[Libre-soc-dev] [Mesa-dev] Loading Vulkan Driver

[apinheiro]

On 23/8/20 8:11, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 1:56 AM apinheiro <apinheiro at igalia.com> wrote:
>
>> On 22/8/20 23:59, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>>> constructive feedback on this approach greatly appreciated:
>>> https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=251#c36
>> In any case, those steps look good enough, although I lack any context
>> of the final target.
> (if i can fill in this bit)
>
> the context is: to augment the PowerISA Instruction set to add 3D
> opcodes *directly* to PowerISA, with the guidance, full knowledge and
> under the supervision of the OpenPOWER Foundation.
>
> this will include:  adding sin, cos, atan2... *to PowerISA*.  adding
> texture interpolation instructions... *to PowerISA*.  adding YUV2RGB
> and FP32-to-RGB8888 conversion instructions... *to PowerISA*.
>
> therefore, whilst the initial target is "general purpose scalar
> non-accelerated non-vectorised soft-3D", this is simply because the
> next step is to add 3D opcodes *directly* to the POWER9 core that we
> are developing.


Then, in addition to the drivers you already looking as reference, it 
would make sense if you take a look to Vallium, that have just landed on 
Mesa master

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/6082

>
>
> i mention this because normally, GPUs are considered completely
> separate entities - completely separate processors.  LibreSOC will be
> the first ever libre-licensed *hybrid* 3D-capable CPU, i.e. where the
> *main processor* ISA is augmented to no longer need a completely
> separate GPU.
>
> i appreciate that i have said the same thing in several different
> ways.  this is because hybrid CPU/VPU/GPUs are so unusual and so "not
> normal industry practice" (because they're easier to sell if they're
> separate) that it takes a while to sink in.
>
> i know of only one commercial company that has developed a hybrid
> CPU/VPU/GPU (they called it a GPGPU - general purpose GPU) - by
> ICubeCorp. back around 2012-2015 they received government funding
> sufficient to complete the IC3128 and associated VLIW compiler.  an
> SGI Engineer who went on to work for both AMD and NVidia created the
> ISA and designed the architecture.
>
> l.
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