Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Open ARM GPU drivers

[Michael Dorrington]

On 31/01/13 18:04, Dave Love wrote:
> Michael Dorrington <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> As you may or may not be aware, the state of free video drivers on the
>> rising ARM architecture, found in mobile computers, is not good.  This
>> includes the Raspberry Pi which has what the makers call a free video
>> driver but really it's merely a shim layer to the real driver¹.
>> Thankfully this is changing due to reverse engineering efforts:
> 
> I'd be interested if anyone knows about the possibility of using the
> drivers for floating point work, presumably via OpenCL.  If so, what
> sort of performance might Mali 400, for instance, provide?  I couldn't
> find much relevant information even for proprietary drivers.

I don't think there are many people in the world that can answer that
question about the free software driver.  The best way to find out would
be to go FOSDEM this weekend and ask the developers. :)  If you can't do
that then maybe get a proxy to ask them or perhaps you can ask questions
via IRC at the end of the talk (as they do at some events).
https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/operating_systems_open_arm_gpu/

Another possibility is to ask nicely on the powervr-devel list:
http://listas.gnu.org.ve/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/powervr-devel

> -- Dave [research computing muggins, bemused that Southampton claim
>          a Pi-based "supercomputer"]

Perhaps they just have lots and lots of Pi computers and perhaps it was
a cheap way of getting ARMs and headline grabbing.

Mike.

-- 
FSF member #9429
http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=9429
http://www.fsf.org/about
"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide
mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all
free software users."

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature