Well let’s face it, if you are using an Arm development board and want to use the on-board Mali GPU while running a GNU/Linux distro, its not gonna be a smooth ride.

Well, as a relief to a lot of us, two projects have recently been merged into upstream Linux and Mesa.

The Lima driver is the reverse-engineered driver for the lower-end Mali-400 and Mali-450 series GPU, and we’ll talk about that on a later date.

Today I want to talk about Panfrost, and how to try it out on the Rock960.

What’s Panfrost?

Panfrost is a free and open source driver for Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs.

The driver is capable of running a few demos and has been upstream to Mesa & Linux (currently in linux-next). It has been tested on Rockchip RK3288/R3399, and Amlogic S912 with the Arm Mali-T764, Arm Mali-T864, and Arm Mali-T820MP3 GPUs respectively.

What works?

I ended up testing the following programs

• kmscube
• glmark2
• weston

Others have also tested:

• super-tux-kart
• kodi

What does it mean for for 96Boards?

This means that the Rock960 can already run this driver.

This also means any other 96board that runs on the rk3399 SoC will be able to run this driver with little to no modification to the devicetree.

Moreover any other board with a Midgard, or in the near future Bifrost GPUs can be supported by this driver.

How to install Panfrost on Rock960? The quick and dirty way ;)

So In this quick and dirty method, we need to compile cmake, libdrm, mesa, linux and kmscube… and we’ll do it all natively on the rock960 :evil_laugh:

1. Setup:

• Make sure you have a fresh installation of ubuntu 16.04
  • Ubuntu Downloads for ROCK960
• Connected to Ethernet via USB
  • Wifi doesn’t seem to work on mainline kernel, something about missing firmware. Idk ask Mani.
• Rootfs is expanded:

2. Build Dependencies:

• Basic dependencies

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt dist-upgrade
    sudo apt build-dep mesa libdrm  # you may have to edit /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment deb-src repo
    sudo apt install bc python-make python3-pip flex bison build-essential libncurses5-dev
  

• Install Cmake

    version=3.14
    build=1
    mkdir ~/temp
    cd ~/temp
    wget https://cmake.org/files/v$version/cmake-$version.$build.tar.gz
    tar -xzvf cmake-$version.$build.tar.gz
    cd cmake-$version.$build/
    ./bootstrap
    make -j4
    sudo make install
  

• More Dependencies

    sudo pip3 install meson ninja
  

Note: These are to the best of my knowledge all the dependencies, if others may arise, hunt them down.

3. Download sources:

• Linux

    git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git --depth=1
  

• DRM

    git clone git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/drm.git --depth=1
  

• Mesa

    git clone git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa.git --depth=1
  

• Kmscube

    git clone git clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/kmscube.git --depth=1
  

4. Compile and Install:

Linux

• Setup:

    cd linux-next
    make defconfig
    make menuconfig
  

• In the menu-config TUI:
  • Disable loadable modules for simplicity
  • Navigate to to Drivers -> Graphics
  • Enable Panfrost
  • Save and exit
• Build:

    make -j6
  

• Brew some coffee.

• Install

    sudo mount /dev/mmcblk1p4 /boot
    sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/Image /boot/
    sudo cp arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3399-rock960.dtb /boot/
  

• Edit extlinux conf:

    vi /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf
  

• Change the contents to:

    label kernel-4.4
    kernel /Image
    fdt /rk3399-rock960.dtb
    append  earlyprintk console=ttyS2,1500000n8 rw root=PARTUUID=b921b045-1d rootfstype=ext4 init=/sbin/init rootwait
  

• Reboot

Drm

• Compile:

    cd drm
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make -j6
  

• Install:

    sudo make install
  

Mesa

• Compile:

    mkdir build
    meson -Ddri-drivers= -Dvulkan-drivers= -Dgallium-drivers=panfrost,kmsro -Dlibunwind=false -Dplatforms=x11,drm,surfaceless -Dprefix=/usr build/
    ninja -C build/
  

• Drink the coffee you brewed earlier
• Install:

    sudo ninja -C build/ install
  

  kmscube

• Compile:

    cd kmscube
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure --prefix=/usr
    make -j6
  

• Install

    sudo make install
  

  5. Run:

• Running kmscube should show a rainbow cube rotating.
• Now exit using Ctrl+c and the log on the screen should have renderer: "panfrost"

Demo During OpenHours

Open-Source GPU Driver BoF Session at connect