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Arm Officially Supports Panfrost Open-Source Mali GPU Driver Development

182 points by conductor 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
varbhat 6y ago
Nice. May benefit pinephone ,etc. aiming to become Linux-Phone .
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  I think Pinephone uses Lima drivers rather than Panfrost. That said, it will certainly help the Pinebook Pro and many other SBC-based projects
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Wasn't panfrost used by Puri.sm the libre 5?
    - blendergeek 6y ago
      No. The Librem 5 uses a Vivante GPU which uses the Etnaviv free/libre driver.
      - dathinab 6y ago
        Thanks
marcodiego 6y ago
I wonder for how long this will continue, considering NVIDIA has just bought ARM.
- protomyth 6y ago
  I doubt Mali will survive the purchase.
- justaguy88 6y ago
  Wont it take like 18months or something to actually get the transaction done?
- Subsentient 6y ago
  I'm expecting this to be another Oracle/Sun acquisition, e.g. annihilates everything the old company's customers ever liked about them. So no, I don't think this FOSS contribution will continue. Nvidia is notoriously hostile to open source.
  - bazooka_penguin 6y ago
    Nvidia has been contributing to open source scientific computing, ml, and simulation libraries for a while now to support CUDA's adoption
    - wtallis 6y ago
      The userspace vs kernelspace distinction is important here. Nvidia contributing userspace code with dependencies on their hardware and proprietary drivers is part of a lock-in strategy. Contributing open-source drivers would be a very different thing, and would undermine at least some of their product segmentation strategies.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Yet CUDA is still fully proprietary & total vendor lock-in...
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        Kinda surprising AMD hasn't made their own CUDA compiler and set of libraries.
tomalpha 6y ago
Is this perhaps a foretelling of what is to come? If Arm plan to drop Mali completely, to be replaced by something from Nvidia, this could be an early step to washing their hands of driver itself. Edit: That was a bit cynical. More charitably, open sourcing the driver under these circumstances would allow the community to continue to use and support Mali even if Arm were looking to discontinue it.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Even if NVidia is going to abandon Mali, why give consumers less reason to switch and not jump ship to some hypothetical RISC-V thing? (Before one might say "well, it was already closed source".) I want to believe this is some mid-level employee going rouge trying to salvage what they can before the inevitable rent seeking :D.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    I don't get why everyone is so negative about Nvidia Arm. Is it not possible that this leads to good competition in the datacenter, and pushing prices down generally?
    - LockAndLol 6y ago
      In English saying "no competition" means either there are no competitors or the existing rivals lack the skills or resources to compete. On the other hand, having a lot of competition means the opposite: a lot of rivals that have the skills and resources to compete --> 0...n. Merging is n-1 thus reducing competition. Can you explain how merging two companies and thus removing a competitor leads to good competition?
      - core-questions 6y ago
        ARM is not really yet a competitor because I can't just go to HP or Dell and get an ARM machine. I'd have to go out of my way, buy something from a smaller vendor, etc. If Nvidia ARM machines become something that first-tier server vendors make available, there will indeed be competition in places there there isn't presently.
dtx1 6y ago
I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. They have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Any SBC, Phone, Notebook will be easier to sell if it can run a mainline kernel. Android Updates will become much less of a problem and just the sheer amount of free QA work in form of bugtracker items should be well worth the effort. I do hope nvidia starts to realize this aswell and makes their drivers less closed and annoying to use on linux. I suspect the issue is a little bit of licensing and a lot of "management" and people that think that "proprietary" is a good thing.
- shmerl 6y ago
  > I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. It could be market manipulation. If you have an open driver, you can use the hardware any way you want. If the only well performing or functional driver is a blob, they can decide to charge you for using specific features. Like with some enterprise use cases and etc.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      > Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. Yep, that's my guess exactly why they are such jerks and hinder Nouveau reclocking. > And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons.
dleslie 6y ago
This is good news for Pinebook Pro users.
- jandrese 6y ago
  I'm also hoping this means I can finally get working GPU drivers for my old Pine64 board. I had a couple of projects that got shelved because the graphics situation on that board was such a disaster.
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    That would be the Lima driver, different project. Hopefully ARM helps with that too, but Lima is a bit more mature than Panfrost and it is used for older hardware, so ARM might not think it's worth the effort.
  - megous 6y ago
    The drivers work already.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
The article starts by saying: "Most GPU drivers found in Arm processors are known to be closed-source making it difficult and time-consuming to fix some of the bugs since everybody needs to rely on the silicon vendor to fix those for them, and they may even decide a particular bug is not important to them, so you’d be out of luck." Why is it then that nvidia is singled out for hatred in this regard? nvidia is an evil, baby-killing company for not open sourcing its drivers, but all the others with closed drivers (including ARM up until today) don't get hated on. The drivers are not open source, but nvidia has released quite a few open source projects. I admit I haven't used any of them, maybe they are shit, I don't know. I just googled "nvidia open source" to find them. https://developer.nvidia.com/open-source https://developer.nvidia.com/open-source https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA
- jorams 6y ago
  Nvidia is singled out for hatred on desktop, because everybody else has cleaned up their act quite a bit. ARM is practically irrelevant on desktop, so the fact that ARM only has closed-source options is just not that big of a deal. ARM is very relevant on mobile, and on that front so much is closed that basically everything deserves plenty of hate. The GPU is not a frontier there.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    This article is describing Arm collaborating on development of open source drivers for its graphics architecture - none of the other mobile GPU architecture developers are doing that so I think Arm deserves some credit for that.
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    nVidia is collaborating on their embedded Tegra driver. Rather, they are driving its open source development. nouveau is a viable option on the desktop GPUs, if not a performant one due to the lack of re-clocking, at least it works. LIMA, Panfrost, Etnaviv, freedreno, V3D... The last bastion is powerVR, but I am afraid that this might never happen. https://web.archive.org/web/20181112100406/https://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html https://web.archive.org/web/20181112100406/https://libv.live...
ChuckMcM 6y ago
This gives NVidia an go to market strategy for ARM licensees, use the "community" GPU that is bundled with your ARM license or use the "pro" GPU that costs an additional $$ and you license drivers from NVidia.
shmerl 6y ago
Let's hope Nvidia won't kill it, pushing blobs and CUDA instead, like they block Nouveau from working properly.
bfrog 6y ago
Will it matter when its all closed source blobs because nvidia?
ATsch 6y ago
For context, when Alyssa Rosenzweig initially started this reverse engineering effort, she published releases via TOR out of fear of retribution from ARM. This was in response to the mysterious firing of the main person driving earlier reverse engineering efforts with clear hints at pressure from ARM. All allegedly of course, please don't sue me.
- mkl 6y ago
  Mysterious firing of who by who?
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Alyssa's blog post links to this blog post: https://libv.livejournal.com/27461.html https://libv.livejournal.com/27461.html
- TheAsprngHacker 6y ago
  This blog post seems to discuss what you say: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/my-name-is-cafe-beverage.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/my-name-is-cafe-beverage.html

