S912 support, what is needed ?

    Hi kszaq,

    Thanks for all the hard work. I'm currently enjoying your S905 builds very much on my MXQ Pro 4k :).

    Just for fun I also bought a km8 (s912).

    So far I tried t8xx kernel drivers r11 and r12 which seem to load alright (as far as I can see).

    On to the userspace I tried the included r6 driver which just reports a version mismatch(I assume?):

    ERROR: EGL error in InitDisplay: 3003
    ERROR: InitWindowSystem: Could not create display

    Also did an arm 32-bit userspace build to try these Mali fbdev blobs (Mali GPU Drivers | Mali GPU User-Space Binary Drivers – ARM Developer).

    But no luck, as expected they are device specific:

    ERROR: The DDK is not compatible with any of the Mali GPUs on the system.
    The DDK was built for 0x620 r0p1 status range [0..15], but none of the GPUs matched:
    ERROR: Unable to create GUI. Exiting


    Even the latest Amlogic buildroot only includes r6 userspace driver. I guess we just have to be patient...

    Quote from kszaq


    Please don't. I'm in touch with Amlogic regarding fbdev libraries for S912. No ETA though.

    Thanks! So maybe there is some hope still. Do you know why the t8xx support is not there? Except for the pretty well hidden kernel driver of course :). I could imagine they only care about Android DRM support but on the other hand t7xx and t6xx fbdev drivers are available.

    Quote from kszaq


    Kernel driver has been available for some time at Index of /download/ARM/gpu

    Amlogic doesn't have fbdev libs for S912, at least none that they can share. That's all I know.

    Thanks, I think they are comparable to the ones made available by Arm? Mali GPU Drivers | Open Source Mali Midgard GPU Kernel Drivers – ARM Developer interesting though they only mention the T860 / T880 GPU.

    I think we would be really lucky if they would put in the man hours to create this fbdev driver. :)

    Edited once, last by meijjaa (December 12, 2016 at 2:02 PM).

    kenmills Unfortunately no, we need userspace Mali libraries. There's no need to look for them as I have information straight from Amlogic that there are currently none for S912.

    What you linked is kernel display driver for mainline Linux kernel. I can assure you that when mainline Linux support is mature enough to experiment with it on LE, you will see a LE build with it.

    Hello, Good day to Everyone. This is my first post, I was reading all this info, about Support on S912, because I want to buy an Android Box (KIII PRO DVB S2) and seem to be that the support is on a very early Stage.

    I found this page:
    Mali GPU Drivers | Mali GPU User-Space Binary Drivers – ARM Developer
    But seem to be the version for the S905.
    I believe on this link, when the version for S912 is avalible must be there.

    Another Question, all the S912 Chip will have the same Graphic Chip?
    But the Android Box that I want have the Mali T820MP3.

    I'm novice on this stuff, but I like to learn about Linux and things like that.


    Thanks for your help, it's really interesting.
    Regards

    Edited once, last by amoraila (December 23, 2016 at 6:33 PM).

    Quote from kszaq


    kenmills Unfortunately no, we need userspace Mali libraries. There's no need to look for them as I have information straight from Amlogic that there are currently none for S912.

    What you linked is kernel display driver for mainline Linux kernel. I can assure you that when mainline Linux support is mature enough to experiment with it on LE, you will see a LE build with it.

    No worries kszaq, thanks for your reply. I totally get it.
    Unfortunately for me, I have a business based on a libreelec fork and I can no longer buy MX3-G S812 devices as the manufacturers have stopped making them.
    Only S912 available.
    I'll wait patiently. :)

    Thanks for all your hard work!
    Ken

    One thing that might work is using libhybris to wrap libMali for Android. All in all most of display management is done via command line and we only need to be able to create a GLES window... If only I knew how to create a Hybris wrapper. ;)

    • Official Post
    Quote from chocho

    This is a little harsh !

    No, I think it's not. Sometimes stronger words need to be used to get through people's thick skulls. Buying hardware first without doing proper investigation on what the status of Kodi and/or LibreELEC is, is no reason to come here and cry like a 4-year old asking for a bigger ice cream like some have already done.

    Developers are people too, with families and jobs. I wish there were more, good quality, developers for Kodi / LibreELEC, but sadly, that is not the case. We have to manage with what we got, and if developers say that they limited time, then you will accept that. Don't also forget we have plenty of work on solving bugs in our existing projects for Generic, RPi and other AMlogic devices. Some of those bugs take weeks if not longer.

    So just take a couple of deep breaths, and be thankful for all the work so far, as well as being a little less impatient.