HW Acceleration Working

[jrullan]

Mark,

I respect your opinion,  but it comes down to a philosophical position. I could agree that, for the majority of members in this community engaging in making the MALI work with a custom kernel might not be a walk in the park, but in my opinion products like the Pine, Beaglebone,  Raspberry PI and others are geared primarily towards people that want to prototype, experiment and learn in the process. 

Please note that what we are asking for is not a packaged distro. We are asking for guidance to experiment,  which by definition sets expectations of success appropriately where they should be. What is there to loose?   Who loses? I know I won't,  even if i later decide is not worth my time. But who knows, maybe I end up contributing something useful to others,  and that is the principle behind creating a community around a developer's board such as the Pine.

So,  to get on track again,  we should be willing to help those interested in diving into the unknown, albeit with appropriate cautionary warnings, to explore, break, even get frustrated, but ultimately get the opportunity to learn.  Maybe in the process more community members can also go for a stroll in the park with the park regulars.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T337A using Tapatalk

[longsleep]

Let's assume for a moment you have mali (whatever that means) - what then? Does anyone have a use case which actually would work after installing the mali blobs?

[jrullan]

longsleep, first of all, a big thank you for your commendable work from the rest of us mere mortals.

To me the question about a use case that would work if the Mali blobs were integrated was already answered here and in other threads of the forum by many other community members, but from my own particular perspective my interests lie in maker ed. Our makerspace uses Raspberry PI's as computers to teach young people about computers. Programming using Processing, designing using FreeCad and game development using Godot for example, all those benefit greatly by using hardware OpenGL acceleration. Other's may cite using Kodi with HW acceleration in a desktop environment, which is not my particular interest but I'm sure that there are lots of other use cases other members can think of.  

I bought (10) 2GB A64+ boards to replace the Rasperry PI's on our homemade machines, first because there was no RPI3 and there is also an issue with Broadcom regarding HW Acceleration. But not to get carried away, what are we asking for at this point in time (considering the apparent frustration among some in this thread) is help to put together a "How To" that shows interested members the steps to make hardware OpenGL acceleration available to the apps that support it.

[adamw]

I'll answer longsleep's question with another question.

I'm using SFML to draw graphics on the screen (might use some OpenGL too, but very primitive right now).
Right now, I'm only getting around 1 fps for a 1024x600 screen size.

I've been assuming (maybe incorrectly?) that since SFML can use HW acceleration if it's available, that once we have this working in the kernel, I'd be able to take advantage of that, and start seeing decent frame rates.

Am I incorrect?

[pietrondo]

Freecad (I'm working with 3d print)
emulator (like n64 or playstation)

[pfeerick]

Let's assume for a moment you have mali (whatever that means) - what then? Does anyone have a use case which actually would work after installing the mali blobs?

I'll also answer that with another question, as either I've missed something in the discussion, or we're still avoiding the bear in the room by jumping to conclusions: What exactly does installing / enabling the mali blobs give us that we don't already have? Then we can work out if that's users are after, and what needs work on for it to happen. There are more A64 boards comming out of the market, so there's certainly no reason to beieve that GPU HW acceleration/OpenGL acceraton won't be functional due to more of the community wanting it on compatiable SoC boards, but I think the issue needs to be identiied properly... and then we can work out if the mali blob going to get us (the community) that?

[longsleep]

So far i read OpenGL all over the place. You all are aware that the Mali chip does not even have OpenGL right. It only has OpenGL ES. So please, write OpenGL ES when you know and have verified that your use case actually supports OpenGL and has been confirmed working on another arm64 Linux platform which has fully working X11 and mali blobs (assuming there is such a thing). If you write "OpenGL" as you folks did - i take your word and afraid to tell you not going to work.

Also, the Pine64 has a Mali400 which is old and thus pretty slow. Totally the opposit to the CPU which is rather fast.

[jrullan]

Yes longsleep you are correct, it is specifically OpenGL ES.

Regarding the idea of creating a How To, do you have any suggestions? Maybe lenny raposo could also shed some light.

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[tkaiser]

Regarding the idea of creating a How To, do you have any suggestions?

I have a rather simple suggestion: your How To should start clarifying things first: What does a GPU (this differs from what the average Pine64 user knowns from his PC background where the GPU is said to accelerate all sorts of things: 2D, 3D and video which is NOT the case here), what does this specific GPU (no OpenGL, just OpenGLES), what's needed to take advantage of OpenGLES drivers with the application of choice (nope, nearly none of them work out of the box, huge amounts of patching are required), what to expect from an ultra-slow 8 years old GPU in terms of 3D performance (yes, it's only about 3D and maybe accelerating some window manager effects in X11 or Kodi), why bothering with this stuff on a system where display output is that limited (we have a crippled HDMI driver relying on blobs, no documentation at all and source code with unusable license situation so no one can write display drivers for A64 that do not suck), and why does stuff on arm64 works differently than on armhf.

If you're done with this the hype regarding Mali blobs might already be over. Mali400 is about 3D acceleration, 2D/desktop acceleration is done differently and video decoding/encoding is also something completely different handled by different hardware engines in Allwinner SoCs.

Longsleep all the time asked what might differ for you personally when you get these mythical Mali blobs in your hands. If you answer this question first you know whether you still need to wait or not. And indeed Lenny could share some light on where this Mali blob hype originated from.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

And indeed Lenny could share some light on where this Mali blob hype originated from.

It is completely irrelevant where the hype originated from.  Um, its nobodies fault, and it doesn't need to be anyone's fault.

What is important is that everyone understand what mali is, and what it is not.  Also, it is also important to understand the use cases;  as longsleep has suggested. Most of what people want to do can be done with a VDPAU browser. That is the direction this discussion should go.