On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:44:00 +0000 Al Johnson <openm...@mazikeen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> That's about all you can expect with the current state of openness on > embedded GPUs. If you want acceleration you get a binary blob if > you're lucky. Mostly you're just SOL. There are hints that things are > moving slowly towards more openness, but that's about it. It's not > much better with embedded DSPs, though Ti seem to have a reasonably > open interface. > > Do you know of a better alternative? To be honest, I was not aware about this. I thought, the lack of specifications of Glamo chip is only a special case of the available embedded GPUs. However, a possible (but more complex) alternative would be to avoid completely the existing proprietary GPU/DSP chips and make an FPGA based phone instead. Then we could use various open source hardware IP cores for CPU, GPU and whatever else is needed, similar to Milkymist, Open Graphics Project or Project VGA. That would be really cool. >From my point of view a GPU is completely useless without drivers / specifications, thus practically it is not better at all from a basic VGA 2D accelerator IP core. At least an FPGA based open source IP core design *could be* improved in time without changing the PCB. Just think the possibilities. On the other hand, a closed unsupported GPU is dead from the start. _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
