ASUS Brings "Tinker Board" Raspberry Pi 3 Competitor to North America

[silentbogo]

By your metric of qualification, the RPi3 is even more uninteresting and outdated. So your argument is a bit self-defeating.

Why all of you think I'm trying to defend RPi? Excluding BeagleBone, it is by far one of the most outdated and underpowered platforms on the market.

Also incorrect information. The Android & rk3288 based devices I own will show 4k30 with ANY app that supports the format, including the MKV files I play on them. Rockchip's code is NOT required. And there are MANY custom roms for the rk3288 SOC which make use of optimized Mali drivers so making a smooth running rom for this SBC will present little challenge.

ARM are the ones to blame.
...and there are no "optimized drivers", since they are all based on the same set of binary blobs from ARM....

 

[lexluthermiester]

...and there are no "optimized drivers", since they are all based on the same set of binary blobs from ARM....

Ok bud. You keep thinking that.

 

[Cheeseball]

Ok bud. You keep thinking that.

No, he's right. Those optimized drivers you're talking about are just updated binary blobs taken from other devices that use the same Mali T7xx GPU, most likely from the Exynos SoC as Samsung usually get updated blobs faster compared to other mobile manufacturers.

ARM never released any proper open-source documentation (not necessarily source code) for their Mali GPUs, unless you pay for their license as a hardware manufacturer.

I do agree that Rockchip has been doing a good job for the last couple of years, being a Ugoos UM3 owner myself.

 

[jabbadap]

Yeah so it seems to be. Kernel driver is open source, but use space is closed binary blob.

 

[lexluthermiester]

No, he's right. Those optimized drivers you're talking about are just updated binary blobs taken from other devices that use the same Mali T7xx GPU, most likely from the Exynos SoC as Samsung usually get updated blobs faster compared to other mobile manufacturers.

Nope.

ARM never released any proper open-source documentation (not necessarily source code) for their Mali GPUs, unless you pay for their license as a hardware manufacturer.

Ok..

I do agree that Rockchip has been doing a good job for the last couple of years, being a Ugoos UM3 owner myself.

That's cool.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yeah so it seems to be. Kernel driver is open source, but use space is closed binary blob.

Did you bother even reading that page? How about this one? https://developer.arm.com/products/software/mali-drivers/midgard-kernel

 

[jabbadap]

Did you bother even reading that page? How about this one? https://developer.arm.com/products/software/mali-drivers/midgard-kernel

I did and even said so: kernel driver is open source. But you do realize that you can't really do anything serious with it without user space drivers.

But yeah you get NDAted full source code from arm if you are developer of the chip itself, so what Cheeseball's said about Exonys chip is most probably quite wrong. Rockship should have the documentation by themselves and most probably build their own binary use space drivers too.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I did and even said so: kernel driver is open source. But you do realize that you can't really do anything serious with it without user space drivers.

But yeah you get NDAted full source code from arm if you are developer of the chip itself, so what Cheeseball's said about Exonys chip is most probably quite wrong. Rockship should have the documentation by themselves and most probably build their own binary use space drivers too.

Clearly you don't understand what the term "open source" means and the concept and ideal behind it.

I have personally compiled a kernel for one of my RK3288[Hmm..] based devices in an attempt to fix a small[but important to me] problem with the custom rom I was using who's maker had retired and was unwilling to fix it[as he no longer had the device]. It was compiled from an OPEN SOURCE repository. I used a modified[optimized] mali binary as a part of the package. It works better[12% on average] in graphics related apps than the original rom supplied by the manufacturer. So I know for a FACT that you are wrong. If someone like ME can easily get a hold of, modify and then compile my own special version of binaries, lawfully, then ANYONE can. Including Asus and the community supporting the Tinkerboard. But hey if you want to give everyone who's ever worked on driver binaries for Rockchip/ARM/Mali based devices a good laugh, by all means please continue making a fool of yourself.

EDIT; FYI the code for the Mali drivers is ON the page I linked above. It's labeled "Download GPU Kernel Device Drivers". It's not were I got the source for my device but they will work. And straight from ARM themselves. Hmmm..

 

[jabbadap]

Clearly you don't understand what the term "open source" means and the concept and ideal behind it.

I have personally compiled a kernel for one of my RK3288[Hmm..] based devices in an attempt to fix a small[but important to me] problem with the custom rom I was using who's maker had retired and was unwilling to fix it[as he no longer had the device]. It was compiled from an OPEN SOURCE repository. I used a modified[optimized] mali binary as a part of the package. It works better[12% on average] in graphics related apps than the original rom supplied by the manufacturer. So I know for a FACT that you are wrong. If someone like ME can easily get a hold of, modify and then compile my own special version of binaries, lawfully, then ANYONE can. Including Asus and the community supporting the Tinkerboard. But hey if you want to give everyone who's ever worked on driver binaries for Rockchip/ARM/Mali based devices a good laugh, by all means please continue making a fool of yourself.

EDIT; FYI the code for the Mali drivers is ON the page I linked above. It's labeled "Download GPU Kernel Device Drivers". It's not were I got the source for my device but they will work. And straight from ARM themselves. Hmmm..

That's the part for user space, which does not have any source available for open source usage. And that the part which arm has commercial licence for getting source("To build a functional OpenGL ES you need access to the full source code of the Mali GPU DDK, which is provided under the standard ARM commercial licence to all Mali GPU customers."), which Rockship most arguably has. So without that modified mali binary, which someone who has the source have made it, you could not do anything to fix your small problem. So your 12% average better graphics performance comes from modified closed source binaries, which you use by your own compiled open source kernel driver.

 

[Cheeseball]

I did and even said so: kernel driver is open source. But you do realize that you can't really do anything serious with it without user space drivers.

But yeah you get NDAted full source code from arm if you are developer of the chip itself, so what Cheeseball's said about Exonys chip is most probably quite wrong. Rockship should have the documentation by themselves and most probably build their own binary use space drivers too.

Yeah, I'm mistaken here. Looking back, it looks like the binaries I was using for the Galaxy S2, S3 and S6 were from modified closed source and not taken from other existing devices. Samsung hasn't really made their modifications of the Mali GPU DDK public.