Re: Re: Broadcom VideoCore graphics acceleration on microboards

There's a newer mention of this for Arm boards for Raspberry Pi a month later in December,
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm/2023-December/003409.html
That mailing list is more fitting.
 
If I were good at this, I would be more helpful.
Though letting more know about it, is a start,
because the common assumption was that everything uses Intel, AMD and Nvidia.
It also doesn't need to be advanced video acceleration.
A common future requirement would be enough to play video well enough.

I also thought, that since NetBSD had one VideoCore driver,
some part of it was opensource.
Now, I understand, that was the video driver for Raspberry Pi 3,
which NetBSD has a video driver to.
You were referring to another opensource driver (V3D) for Raspberry Pi 4.

Thank you for a response.
It's just good that there is more awareness of this lack of driver ability.


> If you have the skills and time to do it I know you would make more people happy. [1]

> When clicking from that blog to the NetBSD Wiki (https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/#index5h1[https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/#index5h1]) it states:
"X11 and GPU

> Video acceleration currently only works with 32-bit (ARMv7 and ARMv6) kernels due to the Broadcom code not being 64-bit clean.
> Since applications require specialized support for the GPU, only a few applications are normally accelerated. NetBSD/aarch64 normally uses llvmpipe to provide fast parallel CPU-driven support for OpenGL, so should be faster when running normal applications.
> The situation should be improved, ideally by writing a DRM/KMS driver."

> So it is not always a bed of roses in NetBSD land either.

> AFAIK this broadcom stuff is proprietary closed source so a bit hard to work on I guess. Although the forums link [1] states that RPI4 has an open source V3D driver.

> Regards,
> Ronald.


>> It has come to my attention that FreeBSD doesn't have a kmod driver for Broadcom VideoCore GPU's
>> for graphics acceleration. We may have assumed that most boards use AMD, Intel or Nvidia GPU's,
>> but microboards typically use VideoCore IV hardware for graphics.
 
>> In comparison, NetBSD has support for graphics acceleration for VideoCore hardware, as can be
>> seen at https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/raspberry_pi_gpu_acceleration_in
 
>> Also on FreeBSD, drivers may also be lacking for the audio hardware from microboards, which may
be bcm devices.
 
>> Thank you

[https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/what-about-2d-3d-hardware-acceleration-and-audio-support-on-raspberry-pi.86341/]