all 14 comments

[–]Vainpaix 42 points43 points  (0 children)

For those who don't bother to read the blogpost, Collabora is reverse-engineering the Valhall GPU-architecture to enable open source driver-development preemptively of any future Linux-powered devices coming to market which have these GPUs on-board, meaning future SBCs and the like based on SoCs more recent than 2019 will not be stuck using proprietary, unmaintained drivers or otherwise be left without any feasible usability at the consumer level thanks to system incompatibilities.

[–]natopwns 24 points25 points  (11 children)

Cool, but why is Collabora reverse engineering ARM chips?

[–]Sarcism[S] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

The project started as a community effort and is now financed by Collabora. As they also provide consulting and support in this domain for their customers, it's probably a win-win situation for them.

[–]linmanfu 25 points26 points  (3 children)

I think the interesting thing isn't that Collabora is doing this, but that Alyssa Rosenzweig is. She's been reverse engineering the iGPU on the Apple M1 for Asahi Linux. She's been doing this for months; this is the first time I've seen Collabora mentioned. Maybe I'm ignorant or maybe Collabora have decided to fund her with a view to supporting desktop Linux on ARM?

[–]JanneJM 21 points22 points  (1 child)

She and Collabra has been at it for years now. They have solid working drivers (called "Panfrost") for earlier Mali architectures already. They're used in the Pinebook Pro for instance. They're good; the only thing still lacking is Vulkan support.

[–]linmanfu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for explaining the background!

[–]interger 10 points11 points  (0 children)

She's employed by Collabora for some time now, but I believe her graphics work started way before that

[–]jozz344 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I was wondering if this was going to be done by Alyssa Rosenzweig again. And it is. What a skilled person.

[–]raiyanrafi 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Why not for nvidia? nouveau lacks hardware accelerated 3d.... :(

[–]Sarcism[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nouveau is reverse engineered. Blame nvidia for raising the bar with signed blobs and other bullshit.