On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 5:49 PM, Lennart Sorensen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 12:33:58PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> interesting. >> >> so. >> >> with that in mind, why has the marvell CPU been chosen as the >> "flagship product" for the freedombox foundation to honour its >> obligations to its kickstarter sponsors? >> >> so i'll ask again: with for example freescale's long-standing >> honourable respect of the GPL, community-driven efforts based around >> the MX53QSB, and the reasonable price _and_ the offer of discount >> vouchers (which steve mentioned, which is what fired off this thread >> in the first place), why has the MX53QSB not been chosen as the board >> for the freedombox foundation to honour its obligations to its >> kickstarter sponsors? > > Is there specs and source for the video engine in the MX53?
no. there isn't a single ARM SoC which has a FSF-compliant 3D engine or video decode engine. the only low-cost SoC in the world i've been able to find which has reasonable performance and is a generic pipelined architecture (X-Burst) instead of a proprietary engine is the Ingenic jz4760 (700mhz and it can only do 720p). unfortunately the much better 1ghz jz4770 has a bloody proprietary GPU, but at least it still uses X-Burst for video decode. really annoying, but for video and 3D you just have to suck it up and accept that these CPUs come with "system libraries" which are proprietary and, as they are "system libraries", qualify for an exemption (translation: they're "acceptable"), under the GPL. no, i don't like it, either. anyway, let's have a look.... corr, bloody hell this was hard to find. it should be right up there on the overview specs, and it isn't. _eventually_ i found this: www.freescale.com/files/ftf_2010/.../WBNR_FTF10_CON_F0702.pdf page 19, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D accelerator (AMD Z430), OpenVG 1.1 graphics accelerator (AMD Z160). given AMD's ongoing policy to release free software drivers, you might get lucky. but that doesn't mean that the _next_ CPU from Freescale (iMX6) will use AMD's engines! if you recall, samsung actually changed 3D engine on a minor release! the S5PC100 800mhz had one engine, and the S5PC110 1ghz had another. complete madness. l. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAPweEDxQyQ_u73shvP7qnmeUh-k=ancqbnuwm8n98bmk+2v...@mail.gmail.com
