Airlie: raspberry pi drivers are NOT useful [LWN.net]

Airlie: raspberry pi drivers are NOT useful

Posted Oct 25, 2012 22:40 UTC (Thu) by Zizzle (guest, #67739)
In reply to: Airlie: raspberry pi drivers are NOT useful by asbradbury
Parent article: Airlie: raspberry pi drivers are NOT useful

> I can only assume Dave Airlie is also upset that he can’t step the disk head by himself on his hard disk.

Hmmm... aren't the kernel devs frequently clamoring for direct access to flash devices instead of working around firmware and FTL bugs?

Aren't the kernel devs all about common infrastructure for drivers? Clearly this driver won't be using DRM2 KMS DMA-BUF etc.

Like David points out, there will be no optimization opportunities with this firmware blob abstraction layer type driver.

Also what is the state of X acceleration on the Pi?
Does this firmware blob provide 2D primitives?
The 2D on OpenGL glamor benchmarks I have seen have been less than impressive.

I think it far from wise for senior kernel guys to endorse this model of abstract everything away in a closed firmware blob and provide us some open source RPC stubs.

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Airlie: raspberry pi drivers are NOT useful

Posted Oct 26, 2012 9:41 UTC (Fri) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]

>> I can only assume Dave Airlie is also upset that he can’t step the disk head by himself on his hard disk.
>Hmmm... aren't the kernel devs frequently clamoring for direct access to flash devices instead of working around firmware and FTL bugs?

Yes they do(*), but this doesn't prevent them to include drivers in the kernel for these devices..

*: disks which lie about the state of the data are hugely annoying as well.