Graphics Category - Page 25 of 28 - CNX Software

February 10, 2012February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ARM Mali-200 and Mali-400 GPU Open Source Driver Released

There has been a lot of controversy around GPU drivers and open source, as GPU drivers usually come with a blob (a binary file). If you have been lurking in Raspberry Pi forums you’ll know what I mean. But this will change thanks to Lima. No, not the capital of Peru but the open source graphics driver for ARM Mali GPUs (Mali-200 and Mali-400) also called Lima whose goal is stated as follows: The aim of this driver is to finally bring all the advantages of open source software to ARM SoC graphics drivers. Currently, the sole availability of binary drivers is increasing development and maintenance overhead, while also reducing portability, compatibility and limiting choice. Anyone who has dealt with GPU support on ARM, be it for a Linux with a GNU stack, or for an Android, knows the pain of dealing with these binaries. Lima is going to solve […]

February 1, 2012February 1, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Raspberry Pi Codecs and Graphics/Video APIs

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced which codecs and API would be supported in the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi board will support the following Graphics and Video API via a set of closed source libraries that give access to the GPU acceleration features: OpenGL ES 2.0 – OpenGL is a 3D Graphics API defined by the Khronos Group. OpenVG – OpenVG is a 2D vector drawing API also defined by the Khronos Group. EGL – EGL is the interface between Khronos rendering APIs such as OpenGL ES or OpenVG and the underlying native platform window system. OpenMAX IL – OpenMAX supplies a set of API’s that provides abstractions for routines used during audio, video, and still images processing. OpenMAX defines 3 layers, Raspberry Pi library will provide an interface to the IL layer, which provides an interface between media framework such as Gstreamer and a set of multimedia components. […]

January 27, 2012January 27, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linaro 12.01 Release with Kernel 3.2 – Android 4.0.3

Linaro has just released version 12.01 based on Linux Kernel 3.2 and Android ICS upgraded to 4.0.3. A lot of work has been done to have video hardware decoding on OMAP 4 (in GStreamer) enabling Pandaboard to run Ubuntu TV and XBMC with Video HW acceleration. Prebuilt binaries for Linaro GCC and Linaro GDBare now available which means you don’t need to use Ubuntu with Linaro Toolchain. It has been tested with Debian 6.0.2, Fedora 16, openSUSE 12.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5.7 and should run on any Linux Standard Base 3.0 compatible distribution. Windows binaries are also available and known to work on Windows XP Pro SP3, Windows Vista Business SP2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro’s ICS has been upgraded to 4.0.3. Linaro Android ICS builds are now optimized using -O3 with the Linaro Toolchain. Click through builds […]

January 19, 2012January 22, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Xibo Digital Signage in Raspberry Pi Emulator (Step 1)

Xibo (pronounced eX-E-bO) is an open source, multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage client/server solution written in Python and dotNET. If you are not familiar with Xibo you can visit http://xibo.org.uk/ or/and read my introduction XIBO: An Open Source Digital Signage Server/Client. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost board based on Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM1176 Core) that should be available for sale at the end of January / beginning of February at http://www.raspberrypi.com. There are two versions of the board: Model A: 128 MB RAM and no Ethernet Model B: 256 MB RAM with 10/100 Mbit Ethernet BCM 2835 also features a Videocore GPU supporting OpenGL and 1080p30 video decoding that makes it ideal for multimedia applications such as digital signage players. The board support both HDMI and composite video output. You should also be able to connect a LCD via the DSI interface. If we can make Xibo run […]

January 18, 2012January 18, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

Cross-compiling libavg 1.7 for ARM on Debian

libavg is a high-level development platform for media-centric applications using Python as scripting language and written in C++ and I’ve already written a post to cross-compile libavg 1.6 in Ubuntu (with linaro cross toolchain) and using Beagleboard qemu image. Since I’ve doing some preparation work to have software running on the Raspberry Pi and that the latter won’t support Ubuntu, I’ve had to cross-compile it again. This time, I’ve found a cleaner way to do the cross-compilation with dpkg-cross and xapt tools which can load the required armel package to the arm toolchain. Those tools really make life easy, as previously (a few years ago), I would have had to cross-compile all dependencies manually. Here are the steps I followed: Install Emdebian ARM Cross Toolchain and Tools in Debian. Download libavg 1.7 source code

wget http://www.libavg.de/raw-attachment/wiki/DownLoad/libavg-1.7.0.tar.gz

1	wget http://www.libavg.de/raw-attachment/wiki/DownLoad/libavg-1.7.0.tar.gz

Extract it

tar xzvf libavg-1.7.0.tar.gz
cd libavg-1.7.0

1 2	tar xzvf libavg-1.7.0.tar.gz cd libavg-1.7.0

Install the following armel development packages: sudo /usr/share/pdebuild-cross/xapt -a armel libpango1.0-dev libavformat-dev […]

January 11, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

20 Times More Graphics Performance with Imagination G6200 and G6400 PowerVR Series 6 GPU

Imagination Technologies announced the first two IP cores, namely PowerVR G6200 and G6400 GPU IP cores, part of PowerVR Series6 GPU cores. PowerVR Series6 relies on PowerVR Rogue architecture based on a scalable number of compute clusters and designed to target the requirements of new high-end graphics applications for smartphones, tablets, PC, console, automotive, DTV and more. The G6200 and G6400 have 2 and 4 compute clusters respectively. The company claims that PowerVR Series6 GPUs can deliver 20x or more of the performance of current generation GPU cores targeting comparable markets thanks to the new Rogue architecture that is around 5x more efficient than previous generations. The PowerVR Series6 GPU cores offer computing performance exceeding 100GFLOPS (gigaFLOPS) and reaching the TFLOPS (teraFLOPS) range. The PowerVR Series6 family introduces new technologies and features such as: An advanced scalable compute cluster architecture. High efficiency compression technology including lossless image and parameter compression […]

December 21, 2011December 23, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Graphics Hardware Acceleration for Android 4.0 on Origen and Snowball Development Boards

Last week, Linaro Android team announced that graphics hardware acceleration (2D and 3D) was coming to Android 4.0 for ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4210 Origen development boards. They have now release 2 videos to show the progress on the implementation. The first video (around 5 minutes) showcases Samsung Origen development board running Linaro’s build of Android ICS with 2D and 3D demo. The second video (1:21) shows 2D hardware acceleration on ST Ericsson Snowball board. Snowball Android 4.0 daily snapshots and instructions are available at https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/staging-snowball/ and Origen builds at https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/staging-origen/ The official December 2011 releases should also come pretty soon are available at http://releases.linaro.org/11.12/android/. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

December 21, 2011December 21, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Dual Monitor Setup with ATI Graphics Cards in Ubuntu

I’ve recently bought an ATI Radeon HD5450 in order to be able to use multiple displays in Windows XP and Ubuntu 11.04. I’ll explain how to install and configure the ATI drivers in order to use multiple displays and extend the desktop on two monitors. The first thing to do is to install the proprietary ATI drivers and Catalyst Control Center. Click on the icon at the top right of the screen and select “System Settings” in the drop down menu. Then click on “Additional Drivers”, Ubuntu should detect your ATI graphics card automatically and show the following: Click on “Activate” to download and install ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver and Catalyst Control Center (CCC). Alternatively, you could also download the latest linux ATI driver (version 11.12) on ATI website and run ./ati-driver-installer-11-12-x86.x86_64.run After installation, you may have to restart you computer. Once the drivers are installed, if you use […]