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The Raspberry Pi starts up by loading an opaque blob into the GPU, and that then runs the CPU under supervision. ie the CPU is a servant and controlled by the
by rogerbinns 14y ago
The Raspberry Pi starts up by loading an opaque blob into the GPU, and that then runs the CPU under supervision. ie the CPU is a servant and controlled by the GPU, not the other way around as is normal in the PC world.
So irrespective of your video intentions, you are still at the mercy of a blob.
- excuse-me 14y agoBut unless your are a real FOSS zealot (say > 500milli Stallmans) you are at the mercy of the bios, the disk controller firmware and the CPU microcode on any machine In reality being able to run whatever user programs you want in whatever combination you want without artificial is what FOSS is all about.
- rogerbinns 14y agoThe "user programs" you want to run are determined by the operating system. And the operating system is determined by blobs, controllers, BIOS and similar gunk. If for example the Pi blob is such that Linux kernel 3.7 can't run then you are SOL. Or if on a device like this their blob only works with Android 2.3 then you can't run a different version. Or maybe you can't run one of the BSDs. The video/GPU is especially relevant in the Pi case because it controls what the CPU can do.
- excuse-me 14y agoYes that's true - I was thinking of people who complain they don't have details for some deep detail of the GPU shader cores to write an opensource driver for their NVidia card.