2 ms·
Most likely yes. There is very little known about the VideoCore VI's capabilities, but it doesn't look impressive. They state OpenGL ES 3.0 support, which to m
by DCKing 7y ago
Most likely yes. There is very little known about the VideoCore VI's capabilities, but it doesn't look impressive. They state OpenGL ES 3.0 support, which to me implies that it doesn't even support compute shaders (introduced in OGL ES 3.1). It looks like the hardware lacks features many modern graphics architectures can be expected to have. As a point of comparison, Nvidia has supported compute shaders in their architectures for eight full yearrs now. If I understand the spec sheet correctly Vulkan will never come to the RPi 4 because of hardware limitations.
On top of that, in basic initial benchmarks using OpenArena the GPU only shows a 50% improvement over the RPi 3B+, which is still using the same GPU architecture the RPi launched with in 2013. That benchmark doesn't test shader performance so it's not the best indicator, but it doesn't make the chip look any more impressive either.
I think Broadcom is not spending the R&D resources required to keep their graphics architecture up to date. It's a shame because the GPU of the original Raspberry Pi was really good for its time, and maybe the most impressive specification it had.
If you want to do graphics/compute tasks on an SBC the Nano (or just the full uncompromised Nvidia Shield TV) will undoubtedly be superior.
- DCKing 7y agoI have spoken too soon. Khronos lists the VideoCore VI as Vulkan compatible - latest Vulkan 1.1 compatible even [1]. Apparently compute shader support is being worked on for the VideoCore driver [2], which explains why it's missing from current reviews. Functionality to support compute shaders is not even present in current Mesa's git HEAD, let alone on Debian Buster's older Mesa version. So it not having a modern featureset is a result of more driver issues. It's clear that this hardware has been a surprise release. Oh well, even then using an Nvidia Jetson gives you way better software support for graphics / compute tasks in the forseeable future. [1]: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#submission_344 https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-prod... [2]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=V3D-Compute-Shader-Compilation https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=V3D-Comp...