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The problem with the Raspberry Pi is that it is based on dead IP after Broadcom fired the whole division and canceled the program. It went ok the last few year

The problem with the Raspberry Pi is that it is based on dead IP after Broadcom fired the whole division and canceled the program. It went ok the last few years as at least the CPU improves as the foundation makes an effort to release new SoC revision with updated ARM cores. However the GPU is in a dead end since quite some time and most likely this will never change.

hazeii 7y ago
Do you mean this story[0]? It's the only reference I could find. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom-VC4-V3D-Developer-Left https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom...
- bootloop 7y ago
  No, Eric wrote the open source driver for the GPU. There was actually quite a lot of effort invested into VC4 and that's why we still have it. But this is all software. [0] The actual HW didn't change much and the reason is because they got all fired. [1][2] I will give you a few links but this happened in 2014/2015 so it's not so easy to find a lot of relevant things (James who commented in the forum worked for them): [0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&sid=7e97844c1dcf5c7c80c890ab31fa96de#p846710 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&si... [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p893456 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p8... [2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_broadcom_thousands_laid_off/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_b... Edit: Back then I was a bit involved into QPU programming with the assembler which was written based on the open source documentation of the VC4. That's why I have seen all this discussion. [3] I doubt that Broadcom has done much more then maintenance on the GPU IP in the last few years because Raspberry Pi are their only customers. [3] http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html
  - dannyw 7y ago
    Sad to see the GPU IP linger, but at least it's just the GPU. It's not like Pis are meant for video rendering or training ML models or whatnot.

hazeii 7y ago

Do you mean this story[0]? It's the only reference I could find. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom-VC4-V3D-Developer-Left https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Broadcom...

bootloop 7y ago
No, Eric wrote the open source driver for the GPU. There was actually quite a lot of effort invested into VC4 and that's why we still have it. But this is all software. [0] The actual HW didn't change much and the reason is because they got all fired. [1][2] I will give you a few links but this happened in 2014/2015 so it's not so easy to find a lot of relevant things (James who commented in the forum worked for them): [0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&sid=7e97844c1dcf5c7c80c890ab31fa96de#p846710 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846710&si... [1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p893456 https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=893456#p8... [2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_broadcom_thousands_laid_off/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/23/chips_are_down_at_b... Edit: Back then I was a bit involved into QPU programming with the assembler which was written based on the open source documentation of the VC4. That's why I have seen all this discussion. [3] I doubt that Broadcom has done much more then maintenance on the GPU IP in the last few years because Raspberry Pi are their only customers. [3] http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html
- dannyw 7y ago
  Sad to see the GPU IP linger, but at least it's just the GPU. It's not like Pis are meant for video rendering or training ML models or whatnot.