182 points by conductor 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

varbhat 6y ago

Nice. May benefit pinephone ,etc. aiming to become Linux-Phone .

entropicdrifter 6y ago
I think Pinephone uses Lima drivers rather than Panfrost. That said, it will certainly help the Pinebook Pro and many other SBC-based projects
- dathinab 6y ago
  Wasn't panfrost used by Puri.sm the libre 5?
  - blendergeek 6y ago
    No. The Librem 5 uses a Vivante GPU which uses the Etnaviv free/libre driver.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      Thanks

marcodiego 6y ago

I wonder for how long this will continue, considering NVIDIA has just bought ARM.

protomyth 6y ago
I doubt Mali will survive the purchase.
justaguy88 6y ago
Wont it take like 18months or something to actually get the transaction done?
Subsentient 6y ago
I'm expecting this to be another Oracle/Sun acquisition, e.g. annihilates everything the old company's customers ever liked about them. So no, I don't think this FOSS contribution will continue. Nvidia is notoriously hostile to open source.
- bazooka_penguin 6y ago
  Nvidia has been contributing to open source scientific computing, ml, and simulation libraries for a while now to support CUDA's adoption
  - wtallis 6y ago
    The userspace vs kernelspace distinction is important here. Nvidia contributing userspace code with dependencies on their hardware and proprietary drivers is part of a lock-in strategy. Contributing open-source drivers would be a very different thing, and would undermine at least some of their product segmentation strategies.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Yet CUDA is still fully proprietary & total vendor lock-in...
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      Kinda surprising AMD hasn't made their own CUDA compiler and set of libraries.

tomalpha 6y ago

Is this perhaps a foretelling of what is to come? If Arm plan to drop Mali completely, to be replaced by something from Nvidia, this could be an early step to washing their hands of driver itself. Edit: That was a bit cynical. More charitably, open sourcing the driver under these circumstances would allow the community to continue to use and support Mali even if Arm were looking to discontinue it.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Even if NVidia is going to abandon Mali, why give consumers less reason to switch and not jump ship to some hypothetical RISC-V thing? (Before one might say "well, it was already closed source".) I want to believe this is some mid-level employee going rouge trying to salvage what they can before the inevitable rent seeking :D.
- core-questions 6y ago
  I don't get why everyone is so negative about Nvidia Arm. Is it not possible that this leads to good competition in the datacenter, and pushing prices down generally?
  - LockAndLol 6y ago
    In English saying "no competition" means either there are no competitors or the existing rivals lack the skills or resources to compete. On the other hand, having a lot of competition means the opposite: a lot of rivals that have the skills and resources to compete --> 0...n. Merging is n-1 thus reducing competition. Can you explain how merging two companies and thus removing a competitor leads to good competition?
    - core-questions 6y ago
      ARM is not really yet a competitor because I can't just go to HP or Dell and get an ARM machine. I'd have to go out of my way, buy something from a smaller vendor, etc. If Nvidia ARM machines become something that first-tier server vendors make available, there will indeed be competition in places there there isn't presently.

