CI-Tron: A Long Road to a Better Board Farm

I’m a big supporter of finding problems before they get into the code base. The earlier you catch issues, the easier they are to fix. One of the main tools that helps with this is a Continuous Integration (CI) farm. A CI farm allows you to run extensive tests like deqp or piglit on a merge request or even on a private git branch before any code is merged, which significantly helps catch problems early....

October 30, 2024 · 5 min · Christian Gmeiner

It All Started With a Nop - Part I

Note This blog post is part 1 of a series of blog posts about isaspec and its usage in the etnaviv GPU stack. I will add here links to the other blog posts, once they are published. The first time I heard about isaspec, I was blown away by the possibilities it opens. I am really thankful that Igalia made it possible to complete this crucial piece of core infrastructure for the etnaviv GPU stack....

July 11, 2024 · 9 min · Christian Gmeiner

hwdb - The only truth

Trusting hardware, particularly the registers that describe its functionality, is fundamentally risky. tl;dr The etnaviv GPU stack is continuously improving and becoming more robust. This time, a hardware database was incorporated into Mesa, utilizing header files provided by the SoC vendors. If you are interested in the implementation details, I recommend checking out this Mesa MR. Are you employed at Versilicon and want to help? You could greatly simplify our work by supplying the community with a comprehensive header that includes all the models you offer....

April 12, 2024 · 8 min · Christian Gmeiner

The Year 2023 in Retrospect

Holidays are here and I have time to look back at 2023. For six months I have been working for Igalia and what should I say? I ❤️ it! This was the best decision to leave my comfort zone of a normal 9-5 job. I am so proud to work on open source GPU drivers and I am able to spend much of my work time on etnaviv. Driver maintenance Before adding any new feature I thought it would be great idea to improve the current state of etnaviv’s gallium driver....

December 26, 2023 · 3 min · Christian Gmeiner

Mainline kernel boot with STM32MP157C-DK2 Discovery Board

I recently bought a new device for my etnaviv board farm - STM32MP157C-DK2 Discovery Board. The big problem is that the stock boot-chain can not boot a mainline kernel - it simply hangs. TF-A Trusted Firmware-A (TF-A) is a reference implementation of secure-world software used on this platform. It implements a secure monitor with various interface standards: The power state coordination interface (PSCI) Trusted board boot requirements (TBBR) SMC calling convention System control and management interface More information can be found at the official website at https://www....

December 19, 2019 · 2 min · Christian Gmeiner