[Arm-netbook] allwinner A31 processor

jm joem at martindale-electric.co.uk
Wed Dec 12 10:50:17 GMT 2012


On Wed, 2012-12-12 at 09:48 +0000, luke.leighton wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 9:18 AM, michel memeteau <contact at ekimia.fr>
> wrote:
>         Hi , 
>         
>         
>         As I did not read all the posts for few weeks : 
>         
>         
>         2012/12/12 Alexey Eromenko <al4321 at gmail.com>
>                 Again, without free software drivers for 3D and Video
>                 decoding,
>                 
>                 Allwinner chips are pretty useless for the GNU/Linux
>                 community.
>         
>         
>         Yes I agree but what the F**** ARM is doing ? I guess they
>         understood that massive adpotion of an ARM GPU is now linked
>         with linux kernel support and a Chip that would have its
>         drivers included in the kernel would definitely kill all the
>         others thanks to android, so why don't they provide source
>         drivers ? 
>         
>         
> 
> because from what i can gather they don't own the rights to the source
> code: they're licensing it from Mediatek, the original creators of the
> MALI core.
> 
> employees internally have told the ARM Management till they're blue in
> the face to get this sorted out: they're not listening.

Probably something deeper going on and the chains are unbreakable
aided by a wall of silence;
until someone makes an open source alternative (e.g. at opencores.org).

ARM could go hire 10 engineers and make their own open sourced video
accelerators and easily add 10% to their revenue. If mpegla patents
stand in the way of video decoders, then don't make it, open
source world will port everything to ogg until the patents run out.

The internet of things is coming and without fully open sourced video
drivers ARM and Mediatek isn't going to be it because no one important
is going to be writing drivers for it, and hence make all the products
that matter for internet of things.









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