opensource videodriver

now that videocore drivers are released opensource, im wondering how this will impact the development of an gpu-accelrated android build.

has anybody put hands on the sources and is able to tell if an android driver is possible, or do we have to wait until the foundation releases a driver?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=20688

Check nearer the bottom for a post by aaa801, he's the guy heading up the razdroid project. I've also read on other forums that confirm that it is not what the community needs.

Official line was that it was a breakthrough release that would be highly enabling - but the response from others who appear to know what they're talking about has been a resounding 'meh'.

'meh' haha that's funny hope the real deal driver gets released pretty soon.

[jamesh]

'meh' haha that's funny hope the real deal driver gets released pretty soon.

What do you mean 'real' driver? We have released the entire Arm side driver collection. This should enable other OS to take advantage of the GPU acceleration, including Android.

I believe that it has to do with Android needing a special "gralloc" module.
This seems not to be available to us.


ghans

[jamesh]

Well, surely the whole point of making the Arm side code open source is that someone can now write a gralloc module? These things don't just miraculously appear out of thin air. Or have I misunderstood?

I'm not sure but AFAIK to write a gralloc module you'll have to mess
with the memory managment of the GPU ? Is that already possible ?
I've read pretty conflicting opinions .

ghans

[jamesh]

The Android implementation running on the Videocore on other SoC's already has a gralloc library, and I believe the GPU binary on the Raspi supports that already, but I would need to check.

'meh' haha that's funny hope the real deal driver gets released pretty soon.

What do you mean 'real' driver? We have released the entire Arm side driver collection. This should enable other OS to take advantage of the GPU acceleration, including Android.

Sorry didn't mean to offend anybody, I'm very thankful to broadcomm and people helping to get drivers out for our delicious raspberry pi. I just thought green named people were talking about 'meh' deal, that includes you jamesh. If it wasn't my bad, but take it easy man

[jamesh]

'meh' haha that's funny hope the real deal driver gets released pretty soon.

What do you mean 'real' driver? We have released the entire Arm side driver collection. This should enable other OS to take advantage of the GPU acceleration, including Android.

Sorry didn't mean to offend anybody, I'm very thankful to broadcomm and people helping to get drivers out for our delicious raspberry pi. I just thought green named people were talking about 'meh' deal, that includes you jamesh. If it wasn't my bad, but take it easy man

I was taking it easy. It was a 'real' question - what do you mean by 'real' driver?

Well I was just referring to android driver broadcomm showcased on august. I've been waiting eagerly since then. I'm not saying lego block pieces we need to get anything we want didnt come out, all im saying is finished working android driver with official android sdcard image didn't come out. Full living driver like a car driver, not arms and leg parts of our android car driver, got what I'm saying?. I hope you're not angry man.

I was taking it easy. It was a 'real' question - what do you mean by 'real' driver?

[/quote][/quote]
Real Driver = the bit that Broadcom thinks is worth money and isn't releasing LOL

In my experience, stuff that's protected and worth lots of money is usually more "real" in some way or another...

But isn't the released code supposed to be largely one-to-one calls into the unreleased bit? This is where my understanding falls down. If there's a function that merely makes a call into the secret GPU bit, then a) the main value of the function is to give it a nicer name, and b) we were already able to call that function before. So how are we empowered?

The point is that those libraries
1) expose the exact messages passed to the GPU , and can be used for bare-metal
2) can be compiled against bionic instead glibc , whic is important for Android

@bud-pnq
Nobody calls that a driver . That what you want is a Operating System Image. That is something different.

ghans

[jamesh]

Well I was just referring to android driver broadcomm showcased on august. I've been waiting eagerly since then. I'm not saying lego block pieces we need to get anything we want didnt come out, all im saying is finished working android driver with official android sdcard image didn't come out. Full living driver like a car driver, not arms and leg parts of our android car driver, got what I'm saying?. I hope you're not angry man.

Er, what?

The OSS software release was for the source code of the Arm side Linux drivers/libraries for OpenGLES, OpenVG etc. Nothing specific to Android was released (or even announced to be released), but what was released might help with Android porting.

No, I'm not an angry man. Confused usually.

I got what you're saying

It was, "I hope you're not angry, man", not "youre an angry man" got what I tried to say? haha

Anyway raspberry pi is so delicious. My brain loves taste of learning with it. Thank you raspberry pi foundation!!

@ghans Thanks, got it.

