How is the video without the proprietary drivers?

[jims...@gmail.com]

I am greatly intrigued with the beagleboard. I've wasted too many man
hours wrestling with undocumented hardware. I'm done with that. The
only wrinkle I see is the SGX graphic accelerator from Imagination
Technologies. They are apparently unwilling to release the
documentation except to licensees. So...

How well does the video work with only the openly available
information and code?

How well documented is the rest of the OMAP processor? I have read the
datasheet and it doesn't mention that the 2D/3D hardware is not openly
documented. Are there other surprises?

[Jason Kridner]

On Aug 10, 8:43 pm, jimst...@gmail.com wrote:
> I am greatly intrigued with the beagleboard. I've wasted too many man
> hours wrestling with undocumented hardware. I'm done with that. The
> only wrinkle I see is the SGX graphic accelerator from Imagination
> Technologies. They are apparently unwilling to release the
> documentation except to licensees. So...
>
> How well does the video work with only the openly available
> information and code?

The FFmpeg 720p demo was put together with all open source software.
Video using the DSP is pending.

>
> How well documented is the rest of the OMAP processor?

Please find out for yourself by visiting http://www.ti.com/omap35x.
The technical reference manual is 3,446 pages today. And covers all
of the peripherals utilized on the Beagle Board today, to the best of
my knowledge.

> I have read the
> datasheet and it doesn't mention that the 2D/3D hardware is not openly
> documented. Are there other surprises?

The DSP interface software hasn't been released to open source yet.
It is in the plan to provide them as open source, but they will be
provided as GPL in the kernel and TI proprietary licensing (partial
source) in the user space first. The DSP-side portions, namely the TI
codecs, will still be closed source.

When the 2D/3D graphics drivers are released, only the kernel portions
will be GPL. The user-space libraries will be closed source by the
current plan of record.

None of these are surprised to those who have been paying attention to
the discussions on-going here. Let me know if there is some way to
better be up-front about these things that doesn't include statements
that go further to pointlessly discourage people.

[jims...@gmail.com]

Well that is a disappointing silence.

[Måns Rullgård]

Jason Kridner <jkri...@gmail.com> writes:

> On Aug 10, 8:43 pm, jimst...@gmail.com wrote:
>> How well documented is the rest of the OMAP processor?
>
> Please find out for yourself by visiting http://www.ti.com/omap35x.
> The technical reference manual is 3,446 pages today. And covers all
> of the peripherals utilized on the Beagle Board today, to the best of
> my knowledge.

The Video Hardware Accelerator in the IVA is not documented.

--
Måns Rullgård
ma...@mansr.com

[Koen Kooi]

On 13 aug, 18:10, jimst...@gmail.com wrote:
> Well that is a disappointing silence.

What does a non-dissappointing silence look like?

[Felipe Contreras]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 11:24 PM, Jason Kridner <jkri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 10, 8:43 pm, jimst...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I am greatly intrigued with the beagleboard. I've wasted too many man
>> hours wrestling with undocumented hardware. I'm done with that. The
>> only wrinkle I see is the SGX graphic accelerator from Imagination
>> Technologies. They are apparently unwilling to release the
>> documentation except to licensees. So...
>>
>> How well does the video work with only the openly available
>> information and code?
>
> The FFmpeg 720p demo was put together with all open source software.
> Video using the DSP is pending.
>
>>
>> How well documented is the rest of the OMAP processor?
>
> Please find out for yourself by visiting http://www.ti.com/omap35x.
> The technical reference manual is 3,446 pages today. And covers all
> of the peripherals utilized on the Beagle Board today, to the best of
> my knowledge.
>
>> I have read the
>> datasheet and it doesn't mention that the 2D/3D hardware is not openly
>> documented. Are there other surprises?
>
> The DSP interface software hasn't been released to open source yet.
> It is in the plan to provide them as open source, but they will be
> provided as GPL in the kernel and TI proprietary licensing (partial
> source) in the user space first. The DSP-side portions, namely the TI
> codecs, will still be closed source.

The DSP bridge is already open:
http://omapzoom.org/gf/project/omapbridge/wiki/

The kernel side is GPL, and the user-space LGPL.

There's no sign of the codecs yet.

Best regards.

--
Felipe Contreras

[Jason Kridner]

Excellent point. I do tend to forget about that. I was referring to
Codec Engine and Link. I expect that some people will decide to build
open source codecs and that there will be at least a couple of free
codecs. Ogg Theora is under development as a Google Summer of Code
project, but we had several false-starts with the tools, etc., so it
might not get completed in the project time.

[max]

Hi all,

Denis Oliver Kropp has written a graphic driver for DirectFB using the
C64x dsp of the TI DaVinci chip under LGPL.
It might be easily adaptable for the OMAP3530,no?

Regards,

Maxime Coquelin

On Aug 14, 4:24 am, Jason Kridner <jkrid...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 13, 2008, at 6:15 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
>
>
>
>

> > On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 11:24 PM, Jason Kridner <jkrid...@gmail.com>

[Koen Kooi]

On 14 aug, 09:57, max <maxime_coque...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Denis Oliver Kropp has written a graphic driver for DirectFB using the
> C64x dsp of the TI DaVinci chip under LGPL.
> It might be easily adaptable for the OMAP3530,no?

I had a quick look into that and it seems to hook quite deeply into
davincifb, the 2.6.10 mvista version :(
I couldn't figure out what it needs to talk to the dsp (nothing,
dsplink, dspbridge, dspgw, something else) either. Still a pretty
interesting project.

regards,

Koen

[jims...@gmail.com]

Thank you for the information. It sounds like there is enough open
information to drive the video unaccelerated which will cover many of
my applications. I will exacerbate the Digikey backorder today and get
started.

[Felipe Contreras]

I cannot see anything dsp related there either... perhaps code
composer is doing that magically?

--
Felipe Contreras