Hi Wookey,
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ Graeme Russ [2012-10-03 09:10 +1000]:
Many platforms have some binary blobs which you can download to get video decoders and 3D graphics. The ARM cores are getting so fast today that you can probably decode hi-res videos using FFMPEG...
Yes, this is what disappoints me. This is not promising at all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_hardware_and_FOSS#ARM
Mali (ARM), PowerVR (Imagination Technologies) and VideoCore (Broadcom) are the main 3D graphics cores for ARM based chips. None have (and none of the vendors have any interest in providing) FLOSS drivers.
Your best bet for free video drivers is probably Mali at the moment, as that's the furthest-forward reverse-engineering project (SFAIK). But Snapdragon (Qualcomm) is also worth considering as Freedreno has also made useful progress. There are at least 5 different graphics cores available, and 3 or 4 of them have RE projects to free them up, but it'll be a while before any are in useful shape.
If you have any relevant expertise (or would like to aquire some) you will be exceedingly welcome to help out.
Yes, I have seen these - My expertise lies primarily in boot loader development, but I am keen to help with testing and data collection (I simply do not have enough time to start deep RE efforts atm)
The other issue I have is that these efforts are primarily geared towards the 3D hardware and not the video decoding units. For example, the A10 use the Mali core, but it also has it's own core (CedarX) for video stream decoding
Regards,
Graeme