The point is that those libraries
1) expose the exact messages passed to the GPU , and can be used for bare-metal
2) can be compiled against bionic instead glibc , whic is important for Android

@bud-pnq
Nobody calls that a driver . That what you want is a Operating System Image. That is something different.

ghans

Yeah I wasn't referring to os image. I was referring to those installables after launching os, like osx and windows driver installers, those user friendly stuffs. That which enables features and makes hardware run faster and run stable. Sorry if it doesn't fit your description of drivers but in user space this is called driver, not nobody calls it driver You got what I mean? cheers man

The point is that Broadcom never showed such a thing ...
they showed us a working fast Android image in action
Not a driver or a user-friendly setup program.


ghans

The point is that Broadcom never showed such a thing ...
they showed us a working fast Android image in action
Not a driver or a user-friendly setup program.


ghans

Yeah yeah I know but did they not include this driver package in their showcase? Broadcom just make an image without a package of driver code set programs and it just works fast and stable? I've seen nvidia releasing proprietary driver on Linux through package manager and I've been talking about that kind of drivers, man. I didn't suggest to create it or complain about not having it, relax. I may not be a driver maker yet but I'm studying up for it. Sorry I'm just c++ java opengl ios android etc programmer at present Chill out guys I was just hanging out in this forum. Tough crowd.

[jamesh]

The point is that Broadcom never showed such a thing ...
they showed us a working fast Android image in action
Not a driver or a user-friendly setup program.


ghans

Yeah yeah I know but did they not include this driver package in their showcase? Broadcom just make an image without a package of driver code set programs and it just works fast and stable? I've seen nvidia releasing proprietary driver on Linux through package manager and I've been talking about that kind of drivers, man. I didn't suggest to create it or complain about not having it, relax. I may not be a driver maker yet but I'm studying up for it. Sorry I'm just c++ java opengl ios android etc programmer at present Chill out guys I was just hanging out in this forum. Tough crowd.

Broadcom have Android libraries and drivers under development (I know, I occasionally work on them). But not quite finished, and not on the 2835 SoC, although the port should be relatively painless.
Not sure what the point about Nvidia is - perhaps that desktop distro's have Nvidia GPU drivers? Those sort of driver are not available yet for the Raspi - ie. They don't yet exist in a complete form.

The point is that Broadcom never showed such a thing ...
they showed us a working fast Android image in action
Not a driver or a user-friendly setup program.


ghans

Yeah yeah I know but did they not include this driver package in their showcase? Broadcom just make an image without a package of driver code set programs and it just works fast and stable? I've seen nvidia releasing proprietary driver on Linux through package manager and I've been talking about that kind of drivers, man. I didn't suggest to create it or complain about not having it, relax. I may not be a driver maker yet but I'm studying up for it. Sorry I'm just c++ java opengl ios android etc programmer at present Chill out guys I was just hanging out in this forum. Tough crowd.

Broadcom have Android libraries and drivers under development (I know, I occasionally work on them). But not quite finished, and not on the 2835 SoC, although the port should be relatively painless.
Not sure what the point about Nvidia is - perhaps that desktop distro's have Nvidia GPU drivers? Those sort of driver are not available yet for the Raspi - ie. They don't yet exist in a complete form.

Thanks man I was just trying to tell ghans I can distinguish what driver is and what os image is, not to troll around. Yeah Ubuntu x86 has linux nvidia GPU packages. Yes, no complaints, thank you broadcom

Yes , i think the problem is that Android can not get any features enabled
via "packages". You will have to recompile the whole image for something
so deeply rooted like HW acceleration. Quite in contrary to Linux distros.
Android runs only on top of Linux , but is quite a different beast compared
to for example Debian.
Therefore Broadcom didn't even need to create a driver "package" , because Android expects
that to be set-up in a more static way AFAIK.

ghans

Yes , i think the problem is that Android can not get any features enabled
via "packages". You will have to recompile the whole image for something
so deeply rooted like HW acceleration. Quite in contrary to Linux distros.
Android runs only on top of Linux , but is quite a different beast compared
to for example Debian.
Therefore Broadcom didn't even need to create a driver "package" , because Android expects
that to be set-up in a more static way AFAIK.

ghans

Thanks for the cool info. I appreciate it , man

Hey,
thanks for all comments on videodriver.
I am maybe a noob, but could somebody tell me please what prohibits that Rpi actually and finally gets a proper android os ? Broadcom videos showed that it can work but its still not available.
Is the architecture of Rpi so much different from a big range of chinese so-called Android Sticks that all run Android ICS ?
I am intending to use Rpi with a digital signage project and it fullfills my requirements so much better than the android sticks, as it can work with 3g usb modems, GPS usb dongles etc - which the android sticks in most cases can't do.
In the big puzzle that I have almost solved, the last remaining piece that's missing is Android !

Regards,
Wojtek