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Dramatic. :) For the potential fandom side of a dev board (other than companies being a fan of not paying for ARM licensing), a software person's questions: *

by neilv 2y ago

Dramatic. :) For the potential fandom side of a dev board (other than companies being a fan of not paying for ARM licensing), a software person's questions: * Does it work entirely with mainline Linux kernel, including drivers? Which version? * Are all the onboard devices open firmware? * Is it free of unwanted processors like Intel ME and AMD PSP? * Is that a daughterboard? If so, is the daughterboard suitable as a module in production? If so, what is on the main board, other than connectors and passives? * Is "full-size" PCIe 3.0 slot actually x16? (Hard to see the connector at 22s in the video.) * How much RAM, and is it ECC? Upgradeable? * The GPU is only suitable for, say, 1080p or 4K video playing, not for general-purpose or AI compute, correct?

ferbivore 2y ago
It's the exact same GPU as in the MediaTek MT6855/Dimensity 930/7020, it's just the memory interface and clocks that might be different, slower or faster depending on what Eswin have done. It should run some games. For reference, the MT6855 runs Genshin Impact at... playable... framerates on low settings. It wasn't designed with ML in mind, but I guess if the model is small enough... The GPU has a perfectly functional Linux driver, not sure why Eswin haven't released it yet. Proprietary, of course. Prospects for an open-source driver are slim to none. And yeah, the GPU has firmware running on an internal CPU. Proprietary ISA, closed-source firmware, blobs will be provided by Eswin (nb: Chinese). This has security implications even if you trust Imagination and Eswin, since the firmware is in charge of memory protection and there's probably some vulnerabilities in there.