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Re: Getting Intel Cedarview drivers into Debian



On 25.02.2013 17:06, Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez wrote:
On 25/02/13 15:09, Mikko Rasa wrote:
On 21.02.2013 19:42, Carlos Alberto Lopez Perez wrote:
On 21/12/12 14:23, Mikko Rasa wrote:
Hi Debian developers,

I'm working as a consultant on a project to develop drivers for the
PowerVR graphics processor in the Cedarview family of Intel Atom
microprocessors in a Debian environment.  The current target is Wheezy,
and Intel wishes to get the drivers into the official distribution.

What they've failed to take into account is that Wheezy is currently
frozen in preparation of release, so I'm more than a bit skeptical of
getting a new package in (I was only brought in to the project very
recently).  However, I promised to ask you about this, so here we go.

It should be noted that due to licensing issues, the driver will be
closed source.  The kernel component is under the GPL, so a dkms package
will be made.

There's also one kernel patch that needs to be applied to Wheezy's
kernel for the driver to function.  The patch has been accepted to the
mainline kernel, and my understanding is that it's included in the 3.7
release[1].

On to questions:

1. Is there any possibility of getting the drivers in the initial Wheezy
release?  If so, what needs to happen on our end?

2. What about a subsequent update to Wheezy?  I wasn't able to find
information on what kinds of changes are permitted.

3. Neither us nor Intel has any Debian developers on our respective
payrolls.  What's the best approach for maintaining the package?  Should
someone from Intel become a maintainer, or are there some existing
developers or maintainers that can take responsibility of the package
after the initial work is complete?

[1]
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=commit;h=ac207ed2471150e06af0afc76e4becc701fa2733




Hi!

Has been there any progress related to this?

Ubuntu 12.04 has this drivers already packaged. You can take their
packages and adapt them to Debian Wheezy.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/cedarview-drm
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/cedarview-graphics-drivers
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/libva-cedarview-vaapi-driver


Unfortunately Ubuntu packages won't work on Debian Wheezy because the
binary blob for the Xorg driver (cedarview-graphics-drivers) is linked
with glibc 2.15 and Wheezy has 2.13.


I would be interested in testing any package that you may have for
Wheezy. Just let me know about it.


Regards!

There's been some progress, but unfortunately we've found way more
problems than we expected.  Much of this is result of us receiving an
incorrect version of the driver source code.  The project has been on
hold during February while the sales departments have discussed its
continuation.  It looks like it's resuming now, but there are still
issues that need to be resolved for the driver to be considered
production quality.


Can you comment about the version of the DDK that you will be using?

AFAIK all the version of this driver out there
(Ubuntu/Meego/Fedora/Intel[1]...) are all based on the Device Driver Kit
(DDK) version 1.7 ED862890 from Imagination Technologies (IMG).
Basically is the same code compiled for different targets.

Will the packages you are planning for Wheezy be based also on this
version of the DDK (1.7-ED862890) or it will be based on a new
(improved?) version of the DDK?

I'm interested in knowing if Intel/Imagination has plans for an improved
version of this driver, because the one already available out there is a
nightmare in terms of performance.

We considered the possibility of updating the DDK to version 1.9, but in the end decided to stay with 1.7. An update of the DDK would involve an unknown amount of work in making the driver work with it, and that was deemed undesirable by the customer. Unfortunately this means that we won't be able to get official support from IMG or provide native support for full OpenGL.

The Ubuntu version does indeed perform poorly, and improving performance is one of our top priorities in this project. At this point we're not certain how much we can do.

--
Mikko


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