Android AOSP Leader Quits Over Binary GPU Drivers

[Jodell88]

Google's maintainer of the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP), has quit the project out of being frustrated with the lack of open-source ARM GPU drivers. In particular, Google's flagship devices not working with the Android open-source project over no vendor-backed open-source graphics drivers.

Jean-Baptiste Quéru (JBQ) was the maintainer at Google of the Android Open-Source Project, but binary blobs for GPU drivers got the best of him. Jean-Baptiste wrote on Google+, "Well, I see that people have figured out why I'm quitting AOSP. There's no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can't boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I'm getting the blame for something that I don't have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead."

:thumbsup:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQzMDc

 

[poofyhairguy]

This is one place where I would like to see Intel make headway in the mobile market.

 

[jpiniero]

I think Google's finally realized that Android being Open Source does nothing for them. They'd rather push ChromeOS.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm sad

 

[Mopetar]

I think Google's finally realized that Android being Open Source does nothing for them. They'd rather push ChromeOS.

I don't really see what Google has to do with it as they don't make the GPU or own the technology behind it. It's just that none of the companies that make the GPUs (Nvidia, Qualcomm, PowerVR, etc.) have any interest in providing any open source driver.

I suppose Google could pay them extra to release the driver source code, but that's probably a lot of money spent for no tangible gain and would lock their flagship devices into a single vendor. They could also just make their own open source driver, but once again it would likely be quite limited and the performance wouldn't be anywhere near as good as the binary provided from the maker.

I'm not really sure what he expects Google to do in this situation. The amount of resources that they would need to invest wouldn't amount to a reasonable payout.

 

[tfinch2]

I'm not really sure what he expects Google to do in this situation.

Google should set a policy that they only use hardware that has open source drivers for their Nexus devices.

 

[Jodell88]

Google should set a policy that they only use hardware that has open source drivers for their Nexus devices.

AFAIK that would leave Nvidia with their tegra processors, Intel and AMD. Intel's driver would be in better shape than the competition.

 

[tfinch2]

AFAIK that would leave Nvidia with their tegra processors, Intel and AMD. Intel's driver would be in better shape than the competition.

It would force other hardware manufacturers to make a decision if they want to participate or not.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

You do realize that the pretty much the whole industry was trending this way. Samsung and its proprietary binaries and Exynos. Now Qualcomm's going that way, and Google just stood silently by. Google is also going the wrong path by going to closed source apps. I realize everyone was happy the Google Apps were making it to the Play Store which helps users, but at the same time going closed source doesn't help.

 

[Mopetar]

It would force other hardware manufacturers to make a decision if they want to participate or not.

Samsung really doesn't care and have such a dominant position that they can easily afford to tell Google to pound sand. Qualcomm is by far and away the best chip vendor so they don't need the small amount of extra business Google can offer them. The ARM Mali GPU has some of the source available, but not everything. Nvidia provides an open source driver, but if it's anything like their open source linux drivers the performance is nowhere near as good as the binaries you can get.

So, their only option for an SoC of the major vendors would be Nvidia, which ties them to Nvidia's release cycle, so either they release their flagship devices whenever a new Tegra comes out, or they release a flagship device with hardware that could be upwards of a year old. Then they would also release it with a driver that would have terrible performance and the device would get panned by some when the benchmarks aren't anywhere as good.

Google isn't in a position where they can really get anyone to play ball. For all we know, they already tried but no one would agree so they were stuck with things as they are.

 

[Raghu]

Google could get access to NVIDIA driver source if they licensed their GPU. Sure it wont be open source, but it might be good enough if Google gets their hands on it. If Google doesnt want to design their own chip, they could just buy the Tegra.

 

[Jodell88]

Nvidia provides an open source driver, but if it's anything like their open source linux drivers the performance is nowhere near as good as the binaries you can get.

The Linux driver is not provided by Nvidia. It is a reverse engineered effort and it's amazing what they've accomplished so far.

 

[Mopetar]

Google could get access to NVIDIA driver source if they licensed their GPU. Sure it wont be open source, but it might be good enough if Google gets their hands on it.

That wouldn't fix the problem in this case as people are complaining that the source is not available. Even Google having access to it does not make it available to others.

If Google doesnt want to design their own chip, they could just buy the Tegra.

That assumes that NV would want to sell it to them, which I'm not sure they would, given that NV needs an SoC as the x86 chips become less CPUs and more APUs, pushing NV out of parts of the market.

Google would probably need to buy the entire company, which would cost them at least as much as they paid for Motorola with an even more questionable value proposition for Google.

 

[lopri]

I am having a trouble comprehending the news article and what exactly the employee's grievance is..

 

[Mopetar]

The Linux driver is not provided by Nvidia. It is a reverse engineered effort and it's amazing what they've accomplished so far.

