embedded ARM driver ecosystem. Especially when this crap is at the root of why virtually every embedded linux product has serious security flaws that never get fixed. You cant update the kernel if you cant update the drivers.
Hyperbole much? 7 billion people on the planet, and "more than hundreds of millions" of them are waiting with bated breath for the "de-crappification of the embedded ARM driver ecosystem"?!?
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AMD does not license to third parties, neither does Intel. Options (ignoring acquisition and design from scratch) are: * NVidia's Tegra graphics cores, possibly (not clear whether they block-license let alone architecture-license to third parties) * ARM's Mali, definitely licensable * Broadcom's VideoCore, possibly * Vivante, definitely licensable * Qualcomm's Adreno, formerly Imageon, unlikely Also note that at leas…
Nvidia's Tegra is key to their mobile compute efforts. There is no way they are going to license it to anybody. They would sell Apple the chip... maybe. But they would want Apple to buy into their whole stack, which Apple isn't going to want either.
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Everybody who has programmed in VHDL or Verilog knows that building hardware is very close to writing software actually. It's just a level of abstraction lower, and there is a lot more parallelism, but the concepts are very similar.
Hahahaha, No. Synthesizing ASICs and FPGA designs from Verilog/VHDL/insertnewhighlevellanguagehere may be close to software, but I guarantee you that creating high end production chips with such strict efficiency constraints guarantees that you need to do heavy simulations, and most importantly, has massive verification (it is 10/7nm after all....) efforts.
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Its always easier to be an armchair critic, but I bet there are more than hundreds of millions waiting for whoever can de-crappify the embedded ARM driver ecosystem. Especially when this crap is at the root of why virtually every embedded linux product has serious security flaws that never get fixed. You cant update the kernel if you cant update the drivers.
> but I bet there are more than hundreds of millions waiting for whoever can de-crappify the embedded ARM driver ecosystem. Hyperbole much? 7 billion people on the planet, and "more than hundreds of millions" of them are waiting with bated breath for the "de-crappification of the embedded ARM driver ecosystem"?!?
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Apple can build a GPU without infringing ImgTec patents, through a patent agreement with another GPU maker(including ARM, so they're pretty much covered).
Perhaps not. Existing GPU makers protect themselves through cross-licensing their patents: you can use mine if I can use yours. However, it sounds like ImgTec is considering going full-on troll, so they won't need access to the other patents any more and can just sit under their bridge extorting tolls.
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According to the post at https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Power-VR... from 2015, PowerVR is/was working on an open source driver. Does anybody know whether something materialized from this?
Last time I pinged their spokesman (Alex Voica), the answer was that they hadn't found someone with the 'right fit'.
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The people are free to go, but getting the same people to develop the same product again without infringing patents is a challenge.
Conversely, if there are any group of people who will be able to develop the same product again without infringing patents, it's the people who wrote the patents in the first place. Patent violation doesn't have a mens rea component - either you violate the patent by doing exactly what is described in it, or you don't. If you change even one aspect, you're no longer violating the patent. I'm sure the people who wrote…