Mali GPU Driver

Hello,

first of all is Mali GPU on the HiKey open source?
If it is open source, where can I find the source code?

The newest Debian build 16.03 does not have WebGL support, but Android build 16.03 does have WebGL support. Why is this the case? What is the difference between Android and Debian in terms of Mali MP4 GPU support?

I think the last part is related to this post:
No graphics acceleration on stock Debian install

Hi @jeeppler,

We also would like to have hardware acceleration working on the GPU for all builds on HiKey.

Unfortunately, we also do not own and have the source of the GPU used on the HiKey, and requires the vendor to supply the binary for the builds.
The source of the GPU is unlikely to become open source at the moment.

We are working on this matter with the vendor and trying to have more hardware acceleration working on the GPU on the future release.

The next release is planned to be on end of this month.

Hello Akira Tsukamoto,

first of all thank’s a lot for the reply. Do I get this right at the moment the driver is part of the Android build, but not part of the Debian build?

Do you integrate the GPU driver for both Android and Debian builds for your 16.06 build?

Who is your GPU vendor?

What reason does a hardware vendor, which produces complex hardware devices like GPU’s, has to not release the source code? I mean the whole point of GPU’s and other computer hardware is to run software on it? Easy available and well supported driver would enable customer to create the best possible products with the hardware.

Hi @jeeppler,

Normally it requires different builds for building closed source GPU binary for Android and Debian.
It is not this simple, but trying to simplifying, commonly building the OpenGL-ES driver for Debian requires linking X-window libraries and building OpenGL-ES driver for Android do not link x-windows and can not use the closed source GPU binary interchangeably.

For other your comments, there are millions of people feeling the same with you.
Even Linus Torvalds mentioned about the GPU driver in the past.

We are not sure how much support we could get for 16.06 release.

Your comments above on this public forum helps us making things better.

Hello,

thanks for the clarification. However there seems to be an open source driver for the Mali-200 and Mali-400 line: Lima driver. Have you tried the driver? Do you know if the driver could work?

Best regards
J. Eppler