5 ms·

The videocore gpu has not changed. So if the previous gen doesn't have hardware support then nor will this.

by kingosticks 11y ago

trampi 11y ago
Ah, thanks for that information!
MegaDeKay 11y ago
It is clocked at a higher frequency though.
khedoros 11y ago
It's clocked at a higher frequency, and the video codecs seem to be built in software that runs on part of the GPU that isn't directly user-accessible (early builds of the firmware supported fewer codecs). So, the question would be if it is hardware limitation, or if it's just a case that hasn't been implemented in the firmware blob yet. Maybe it wasn't implemented before because the hardware wasn't fast enough to do it at the lower clock.
- kingosticks 11y ago
  I think we'd have seen more products using the Videocore if it had the potential for anything vaguely interesting (like this). But here's to hoping.
  - khedoros 11y ago
    That may be. That portion of the chip is completely closed (no public specs or compiler), so I'm just speculating based on inputs and outputs to a blackbox system. I do know that I've seen people trick the thing (VC4 on Pi2) into pushing out 4K video at about 20fps and decoding 3 h.264 videos at once. Playing a 4th video caused a lot of visual artifacts. So it has potential for more than it's usually used for. There could be a low-level assumption of 8 bits per sample, or some other constraint that we don't know about. Or it could be as simple as Broadcom not being interested in marketing the chip toward higher-end uses like the 10bit profiles. Without signing an NDA and ordering 6-7 digits worth of chips, I think we can only speculate.
- kingosticks 11y ago
  Just came across this at https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=138315 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1383... which doesn't bode well: > The VC4 dev team is disbanded (Broadcom closed down the division making us all redundant)

The videocore gpu has not changed. So if the previous gen doesn't have hardware support then nor will this.

trampi 11y ago

Ah, thanks for that information!

MegaDeKay 11y ago

It is clocked at a higher frequency though.

khedoros 11y ago

It's clocked at a higher frequency, and the video codecs seem to be built in software that runs on part of the GPU that isn't directly user-accessible (early builds of the firmware supported fewer codecs). So, the question would be if it is hardware limitation, or if it's just a case that hasn't been implemented in the firmware blob yet. Maybe it wasn't implemented before because the hardware wasn't fast enough to do it at the lower clock.

kingosticks 11y ago
I think we'd have seen more products using the Videocore if it had the potential for anything vaguely interesting (like this). But here's to hoping.
- khedoros 11y ago
  That may be. That portion of the chip is completely closed (no public specs or compiler), so I'm just speculating based on inputs and outputs to a blackbox system. I do know that I've seen people trick the thing (VC4 on Pi2) into pushing out 4K video at about 20fps and decoding 3 h.264 videos at once. Playing a 4th video caused a lot of visual artifacts. So it has potential for more than it's usually used for. There could be a low-level assumption of 8 bits per sample, or some other constraint that we don't know about. Or it could be as simple as Broadcom not being interested in marketing the chip toward higher-end uses like the 10bit profiles. Without signing an NDA and ordering 6-7 digits worth of chips, I think we can only speculate.
kingosticks 11y ago
Just came across this at https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=138315 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1383... which doesn't bode well: > The VC4 dev team is disbanded (Broadcom closed down the division making us all redundant)