[Letux-kernel] Lay common foundation to make PVR/SGX work without hacks on OMAP34xx, OMAP36xx, AM335x and potentially OMAP4, OMAP5

[Tomi Valkeinen]

On 23/01/18 16:41, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> Hi Tomi,
> 
>> Am 23.01.2018 um 14:48 schrieb Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen at ti.com>:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 23/01/18 15:38, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>>> In the end we should have a single, generic SGX driver for all OMAP SoC variants
>>> sitting in mainline drivers/gpu/pvr. So the goal is to end the era of out-of
>>> tree SGX drivers for a significant portion of OMAP processors.
>>
>> I don't think that will ever happen, because there is no open source
>> userspace library for SGX. That library is the "real" driver here.
> 
> Yes and no... It can be seen as application software for the SGX
> and consists of a microkernel and user-space libs to communicate
> with it. Both are unfortunately closed source but no kernel components
> and need no integration. Just data sent back and forth through open source
> drivers.
> 
>> At
>> least the policy has been (I believe it still is) that you can't have a
>> driver in the kernel which can only be used with a closed source
>> userspace component.
> 
> I see counter-examples, mainly in the WiFi area. There are drivers for
> Realtek, Marvell, TI WiFI chips and firmware is separate and required
> to make it useful.
> 
> Other examples may also exist.

Well, you can refer to

https://dri.freedesktop.org/docs/drm/gpu/drm-uapi.html#open-source-userspace-requirements

 Tomi

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