4 ms·

Are there SoCs at a comparable price/speed that are more open? I can understand being disappointed at this choice, but if no other options exist, then either y

by rtpg 10y ago

Are there SoCs at a comparable price/speed that are more open? I can understand being disappointed at this choice, but if no other options exist, then either you're sacrificing price or performance to get more open-ness. My impression has been that this has mostly been about giving a cheap, easy to use software platform, and they've succeeded at that because of the price/performance balance. That was then, though. Now that this platform is more established, I imagine they can apply some pressure to get things like the video core to be more open.

agumonkey 10y ago
Nowadays possibly; when the rpi project started I don't think so.
userbinator 10y ago
AllWinner comes to mind; here's one of the more well-known RPi-ish boards using them: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardwa...
- rincebrain 10y ago
  Allwinner's been known to play hard and fast with the GPL and LGPL, so I'm not sure I'd cite them for being better about open source. cf. http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
  - makomk 10y ago
    I think they got their act together a while ago. More importantly, part of the reason they got in so much hot water is they didn't use the Pi's GPL compliance technique of moving everything interesting into a blob running on a totally undocumented core. Everything important runs on the ARM core. (I believe some of the newer SoCs have an embedded core for power management, but apparently it's OpenRISC-based.)
  - trome 10y ago
    Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. Not saying they did any of that mind you, but they at least put the docs out there and eventually posted their BSP on github under GPLv2, so their changes could be updated & mainlined.
    - justabystander 10y ago
      > Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. It is not fully open. (http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX). Partial code was published a year and a half ago, but the video engine still isn't supported. Their GPUs are Mali, as well, which is still a large obstacle in running a modern kernel. Not to mention that all the code they published was as code dumps, some was under unclear licensing, and it's never on a remotely modern kernel, so it requires heavy porting. But yeah, they did release the code after years of complaints about GPL violations. Giving a company credit for community efforts is kind of misleading.
      - trome 10y ago
        Uhh, if you want a bad experience from a closed source blob, CedarX is your go to. Cedrus is the fully open VPU driver I was referring to, with H265, VP8 and H264 support. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus Mali is still closed source, but GPUs in general are in a poor state for open driver support. Luckily you don't need GPU drivers to bring up Xorg on HDMI on Allwinner chips, so unless your playing video games, it is a non-issue. Their code dumps they have cleared up the licensing on as of late, Tyle from Allwinner did make clear that everything that isn't explicitly licensed in the file itself is under GPLv2, and that that was Allwinner's original intention. The fact that they are ancient BSP kernels is sucky, but the community is making these sub-$1 SOCs run circles around the other SBCs.
  - wycx 10y ago
    Allwinner itself might not be the best example of open source support, but Allwinners products are well supported in the mainline kernel by the outstanding work of the linux sunxi team. See their progress here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort edit: I now see you link to linux-sunxi, so you probably already know about this.
  - userbinator 10y ago
    They release plenty of documentation, which is more than can be said for Broadcom who seem to be doing all they can to both stay proprietary and legal. Broadcom supplies binary blobs, some source code (which is definitely not for those blobs given how anal they are about IP/licensing), and almost no documentation; AllWinner supplies binary blobs (which are based on existing open-source, thus easier to reverse-engineer), some source code, and far more documentation. Regardless of the legal situation, the contrast is clear.
aceperry 10y ago
"My impression has been that this has mostly been about giving a cheap, easy to use software platform, and they've succeeded at that because of the price/performance balance." It was chosen mainly for the low price. The performance was a little subpar but it had the advantage of a decent video graphics block. "Now that this platform is more established, I imagine they can apply some pressure to get things like the video core to be more open" Broadcom was one of the worst companies to get documentation from, even for their own customers. Unless you were a big customer, you're lucky to get the time of day from them. Hopefully, their new owners Avago will have a different attitude towards the open source community.
- superflyguy 10y ago
  I doubt the pi foundation are remotely concerned with how open the soc is as it has absolutely no impact on the core uses of the pi. They're smart people and would have made a different choice were it the case.
  - tinus_hn 10y ago
    I've seen statements from them about this. They do care but they also are pragmatic and made the choices they had to make to reach their goal, which was to have a small cheap programmable device with enough power to make cool things easily. Openness came second to that.
makomk 10y ago
The Orange Pi PC is $15, roughly comparable to the Pi 3 performance wise, and doesn't require any of this hilarity to boot with open source code.
- bostand 10y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. The OPi chip maybe for not cone from a "respected" western company but it is in all regards a more open chip. While the datasheet is almost as thin as that of Broadcom it is mostly because they use standard components where the full datasheet is available from arm. There are also far less magic blobs and crazy boot gymnastics in there.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Is it just me or the downloads on the Orange Pi site have no checksum attached? http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/orangepipc2/2016-11-15/orangepipc2_bf8c2b9aa91473e7659e4d8e.html http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/orangepipc2/2016-1...
  - justabystander 10y ago
    > The OPi chip maybe for not cone from a "respected" western company This isn't some petty nationalist agenda like you're claiming. AllWinner's lack of respect stems from their pathological refusal to cooperate with the Linux kernel and their many GPL license violations. They throw out new hardware cores very frequently, but the hardware is impossible to keep updated (and is thus insecure and hard to use) because AllWinner won't release hardware documentation or source code. I've got a few AllWinner devices, and they're poorly suited as general-purpose computing devices if you need both graphics and a recent kernel. They collect dust with my other nigh-unusable hardware. Most of the AllWinner support in the kernel has been added despite the company's deplorable position, and the major community repository of information is highly critical of them (http://linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner http://linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner). It's sad for a company when your major users and developers think so poorly of you. Broadcom also acted like this for many years, and was similarly hated. The Raspberry Pi has been a bit of a paradigm shift in corporate policy which has earned them a lot more respect. And it's still been a rather slow journey. If AllWinner wants respect, they can earn it by making their hardware easy to use for the hobbyist and non-commercial developers they're courting with all the cheap knockoffs they're releasing (e.g. Orange Pi, Banana Pi, etc which try and profit off brand name similarity). Blaming it on Western propaganda is just pitiful self-deception.
joezydeco 10y ago
Yes. Qualcomm/NXP/Freescale's iMX, for starters. Or TI's Sitara line (BeagleBone).

