9 comments

  • dmytrish37 days ago
    Thanks so much for great work! I hope to finally see VisionFive 2 with enabled GPU acceleration soon.
  • djmips37 days ago
    So I'm unfamiliar with this so let me ask a few dumb questions but first of all great job! My questions are - If you didn't do this work how would you use this soc? When I search, it is stated that it supports OpenGL and Vulkan but was that just ' in theory? ' How can a SOC developer make a product without driver support? Don't they risk messing up and having hardware that doesn't work properly?
    • imtringued37 days ago
      You see they don&#x27;t care. They give you a OS image on Google Drive with a forked kernel and call it a day.<p>Silicon hardware companies have one of the dumbest business models, when it comes to programmable chips. They want to sell chips, because it makes them money through sales. They don&#x27;t want to spend money on software support, because you cannot link the software to a sale. So software to them costs money and produces no benefits.<p>But when you think about it even a little bit, you start to wonder. Who is going to write commercial grade software for a commercial hardware product that they don&#x27;t make money off? Nobody. What you&#x27;ll get is an anemic volunteer effort at best. The volunteers might even do a good job, but since they are not involved in the hardware development process, they will always be playing catch up and take a year until the latest hardware is supported. So even in the theoretical best case scenario the hardware will be sold when it is least attractive.<p>This business model is completely illogical and Nvidia doesn&#x27;t follow it. Instead Nvidia proactively invested in a software ecosystem for their hardware, thereby leading them to their current valuation.<p>The same applies to Intel and x86. People prefer x86 boxes, because the software ecosystem of drivers, UEFI&#x2F;booting and so on is fully mature, whereas ARM SBCs are a fragmented mess.
      • djmips37 days ago
        man, things haven&#x27;t changed since the nineties... What you said about Nvidia is 100% facts
  • eek212138 days ago
    Nice! Looking forward to finally getting proper support for my Lichee Pi 4A!
  • stevefolta38 days ago
    Hooray! Personally, I&#x27;m hoping this&#x27;ll lead to support for the GPU on Spacemit SoCs.
    • michalwilczynsk38 days ago
      The GPU driver itself is largely the same, though it might need some tweaks for the specific variant in the K1.<p>The bigger hurdle will likely be the display controller. The TH1520 and JH7110 both use the Verisilicon DC8200, whereas the Spacemit K1 uses a custom display controller that will need its own DRM driver mainlined.
  • holg38 days ago
    Kudos, great project, i wait to have my work machine being the RISC-V once...
  • yunnpp38 days ago
    Fantastic, good work. I&#x27;m looking forward to mainstream RISC-V.
  • fithisux38 days ago
    Congratulations!<p>BTW is OrangePI V2 supported?
    • michalwilczynsk38 days ago
      The Orange Pi RV2 (Ky X1) uses the Imagination BXE-2-32.<p>The good news is that firmware is available for that variant. The bad news is that Mesa currently lists the BXE-2-32 as &#x27;unsupported &#x2F; not under active development&#x27; (unlike the BXS-4-64 in the TH1520, which is active). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.mesa3d.org&#x2F;drivers&#x2F;powervr.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.mesa3d.org&#x2F;drivers&#x2F;powervr.html</a><p>So while the kernel driver (drm&#x2F;imagination) is the right path, the RV2 is a steeper hill to climb: it needs the SoC kernel plumbing and likely some work in Mesa.
      • fithisux38 days ago
        Ouch!!!<p>I will have to wait then. I may choose a supported variant then.
        • snvzz37 days ago
          This year will see the first chips with RVA23 support.<p>K3 (which succeeds K1 this story is about) is expected to be among them.
  • NooneAtAll338 days ago
    what&#x27;s the point of supporting HDMI?<p>just let this worse standard die already - and switch to DisplayPort
    • michalwilczynsk38 days ago
      I agree DisplayPort would be nice, but unfortunately, almost all currently available RISC-V SBCs only have physical HDMI and MIPI DSI connectors. We have to support the hardware that actually exists on the board.
    • pantalaimon38 days ago
      If your board comes with a HDMI output you surely want to the that to connect e.g. a TV