[Arm-netbook] Fwd: Allwinner A31 + Imation/PowerVR/SGX

[mike.valk at gmail.com]

Hi All,

I've been passively been watching the list for quite a while now. But
could not keep my mouth shut on this one.

Why bother with the A31? It has a PowerVR SGX GPU core and probably
the VPU resides in that IP part of the SoC as well.
http://linux-sunxi.org/A31

Imation is not a Linux friendly company. All they provide is binary
drivers. And those come at infrequent intervals and they are not
publicly released.

Even Intel was unable to pursade them to deliver up to date drivers
for the Atoms.

Just search Poulsbo+Linux on the web. For example:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=search&q=Poulsbo
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCardsPoulsbo

The FSF has put reverse engineering the SGX driver a top priority
task, but No body to this day has took a real bite. It seems that FSF
has even removed it from the list. I wonder why?
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:PowerVR_drivers

Alan Cox has managed to create a upstream KMS drivers for the Poulsbo.
But that is as far as he will go. He wrote that in all the bits of
code out there a VPU driver creation should be manageable to be build,
but nobody has bothered until now.

Please, I urge you to put your time to better use an leave every
Imation tainted SoC to rot. Perhaps that will persuade Imation to be a
bit more Linux friendly.

And it will be long before the opensource driver will be ready.
Imation also allegedly stranglehold all the most talented GPU
developers with NDA's, through there (previous) employers.

Kr, Mike
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