dtx1 6y ago

I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. They have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Any SBC, Phone, Notebook will be easier to sell if it can run a mainline kernel. Android Updates will become much less of a problem and just the sheer amount of free QA work in form of bugtracker items should be well worth the effort. I do hope nvidia starts to realize this aswell and makes their drivers less closed and annoying to use on linux. I suspect the issue is a little bit of licensing and a lot of "management" and people that think that "proprietary" is a good thing.

shmerl 6y ago
> I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. It could be market manipulation. If you have an open driver, you can use the hardware any way you want. If the only well performing or functional driver is a blob, they can decide to charge you for using specific features. Like with some enterprise use cases and etc.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    > Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. Yep, that's my guess exactly why they are such jerks and hinder Nouveau reclocking. > And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons.

dleslie 6y ago

This is good news for Pinebook Pro users.

jandrese 6y ago
I'm also hoping this means I can finally get working GPU drivers for my old Pine64 board. I had a couple of projects that got shelved because the graphics situation on that board was such a disaster.
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  That would be the Lima driver, different project. Hopefully ARM helps with that too, but Lima is a bit more mature than Panfrost and it is used for older hardware, so ARM might not think it's worth the effort.
- megous 6y ago
  The drivers work already.

tasty_freeze 6y ago

The article starts by saying: "Most GPU drivers found in Arm processors are known to be closed-source making it difficult and time-consuming to fix some of the bugs since everybody needs to rely on the silicon vendor to fix those for them, and they may even decide a particular bug is not important to them, so you’d be out of luck." Why is it then that nvidia is singled out for hatred in this regard? nvidia is an evil, baby-killing company for not open sourcing its drivers, but all the others with closed drivers (including ARM up until today) don't get hated on. The drivers are not open source, but nvidia has released quite a few open source projects. I admit I haven't used any of them, maybe they are shit, I don't know. I just googled "nvidia open source" to find them. https://developer.nvidia.com/open-source https://developer.nvidia.com/open-source https://github.com/NVIDIA https://github.com/NVIDIA

jorams 6y ago
Nvidia is singled out for hatred on desktop, because everybody else has cleaned up their act quite a bit. ARM is practically irrelevant on desktop, so the fact that ARM only has closed-source options is just not that big of a deal. ARM is very relevant on mobile, and on that front so much is closed that basically everything deserves plenty of hate. The GPU is not a frontier there.
- klelatti 6y ago
  This article is describing Arm collaborating on development of open source drivers for its graphics architecture - none of the other mobile GPU architecture developers are doing that so I think Arm deserves some credit for that.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  nVidia is collaborating on their embedded Tegra driver. Rather, they are driving its open source development. nouveau is a viable option on the desktop GPUs, if not a performant one due to the lack of re-clocking, at least it works. LIMA, Panfrost, Etnaviv, freedreno, V3D... The last bastion is powerVR, but I am afraid that this might never happen. https://web.archive.org/web/20181112100406/https://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html https://web.archive.org/web/20181112100406/https://libv.live...

ChuckMcM 6y ago

This gives NVidia an go to market strategy for ARM licensees, use the "community" GPU that is bundled with your ARM license or use the "pro" GPU that costs an additional $$ and you license drivers from NVidia.

shmerl 6y ago

Let's hope Nvidia won't kill it, pushing blobs and CUDA instead, like they block Nouveau from working properly.

bfrog 6y ago

Will it matter when its all closed source blobs because nvidia?

ATsch 6y ago

For context, when Alyssa Rosenzweig initially started this reverse engineering effort, she published releases via TOR out of fear of retribution from ARM. This was in response to the mysterious firing of the main person driving earlier reverse engineering efforts with clear hints at pressure from ARM. All allegedly of course, please don't sue me.

mkl 6y ago
Mysterious firing of who by who?
- pabs3 6y ago
  Alyssa's blog post links to this blog post: https://libv.livejournal.com/27461.html https://libv.livejournal.com/27461.html
TheAsprngHacker 6y ago
This blog post seems to discuss what you say: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/my-name-is-cafe-beverage.html https://rosenzweig.io/blog/my-name-is-cafe-beverage.html