Linux 3D GPU Acceleration Demo on Rockchip RK3288 based Firefly Board

[adam8bit]

It looks like GPU acceleration could finally be coming to rk3288

Several devices and development boards based on Rockchip RK3288 processor already support Linux, usually with images based on Ubuntu, including Ugoos UM3 / UT3, Open Hour Chameleon, and Firefly-RK3288 among others. What these images lack however, is support for 2D and 3D graphics acceleration with the GPU, and hardware video decoding/encoding with the VPU. But Jas-hacks has made some progress with 3D graphics support.
He has managed to add GPU acceleration via EGL/OpenGL ES bringing 3D acceleration to the platform, but 2D support is not there yet, meaning X11 still heavily relies on software rendering. But the implementation is still good enough to run the usual es2gears and glmark2-es2 benchmarks. as well as some WebGL demos in Chromium. Performance is currently underwhelming, with 50 points in glmark-es2, even a bit lower than the score (54 points) I got with ODROID-X board powered by Exynos 4412 SoC with a Mali-400MP4 GPU, and running Unity desktop in Ubuntu Linaro 12.11. The desktop environment used also appears togreatly affect glmark-es2 performance, with Unity being much slower than LXDE for example. But let’s get to the demo.

Since the image used for the demo is a minimal image for testing, it has not been released, and you can’t try by yourself just yet. But I’m sure GPU acceleration will eventually make it to Ubuntu for Firefly-RK3288, and possibly other RK3288 hardware platforms where the manufacturer or/and the community are involved with Linux development

From Cnx-software

[no_spam_for_me]

=> http://community.arm.com/message/24715#24715

Ok, answer is from yesterday, but what do I have to think about "within the next month"?
February or maybe does it mean "within the next few months" ?
We will see...

[Rayzin]

=> http://community.arm.com/message/24715#24715

Ok, answer is from yesterday, but what do I have to think about "within the next month"?
February or maybe does it mean "within the next few months" ?
We will see...

Technically, the way the guy from ARM stated it he said they would release something sometime in February. But then he goes on to say Rockchip themselves will release something "within the next few months".

So to translate into realistic terms- ARM by this quarter and Rockchip by the end of the year. That's my interpretation anyhow.

Either way very exciting stuff. My dream of a fully functioning Openelec with android dualboot on an rk chip is coming true! Woohoo

[scooter2014]

PST ----------- Its MARCH



THEY DIDNT SAY THIS FEBUARY DID THEY GOT IT........

[Rayzin]

By the time this actually gets released boxes with the new Rockchip SoC will already be released and the cycle will continue. People still using the old rk3288 are going to get shafted as development slows or stops as everyone's attention gets shifted to the new top of the line.

[adam8bit]

I uncovered this link to the ARM community forums.

http://community.arm.com/thread/7258

It's about time someone asked ARM about Linux support, usually the blame game is played between Rockchip, Mali and ARM.

If the community is left unsupported then the device is left and developers leave. The possibilities of community ports for popular software is forgotten.

I've ordered a Intel device out of desperation knowing it at least has half decent Linux support, if development goes well with it I'll be recommending my particular model to be sold to my clients - Not too many, maybe in the hundreds only.

I was hoping an ARM device would fill this gap, not at least because they are usually much cheaper than Intel's SoCs and sometimes have better feature sets and faster.

But this sums up how I and other devs feel about Rockchip & ARM's support for the community, posted on ARM's community Forum.

As a side note, some of our customers initially had high hope of using ARM for the commercial products. The lack (and frustration) of Linux GPU support has meant they moved to x86

[no_spam_for_me]

Unbelievable... I think the "Cherry Trail" by Intel will rocks the market... and I bet, because of Rockchips partnership with Intel at the Sofia, we will never see something from Rockchip... at best case from ARM, but who knows which kind of integration of the MALI Rockchip has done at the RK3288...

[raubtier]

Hello all,

I just read this comment on community.arm.com:
mmind (Heiko Stübner from Germany) wrote (15.06.2015):
Thread:
How can I compile Mali-T764 DRIVERS on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 on RK3288 device.

I have a nicely working X11 stack on the rk3288 using a fork of the armsoc x-server [mmind/xf86-video-armsoc at devel/rockchip · GitHub]. I still have to figure some things out, mainly the one issue I have added there myself. But in general the diff to the upstream xf86-video-armsoc is quite smallish. Also it looks like libdrm currently does not need any specific additions to create basic functionality.
To access the Mali I'm using the mali-driver from ChromeOS. This of course works on veyron devices, but also for example on the Firefly and the seemore.playcanvas.com demo runs really smoothly (around 60fps) with this.

Source: http://community.arm.com/thread/7258 Maybe someone is interested.