by rtpg 10y ago

agumonkey 10y ago

Nowadays possibly; when the rpi project started I don't think so.

userbinator 10y ago

AllWinner comes to mind; here's one of the more well-known RPi-ish boards using them: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardwa...

rincebrain 10y ago
Allwinner's been known to play hard and fast with the GPL and LGPL, so I'm not sure I'd cite them for being better about open source. cf. http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
- makomk 10y ago
  I think they got their act together a while ago. More importantly, part of the reason they got in so much hot water is they didn't use the Pi's GPL compliance technique of moving everything interesting into a blob running on a totally undocumented core. Everything important runs on the ARM core. (I believe some of the newer SoCs have an embedded core for power management, but apparently it's OpenRISC-based.)
- trome 10y ago
  Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. Not saying they did any of that mind you, but they at least put the docs out there and eventually posted their BSP on github under GPLv2, so their changes could be updated & mainlined.
  - justabystander 10y ago
    > Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. It is not fully open. (http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX). Partial code was published a year and a half ago, but the video engine still isn't supported. Their GPUs are Mali, as well, which is still a large obstacle in running a modern kernel. Not to mention that all the code they published was as code dumps, some was under unclear licensing, and it's never on a remotely modern kernel, so it requires heavy porting. But yeah, they did release the code after years of complaints about GPL violations. Giving a company credit for community efforts is kind of misleading.
    - trome 10y ago
      Uhh, if you want a bad experience from a closed source blob, CedarX is your go to. Cedrus is the fully open VPU driver I was referring to, with H265, VP8 and H264 support. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus Mali is still closed source, but GPUs in general are in a poor state for open driver support. Luckily you don't need GPU drivers to bring up Xorg on HDMI on Allwinner chips, so unless your playing video games, it is a non-issue. Their code dumps they have cleared up the licensing on as of late, Tyle from Allwinner did make clear that everything that isn't explicitly licensed in the file itself is under GPLv2, and that that was Allwinner's original intention. The fact that they are ancient BSP kernels is sucky, but the community is making these sub-$1 SOCs run circles around the other SBCs.
- wycx 10y ago
  Allwinner itself might not be the best example of open source support, but Allwinners products are well supported in the mainline kernel by the outstanding work of the linux sunxi team. See their progress here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort edit: I now see you link to linux-sunxi, so you probably already know about this.
- userbinator 10y ago
  They release plenty of documentation, which is more than can be said for Broadcom who seem to be doing all they can to both stay proprietary and legal. Broadcom supplies binary blobs, some source code (which is definitely not for those blobs given how anal they are about IP/licensing), and almost no documentation; AllWinner supplies binary blobs (which are based on existing open-source, thus easier to reverse-engineer), some source code, and far more documentation. Regardless of the legal situation, the contrast is clear.

