• Locked Locked
  • Replies 18 replies
  • Subscribers 137 subscribers
  • Views 29975 views
  • Users 0 members are here
2025 survey

We are running a survey to help us improve the experience for all of our members. If you see the survey appear, please take the time to tell us about your experience if you can.

Options
Related
How was your experience today?
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Mali GPU development boards

guestposter guestposter
Note: This was originally posted on 12th October 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

While there are a variety of Mali GPU licensees currently designing Mali GPUs into their SoCs, there are not necessarily many development boards available to the general public.

In order to provide application developers on Mali GPU-based projects with the hardware they need to get their work done, we would like to gain a strong (and accurate) understanding of what needs to be made available. What are the things you look for in a development platform?
  • Note: This was originally posted on 5th November 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    Indeed the drivers will be provided in binary format directly from the Mali Developer Center. The aim is to provide developers all they need to get started in one place  ;)
    On your last note; it's more a question of availability - this is early stage hardware that is not manufactured in large volumes yet unfortunately. We therefore need to qualify these requests and use a queuing system. Have you requested a board btw?


    Glad to hear that :) To tell you the truth we are not just developers but we plan to make a device based on TCC8900,but since we wanted an open platform it's good we have to add less abstraction since the drivers will be freely available(otherwise we would had to create an intermediate library).

    As for the last note,I was talking of the android bsp only.The dev board and the linux bsp aren't a problem,but android support is limited to key customer at the moment.Yes,we ordered the board,just in the middle of the various negotiations and NDA.
    I think this platform is way ahead of the competitions and the drivers organizations is really good,making use of standard frameworks like gstreamer,openmax,openvg,etc.
  • Note: This was originally posted on 7th November 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    ARM's Mali has the chance to not only offer an IP core with similar or better hardware performance.  It has the chance of being several orders of magnitude better when it comes to providing a "standard Linux graphics stack".  This means that
    * kernel framebuffer driver + DRI2 (or TTM/KMS), open source under GPL, actively contributed back to the mainline kernel
    * Xorg driver with EXA/XAA + Xvideo), open source under MIT license, against latest development version of Xorg
    * OpenGL driver (not only ES), preferrably open source. If it has to stay proprietary, keep the proprietary part as small as possible and make sure it only uses standardized DRI/DRM interface to the kernel

    If ARM can provide something along these lines, they will make it at least 10 times easier to build a Linux-based netbook or MID.  If they don't, it will not make a difference if you use Imgtec or Mali


    This makes the difference, not if the GPU has 5MPoly/sec more or less.
    Anyways, the core business of ARM is the processor architecture, I would do a long term strategy, giving and doing what all the other companies like IMGTEC didn't (source code, helping the open source community, etc), low license prices for the GPU that will supplement the next CortexA8-A9 licenses (the collateral effect is most important: makes stronger the Core business). This is the right moment and a chance that ARM cannot waste.