Arm Releases Android / Linux Vulkan User Space Drivers for Mali GPUs (HiKey 960, Firefly-RK3288 Boards)

A little while ago, I wrote about Imagination’s PowerVR CLDNN Neural Network SDK and Image for Acer Chromebook R13, and some people looks into the Arch Linux Arm image and were pleasantly surprised to find Vulkan drivers, as it was the first Arm platform support Vulkan in Linux.

It looks like there are now more Arm hardware supporting Vulkan drivers in Linux, as Arm has released binary user-space components for GNU/Linux and Android for development platforms featuring the Arm Mali Midgard GPU family, and – provided the GPU can handle it – supporting the following APIs: OpenGL ES 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.2, OpenCL 1.1 / 1.2 / 2.0, Vulkan 1.0, and RenderScript.

Click to Enlarge

Mali-G71 GPU is supported by Android 8.0 and Linux (fbdev) ARM64 drivers for Hikey 960 board, and Mali-T760 should be supported by Linux drivers (fbdev / wayland / X11) for Firefly-RK3288 board.

Hikey 960 and Firefly-RK3288 drivers don’t have specific files about Vulkan, but I’ve downloaded and extracted Linux fbdev drivers, and could find some Vulkan functions with:


Odroid XU3 (Mali-T628 MP6 GPU) and Juno (Mali-T624 MP4 GPU) boards – also listed on that page – did not get any updates, but HiKey (Mali-450 MP4 GPU) development boards got new binary user-space Android 8.1 GPU drivers. Vulkan won’t be supported on those boards however, since the Mali-450 MP4 and Mali-T62x GPUs are not in the list of Vulkan conformant Mali GPUs on Arm developer’s site.

Thanks to Nobe for the tip.

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12 Comments
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blu
blu
6 years ago

Hallelujah w/ angelic choir on the background.

Thanks, Jean-Luc and Nobe, for bringing the good news!

ps: hmm, T720 not supported..

itchy+n+scratchy
itchy+n+scratchy
6 years ago

I doubt it will help me with my amlogic s912 i will scream hallelujah or alternatively if it helps more also al hamdelillah and heureka once they dump the sources at us or the full programming/register manual. Once bootlin proves Kickstarter gives us upstream cedrus we might have a go at lima altough there we might need some crowdfunding for legal support and restoring the names and honour of the involved engineers once arm’s propaganda and legal departments are done… /Sarcasm #tinfoil #hoping past won’t repeat #LOL

Eversor
Eversor
6 years ago

“BENCHMARKING: This Licence does not prevent you from using the Software for benchmarking purposes. However, you shall ensure that any and all benchmarking data relating to the Software, and any other results of your use or testing of the Software which are indicative of its performance, efficacy, reliability or quality, shall not be used to disparage ARM, its products or services, or in a manner that, in ARM’s reasonable judgment, may diminish or otherwise damage the reputation of ARM.” Yeah, it’s bad enough that ARM doesn’t release versions that are compatible across micro-archs, it has this kind of license… FFS.… Read more »

blu
blu
6 years ago

Baby steps, etc. Also, don’t forget to file bug reports! ; )

Eversor
Eversor
6 years ago

I can? Where?

blu
blu
6 years ago

Register at Arm Developer / Graphics & Multimedia section (https://community.arm.com/graphics/) and open a support case. Alternatively, open a topic at the forum there. Or both ; )

willy
willy
6 years ago

Well, I’ve seen worse licenses many times, simply preventing you from publishing any benchmark, which really is a pain. Their wording leaves a reasonable grey area allowing fair use so that you can openly report your code optimization issues, compare side by side various products from comparable families but you don’t abuse this right to freely shame them.

blu
blu
6 years ago

No kidding, I’ve seen CPU vendors, of all hw vendors, prohibit the publishing of any benchmarks. Which might be virtually unenforceable in the case of CPUs, but hey, that never stopped anybody from trying.

Eversor
Eversor
6 years ago

Oh, I actually didn’t notice this new license says “to disparage ARM”. I had just read the old license, which still applies to T60x drivers, that reads:

“However, you shall treat any and all benchmarking data relating to the Software, and any other results of your use or testing of the Software which are indicative of its performance, efficacy, reliability or quality, as confidential information and you ***shall not disclose such information to any third party*** without the express written permission of ARM.”

Which didn’t allow publishing in any form without consent. Improvements, as blu said above 🙂

memeka
memeka
6 years ago

“Odroid XU3 (Mali-T628 MP6 GPU), Juno (Mali-T624 MP4 GPU), and HiKey (Mali-450 MP4 GPU) development boards also got updated binary user-space GPU drivers for OpenGL ES (and OpenCL if supported)”

Where? For odroid, I can see only the r12p0 drivers, which were released more than 1 year ago….

Ian Tester
6 years ago

No RK3399?

Khadas VIM4 SBC