Benson | # 41 | 2008-07-12, 00:31 | Report

That's an example, sure enough; it's an example of a binary firmware; that's a completely separate issue from drivers. Firmware is the same for all OSes, because it runs on the device, which as you point out is the same regardless of what OS is using it.

Drivers, on the other hand, run as part of the OS; while they must have one interface that is the same (the device side), they have other interfaces which vary greatly between platforms, because they must match that platform.

Everyone stands by the claim that they were "too cheap" to pay for the license under the circumstances; it's by throwing "just" in, i.e. denying any other influences, that you differ.

However, someone claiming that they don't see a point paying for something, and also claiming that it's of poor quality does not imply that they would not pay for it in any case; so that word "just" is also where you step outside the evidence you're claiming, and go to speculation. I'd also be interested in pointing to something verifiable, as I'm not aware of any public statements to that effect.

OK, so with no evidence, you assume they're taking actions counter to their own interests, and then criticize them for your own speculations. Have fun.

Mutiny32 | # 42 | 2008-07-12, 00:32 | Report

I have no clue where to find it, but someone implied it in some bug report in the bugzilla marked as won't fix. I'd try to find it, but I'd rather not waste my time.

Mutiny32 | # 43 | 2008-07-12, 00:37 | Report

No, I specifically remember them implying that it wasn't worth it (as in business case) to pay to license the PowerVR functinality. I wasn't speculating.

Ok, you want an example of a driver, not firmware? nVidia binary blobs for Linux.

GeneralAntilles | # 44 | 2008-07-12, 00:38 | Report

That would be bug #1028, and there's nothing of the sort in there.

Mutiny32 | # 45 | 2008-07-12, 00:43 | Report

Hmmm, that is what I was thinking of, but I'm positive either Ari Jaaksi or Qim Gill said it somewhere. Or maybe it was a really vivid dream.

GeneralAntilles | # 46 | 2008-07-12, 00:54 | Report

That seems very likely.

lcuk | # 47 | 2008-07-12, 00:56 | Report

Almost, it is in that bug report where we got official conformation.

Lardman asks the reasons why not. He gives examples of why they may not have been released:


Daniel stone from Nokia then replied:

During the irc meeting, we were told things would be clarified but that the signs were around, we got hopeful.

During Linuxtag we were not given a negative response and infact many got positive indications from discussions, though nothing specific one way or the other.

Then this clarification from Daniel which kindof deflated us.

Benson | # 48 | 2008-07-12, 00:58 | Report

They claim it wasn't worth it (as in business case). And you claim that it was worth it (as in business case), but that they're too stupid to make a better prediction of:[list][*]the cost of licensing,[*]the cost from shipping devices with no PowerVR drivers,
and[*]the cost from shipping devices with PowerVR drivers of available quality and stability
than you can. Even though you're making your prediction at the disadvantage of not knowing what TI wants for licensing or what quality the drivers actually are.

That's called speculation, where I come from.

OK, where the binary driver for Linux is different from the binary driver for Windows, and you can't pull the Windows driver and use it in Linux; so you missed your original point.
(And to save you the trouble of responding with captive-ntfs/fat/cdfs or ndiswrapper: notably both of those work for pluggable drivers working in a rigid API; I don't know enough about Symbian architecture to know if video drivers are that cleanly modularized, but I doubt they are. If they are, then it's possible to reverse-engineer an implementation of the same API for Linux+X, but I'm quite certain that's not how the actual Linux drivers from TI are done; they have no interest in providing Linux with a generic interface to all Symbian drivers.)

Oh, and after the General pointed at that bug, perhaps this is what you saw:
(Edit: I guess lcuk beat me there...)

Comment #5 from Simon Pickering 2008-02-06 13:03:18 GMT+3 [reply]

I don't suppose we could get some sort of comment as to what's stopping this
from being implemented could we?

E.g. lack of time/personnel/not worth it for the licensing costs/no available
source/hardware limitation/etc.?

Comment #7 from Daniel Stone (Nokia) 2008-06-13 00:24:29 GMT+3 [reply]

We have no plans to integrate this, AFAIK. Pretty much all the reasons listed
in comment #5 apply ...

(Don't shoot the messenger, please.)

Comment #8 from Daniel Stone (Nokia) 2008-06-20 07:17:58 GMT+3 [reply]

To clarify, this is not any indication of future plans at all. We won't be
supporting the PowerVR MBX in the N800 and N810 for quite a few reasons (some
technical, others not), but we are obviously looking into OpenGL support for
the future.

So, it is indicated there that "not worth it for the licensing costs" is an applicable reason; that may have been what you remembered?

---

Last edited by Benson; 2008-07-12 at 01:01.

Mutiny32 | # 49 | 2008-07-12, 01:25 | Report

Benson, you're correct.

But usually customers want all the functionality of what they own and not have a company dictate that. They could have released the driver and just said "The guys over at PowerVR got drunk one night and wrote the driver for this, so install at your own peril" and then released it to be tinkered with and improved upon to be useable.

So my speculation wasn't exactually speculation. It has a basis in reality. They could have just been saying that honestly because the PowerVR MBX was crap or they were shot down by beancounters. That's speculation.

Whatever the case may be, I find it hard to believe PowerVR spent all that time designing a GPU and then end up not getting any money back out of it because they wanted too much money for the software to drive it. Even if they had lost money on selling the software at a loss, they would have at least regained some of the capital they invested; reducing the total monetary loss in the end.

So...my bet is that Nokia didn't think of it as a priority and didn't pay to license it. But now that there are competitors with a functional GPU, the incentive to reconsider that decision may be greater. It happened with HTC. They finally bent to customers' demands and competitive pressure and included Imageon drivers in the Touch Diamond, albeit giving existing customers the cold shoulder.

GeneralAntilles | # 50 | 2008-07-12, 01:30 | Report

Yeah, it doesn't work like that.