On Friday, January 17, 2014 03:07 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Jean-Luc Aufranc cnxsoft@cnx-software.com wrote:

...

Somebody from Imagination Technologies left a comment on my blog: http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/01/10/a80-optimusboard-features-allwinner-o...

jean-luc, cnx-software.com is presently offline.

i have a reply sitting in the POST buffer of firefox!

l.

Sorry, my host provider did some maintenance last night, It's working now.

On Fri, 2014-01-17 at 11:35 +0100, mike.valk@gmail.com wrote:

Just posted a reply in the comments. http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/01/10/a80-optimusboard-features-allwinner-o...

PR crap

+10000% second that no end!!

Just before the download link it says

"[1] We always open source the kernel mode code for our drivers, to enable Linux developers to build kernels without restriction. However, just like every other GPU provider we know of, we do not provide open source code for the user mode section of our driver, as a lot of confidential information resides in that code.

Also this code is closely tied to the hardware, which means each driver must be modified by our licensees for each separate chip to link it to all the hardware functions within the chip, and to ensure it works optimally. Imagination could never disclose any proprietary information of our licensees, such as hardware details or address maps.

[2]Imagination is working very closely with the Linux community, significantly increasing the number of code releases upstreamed over the past year. We are extremely keen to maintain our current level of involvement especially following our acquisition of MIPS and build on our already broad and active links with the Linux community for all of our IP

[3] We have been aware of various open source initiatives over many years attempting to produce open source GPU drivers for PowerVR and other GPUs. However inevitably these drivers are significantly lower performance than production drivers from Imagination and our licensees, as developers of these drivers have never tried to obtain the architectural information necessary to optimise performance.

[4] We know our licensees are always keen to get the best possible performance platform for their end customers, which is why the GPU driver is always provided as part of the BSP provided with their SoCs, and why we always recommend that developers get their GPU drivers directly from our licensees rather than trying to use open source. "

Effectively 1 says ONLY the IP licensee can make good drivers Effectively 2 says they claim to work with Linux, what is problem? Effectively 3 says Linux developers are idiots anyway. Effectively 4 says we don't work with Linux idiots.

Doh!

NEVER seen so much troll talk.

If [1] is true, then the rest are false and totally superfluous idiocy.

If [1] is true, there is no way for ANYONE in the open source world or ANY independent proprietary company to get ANY hardware details or ANY address maps to write ANY software to make ANY use of ANY SoCs with ANY PowerVR stuff. Critical proprietary information is split between licensees own IP and NDAs they signed. It requires 2 independent corporations, their board of directors and share holders to agree to release information to the open source world before ANYTHING can happen. Fat chance.

The only part about [2] that is true is that they are working on behalf of their licensees to make sure their closed source stuff is working with Linux. They are NOT working with the Linux community. They are working for *THEMSELVES* !! And if they don't engage, their licensees are toast.

The claims in [3] are no where near truthful. The licensees are prohibited from sharing any of their information with anyone from the NDAs they have signed. So they can't release anything to make open source drivers.

Finally we come to plug [4] for BSPs of SoC makers. Who is to say their BSP closed sources software is not dumb? No one has seen this code outside of the closed sources company and the handful of engineers that worked on the code. And even if you saw the dumbness, it is beyond your power to change it because of NDAs, or distribute the changes to everyone through releasing patches.

The licensees are not going to be able make drivers for every distro out there. So who exactly will make all the drivers in this world where no one has access to critical sources, hardware architectures and address maps?

It is easy for PowerVR people to rectify this.

Document their registers and functions, and make it one contiguous address block that cannot be modified when the IP is implemented. All that anyone has to do then is work out the base address and then any kind of driver can be written for it. At no stage is anyone's intellectual property being disclosed here.

If there is intellectual property being disclosed in the way and manner registers are arranged (welcome to the world of patent trolls!), then they should implement those functions in hardware through undocumented registers that copy information from documented registers. This level of indirection discloses none of the proprietary information. Its better too - as no one from open source world has any interest in those undocumented registers, and it can change without someone having to modify and recompile drivers.

Also they need to seriously pull their fingers out and sort out the differences between working for themselves and working with the Linux community.

They are NOT working with the Linux community. They are working for *THEMSELVES* !! And they are deluding themselves if they thought they can bite the hand that feeds them. If they don't engage with Linux, their licensees are toast, and so are their revenues that are toast, and they know it.

So if they want more revenue, especially now that they have bought MIPS, the only way they can hope to expand their SoC uptake is to change their business model and make all attempts to release publicly all register documentation.

I am not buying any PowerVR Driver Development Kit as sold by marketing trolls any time soon me thinks.