On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Lennart Sorensen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 11:39:09AM +0200, Louis-Maurice De Sousa wrote: >> Video chipset is a PowerVR. I suppose we wouldn't have this problem. >> For the kdelibs problem, perhaps could we help having a Debian Blend >> design for tablets, and based on Active Plasma. Like DebianEdu. > > PowerVR is almost certainly the worst possible option if you ever want > an opensource driver. > > Almost every other ARM video chip has reverse engineering in progress, > while the PowerVR seems doomed to never happen (it is just way too weird).
it's based around a processor core that was i believe developed through a connection to imperial college, and the company was bought by imgtec over two decades ago. it has been used as the basis for the 3D engine. the original designer however left a looong time ago. based around that amazingly-flexible core (which is perfectly capable of running a full operating system), a huge amorphous mess has grown up which is completely unmaintainable by the few people left in img-tec who are barely able to keep up with it. "improvements" are done by tweaking the hard macros and dialing up the number of parallel engines. the software is such a mess - precisely because of the flexible design - that powervr is known to fall over on a regular basis, mostly related to complex shading. ignoring the proprietary software complexity: from a reverse-engineering perspective what this means is that the hardware is just way too complex to tackle in a reasonable time-frame without some serious funding. but, louis, from your perspective, if you're going to be needing that 3D engine for any serious educational purposes then please do take into consideration the fact that the product *will* be unreliable and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it [except to not use the 3D engine and to use software 3D instead, in which case, why are you paying extra for the integrated powervr hardware??]. l. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAPweEDxQRw1A-9Wd1VBUMLppA7hOpGpQbZ2td+yXOR0=jsk...@mail.gmail.com