aceperry 10y ago

"My impression has been that this has mostly been about giving a cheap, easy to use software platform, and they've succeeded at that because of the price/performance balance." It was chosen mainly for the low price. The performance was a little subpar but it had the advantage of a decent video graphics block. "Now that this platform is more established, I imagine they can apply some pressure to get things like the video core to be more open" Broadcom was one of the worst companies to get documentation from, even for their own customers. Unless you were a big customer, you're lucky to get the time of day from them. Hopefully, their new owners Avago will have a different attitude towards the open source community.

superflyguy 10y ago
I doubt the pi foundation are remotely concerned with how open the soc is as it has absolutely no impact on the core uses of the pi. They're smart people and would have made a different choice were it the case.
- tinus_hn 10y ago
  I've seen statements from them about this. They do care but they also are pragmatic and made the choices they had to make to reach their goal, which was to have a small cheap programmable device with enough power to make cool things easily. Openness came second to that.

makomk 10y ago

The Orange Pi PC is $15, roughly comparable to the Pi 3 performance wise, and doesn't require any of this hilarity to boot with open source code.

bostand 10y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. The OPi chip maybe for not cone from a "respected" western company but it is in all regards a more open chip. While the datasheet is almost as thin as that of Broadcom it is mostly because they use standard components where the full datasheet is available from arm. There are also far less magic blobs and crazy boot gymnastics in there.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Is it just me or the downloads on the Orange Pi site have no checksum attached? http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/orangepipc2/2016-11-15/orangepipc2_bf8c2b9aa91473e7659e4d8e.html http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/orangepipc2/2016-1...
- justabystander 10y ago
  > The OPi chip maybe for not cone from a "respected" western company This isn't some petty nationalist agenda like you're claiming. AllWinner's lack of respect stems from their pathological refusal to cooperate with the Linux kernel and their many GPL license violations. They throw out new hardware cores very frequently, but the hardware is impossible to keep updated (and is thus insecure and hard to use) because AllWinner won't release hardware documentation or source code. I've got a few AllWinner devices, and they're poorly suited as general-purpose computing devices if you need both graphics and a recent kernel. They collect dust with my other nigh-unusable hardware. Most of the AllWinner support in the kernel has been added despite the company's deplorable position, and the major community repository of information is highly critical of them (http://linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner http://linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner). It's sad for a company when your major users and developers think so poorly of you. Broadcom also acted like this for many years, and was similarly hated. The Raspberry Pi has been a bit of a paradigm shift in corporate policy which has earned them a lot more respect. And it's still been a rather slow journey. If AllWinner wants respect, they can earn it by making their hardware easy to use for the hobbyist and non-commercial developers they're courting with all the cheap knockoffs they're releasing (e.g. Orange Pi, Banana Pi, etc which try and profit off brand name similarity). Blaming it on Western propaganda is just pitiful self-deception.

joezydeco 10y ago

Yes. Qualcomm/NXP/Freescale's iMX, for starters. Or TI's Sitara line (BeagleBone).