I thought Nvidia had a team working on the open source drivers. Maybe I'm thinking of AMD.

Even still, the performance gap between the open source driver and the binary is so large that it really doesn't matter how far they've come, when there's so, so far yet to go.

 

[Jodell88]

I am having a trouble comprehending the news article and what exactly the employee's grievance is..

His grievance is the AOSP Android cannot run on the Nexus 7. When your software cannot run on your hardware you have problems.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I thought Nvidia had a team working on the open source drivers. Maybe I'm thinking of AMD.

Even still, the performance gap between the open source driver and the binary is so large that it really doesn't matter how far they've come, when there's so, so far yet to go.

That is AMD not Nvidia, and it brings up an important point:

This battle has already been fought on the battlefield of Linux and X for years now. But after years of fighting the obvious unfortunate truth is the open source community lacks the resources to make stable and high performing GPU drivers, even with the full tech specs in hand.

AMD release specs years ago to much fanfare, and then when barely anything happened for a while they ended up having to throw real resources at open source drivers.

Many companies don't see the benefit of open drivers, and don't want to mess with how to deal with the licenced part of their drivers/GPUs.

 

[Jodell88]

I thought Nvidia had a team working on the open source drivers. Maybe I'm thinking of AMD.

Even still, the performance gap between the open source driver and the binary is so large that it really doesn't matter how far they've come, when there's so, so far yet to go.

AMD does have a few guys working on the open sourced driver. The task they have is huge but they're getting there. They recently released a gigantic 160+ patchset to enable dynamic power management. The patchset is almost as big as MESA.

 

[Jodell88]

This battle has already been fought on the battlefield of Linux and X for years now. But after years of fighting the obvious unfortunate truth is the open source community lacks the resources to make stable and high performing GPU drivers, even with the full tech specs in hand.

AMD release specs years ago to much fanfare, and then when barely anything happened for a while they ended up having to throw real resources at open source drivers.

Many companies don't see the benefit of open drivers, and don't want to mess with how to deal with the licenced part of their drivers/GPUs.

Intel has been a company that has thrown their full support behind Linux and it shows. Their hands are all over the Linux graphics stack, kernel and a few other places as well.

Also, having the documentation to hardware makes things easier, but as Intel's Linux dev's will tell you not everything is documented and not everything behaves as documentation says it should.

 

[kasakka]

Considering that there probably aren't all that many people with the skillset to program open source GPU drivers in the first place and would never have the access to the same resources as the people writing drivers at the companies making the chips, is there really even much point in wanting open source drivers? Wouldn't it be enough to have binaries for device X? What about software patents, wouldn't those possible get in the way too?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Considering that there probably aren't all that many people with the skillset to program open source GPU drivers in the first place and would never have the access to the same resources as the people writing drivers at the companies making the chips, is there really even much point in wanting open source drivers? Wouldn't it be enough to have binaries for device X? What about software patents, wouldn't those possible get in the way too?

Two problems with binary drivers:

1. Some people are morally opposed like guy in OP.

2. Many are built for a specific Linux kernel, so the community can't just hack together a ROM for a new version of Android easily.

 

[mosco]

Two problems with binary drivers:

1. Some people are morally opposed like guy in OP.

2. Many are built for a specific Linux kernel, so the community can't just hack together a ROM for a new version of Android easily.

To clarify, I don't think the guy in the OP is morally against binary drivers. I think his issue is that it is impossible to compile ASOP use it on a nexus device device. I think his argument is that nexus devices shouldn't use hardware that requires binary drivers.

 

[Jodell88]

Two problems with binary drivers:

1. Some people are morally opposed like guy in OP.

I use the binary drivers on my Linux installation. I've never used the open sourced driver. I use whatever drivers work best for me.

To clarify, I don't think the guy in the OP is morally against binary drivers. I think his issue is that it is impossible to compile ASOP use it on a nexus device device. I think his argument is that nexus devices shouldn't use hardware that requires binary drivers.

Exactly. The ASOP should be able to run on any Nexus device by default.

BTW, the lack of open sourced drivers hampers Android development as well. If they want to use a newer kernel they'll have to wait for whoever their supplier is to give them a binary driver that will work with that kernel. If the driver is open sourced they can use kernel they want and the driver should work.

 

[cliftonite]

You do realize that the pretty much the whole industry was trending this way. Samsung and its proprietary binaries and Exynos. Now Qualcomm's going that way, and Google just stood silently by. Google is also going the wrong path by going to closed source apps. I realize everyone was happy the Google Apps were making it to the Play Store which helps users, but at the same time going closed source doesn't help.

Why are they going the wrong path by making them closed source?

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Why are they going the wrong path by making them closed source?

Most whys in engineering is:


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