Top all-time · #5790
libv.livejournal.com
Personal blog · libv.livejournal.comsystemshardwareprogramming
libv.livejournal.com is a personal blog at libv.livejournal.com about systems, hardware and programming. Since 2013, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 14 times, most often “The value of writing code and instigating change”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog as background on open-source GPU drivers, firmware blobs, and proprietary driver licensing. Commenters cite its posts as sources; none judge the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /26635.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-02-17
- /26972.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-03-02
- The value of writing code and instigating change2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-04-23
What Hacker News says?
AMD GPUs require AtomBIOS which contains bytecode (that is: blobs) to initialize the GPU. If you look at the Linux drivers, they come with an AtomBIOS bytecode interpreter for that purpose. There was some confrontation over that 10 years ago or so (see radeon vs. radeonhd drivers, one point of view is described at https://libv.livejournal.com/27799.html ) and the people in charge of Linux GPU drivers decided to go w…
Comment linking /27799.html
on “System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware”Submitted PowerVR SGX code leaked as a story · 77 points
HN discussionfrom disclaimers import IANAL I'm not sure, but it could be something to do with: http://libv.livejournal.com/26972.html . Basically, proprietary PowerVR graphics chip driver source was leaked. Anyone who has read the leaked code is considered "tainted" and is unable to contribute to the open-soruce, cleanroom implementation alternative PowerVR drivers. It generally makes it difficult for ANYONE to develop open-sour…
Comment linking /26972.html
on “An $89 remanufactured Ubuntu workstation”Submitted The value of writing code and instigating change as a story · 6 points
HN discussion> can anyone reverse-engineer the mali-400 and write a shader compiler for it in their spare time? I don't believe this is the hardest part (though surely not easy). In my opinion the much harder part is to do it (and be able to show that you did it) in a way that is 100% legal (i.e. strong conditions on clean room reverse engineering etc.). So for example a few years ago some PowerVR driver source code was leaked (…
Comment linking /26972.html
on “Libreboot: Open Letter to the Free Software Community”Submitted The Raspberry Pi, en route to becoming a proper open platform. as a story · 5 points
HN discussionFirst off, that problem already exists in the hardware, the damage is already done (as i stated in my blog entry http://libv.livejournal.com/26635.html under "the patent excuse"). There was another big smoking gun recently, at linaros conference in budapest. Here finally some truth was spoken at 9:40 into the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPjSm_98rgo&t=580s Like IMG, ARM is not selling just the hardware des…
Comment linking /26635.html
on “Discussions with Apple regarding license agreement”Submitted Intel & Mir: The point-of-view of a graphics driver developing bystander as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAlyssa's blog post links to this blog post: https://libv.livejournal.com/27461.html
Comment linking /27461.html
on “Arm Officially Supports Panfrost Open-Source Mali GPU Driver Development”Submitted Quake 3 Arena timedemo on top of the lima driver as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis looks pretty cool. How well documented is its GPU? The Raspberry Pi folks managed to pry documentation out of Broadcom http://www.broadcom.com/docs/support/videocore/VideoCoreIV-A... , with an FFT example included in the standard distro https://github.com/raspberrypi/userland/blob/master/host_app... , resulting in porting the Deep Belief image-recognition SDK to that GPU http://www.raspberrypi.org/more-qpu-magi…
Comment linking /23886.html;
on “ODROID-C1 – Quad Core ARM Linux computer”That is from 2012: in 2012 Raspberry Pi was a closed platform, not at all recommended: https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi http://whitequark.org/blog/2012/09/25/why-raspberry-pi-is-un... Things have only started to change recently when BroadCom released some documentation: https://libv.livejournal.com/26434.html There is some support for OpenBSD on ARM, for hardware that is more open than the Raspberry Pi: http://ww…
Comment linking /26434.html
on “OpenBSD 5.5 Released”The closest to Open Source driver is lima, http://limadriver.org/ but libv has stopped working on it for now. see http://libv.livejournal.com/tag/lima
Comment linking /tag/lima
on “32- and 64-bit ARM Open Hardware Boards”Maybe for your personal use case this is true. However note these important things: - Longterm support (former models still being sold) - 100% backwards compatibility (RPi1/2) - fully open source stack including GPU driver Broadcom's VideoCoreIV driver has been open sourced by Broadcom making the RPi well suited for future developments like Mir and Wayland. In contrast, the Banana Pi has a Mali GPU without a proper…
Comment linking /26635.html
on “Raspberry Pi becomes best-selling UK computer ever as sales top 5M”
