11-07-2019, 02:34 AM
(11-06-2019, 11:16 PM)aleksei Wrote: Could you be bothered to test it? It's a "to buy or not to buy" factor for me.
I've just taken a look at the displayport source for the analogix dp transmitter and it does indeed require firmware. Conceptually that's not really a problem though. The firmware runs on a separate processor inside the display port transceiver to offload timing-critical tasks (of which DP has a lot).
Having to load this blob externally just means that there is no non-volatile memory inside the component itself to store a copy of the firmware permanently. There is probably embedded firmware in quite a few components of the device. Just think about devices like the camera, the rk3399 SoC or the rk808 power management IC. They do most certainly all have non-free firmware inside. The only difference there is that you don't see it.
If you want a real, GNU+free modern device currently no commercially available one is for you. The Pinebook Pro is pretty much as blob-free as it gets. In the distant future there might be RISC-V devices that are truly blob-free. But at the moment there are hardly better choices