SBC News

Ongoing work on the reverse-engineered Panfrost OpenGL ES driver for Arm Mali GPUs has turned the RK3399 SoC into a very attractive platform to try out Wayland on ARM devices. View the full article

This important milestone is a step forward for the open source driver, as it now certifies Panfrost for use in commercial products containing Mali G52 and paves the way for further conformance submissions on other Mali GPUs. View the full article

We have now integrated Mali GPU hardware counters supported by Panfrost with Perfetto's tracing SDK, unlocking all-in-one graphics-aware profiling on Panfrost systems! View the full article

Following two months of work to develop a new kernel driver for Midgard and Bifrost GPUs, the kernel side of Panfrost is now in a form close to be acceptable in the mainline Linux kernel. View the full article

The annual X.Org Developer's Conference returns to Toronto September 28-30, and as a Gold Sponsor, Collabora's graphics team will present six talks and a workshop spanning Vulkan and Open Source GPU drivers. View the full article

PanVK has reached a new milestone, and is now officially conformant with the Vulkan 1.1 specification on the Arm Mali-G610 GPU! The submission was done from the Mesa 25.0.2 release, and covers both armhf as well as aarch64 architectures. View the full article

PanVK has reached another milestone and will be officially supporting Vulkan 1.4 on V10! We're up-to-date with the latest version and are well caught up for this release. View the full article

AFBC support has been merged to PanVK and will be available in the Mesa 25.3 release! This new enablement reduces memory bandwidth and boosts performance. View the full article

Just about 6 weeks after we announced Vulkan 1.1 conformance for PanVK on G610 GPUs, Vulkan 1.2 is now also checked off the list! View the full article

It is now possible to start kicking the tires on Vulkan with an open source driver on Arm Mali-G610 and Mali-G310 GPUs. The Panfrost project continues to grow! View the full article

The Panfrost project started as a reverse engineering effort to understand Arm Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPU internals. With the driver getting more and more mature, the natural next step was to work on an Open Source Vulkan driver for those GPUs. View the full article

Next week, Collaborans will be heading to Paris, A Coruña & Berlin, to sponsor and speak at four different conferences: Embedded Recipes, Kernel Recipes, All Systems Go and XDC 2018. See you there? View the full article

To ensure the Linux kernel is running smoothly, it requires maintenance from a variety of levels. Those working on the lower levels, or the plumber layers, of the kernel will have a chance to convene next week at the annual Linux Plumbers Conference. View the full article

This initial version includes static checks (checkpatch and smatch for now) and build tests across various architectures and configurations, and introduces a flexible 'scenarios' mechanism for subsystem-specific extensions. View the full article

The world-renowned culinary scene in The City of Light will be getting a pack of different types of chefs next week for Kernel Recipes and Embedded Recipes. Kernel Recipes kicks off on September 25, then Embedded Recipes from September 28 to 29. View the full article

Modern CPUs implement a number of technologies that may affect application performance in unpredictable ways. Figuring out what is going wrong with an application can be a hard task, but it can become much easier with the correct analysis tools. View the full article

In this post, I will show one more example of how easy it is to disrupt performance of a modern CPU, and also run a quick discussion on why performance matters - as well as present a few cases where it shouldn't matter. View the full article

Introducing cmtp-responder - a permissively licensed Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) responder implementation which allows embedded devices to provide MTP services and supports a core set of MTP operations. View the full article

Rust is a modern language known for its memory safety, efficiency, and wide range of high-level features. But many beginners also run into something else in Rust: how surprisingly difficult it is to represent some common designs. View the full article

Why is creating object graphs hard in Rust? In part 1, we looked at a basic pattern, where two types of objects refer to one another. In this part we'll follow up in more detail and examine the different approaches that can be applied. View the full article

Our look at the Rust crate for interconnected objects continues, as we examine how persian-rug really does tie the room together by providing a convenient container solution with a safety net to go along with it. View the full article

This is the fourth and final part in a series on persian-rug, a Rust crate for interconnected objects. We've touched on the two big limitations: lack of deletion and lack of enforced matching between proxies and containers. Let's look at other solutions. View the full article

As part of the activities Embedded Recipes in Nice, France, Collabora hosted a PipeWire workshop/hackfest, an opportunity for attendees to meet face-to-face with PipeWire developers and participate in direct discussions about the future of PipeWire. View the full article

PipeWire 0.3 was released a few days ago, marking a big step forward in the effort of making this emerging media service the core layer of all multimedia on Linux. View the full article

The PipeWire project made major strides over the past few years, bringing shiny new features, and paving the way for new possibilities in the Linux multimedia scene. A look what was accomplished in 2021, and what lies ahead for 2022. View the full article

Over the last two years, Bluetooth® audio support has steadily grown in PipeWire and has become a featureful, stable, conformant, open source Bluetooth® audio stack implementation. Here's a look at where things stand. View the full article

Congratulations to Valve on the release of the Steam Deck, their new handheld gaming PC! With it comes a new release of SteamOS, complete with a brand new A/B design for seamless system updates. View the full article

Collabora Brings Wayland and X11 Graphics Performance to Raspberry Pi Ability to run X11 and Wayland clients on Raspberry Pi effectively with low CPU and memory consumption. CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND - (May 23, 2013) - The Raspberry Pi Foundation and Collabora today announce that they have been working together in order to improve the graphics software capabilities of the Raspberry Pi. The collaboration between the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Collabora enables graphically intensive applications to run with low CPU and memory consumption. The Raspberry Pi has… View the full article

Sunny Spain will have multimedia developers on speed dial next week for the 11th edition of the GStreamer Conference, taking place at the Palexco Convention Centre in A Coruña from September 25 to 26. View the full article

Recently, we have been using Perfetto to successfully profile Apitrace traces in crosvm through VirGL renderer. We have now added perfetto instrumentation to VirGL renderer, Mesa, and Apitrace to see what happens precisely in a frame. View the full article

Despite the challenges presented by COVID-19, Linux kernel development continues. Here's a look at the various projects Collaborans have been involved in, and the progress made in kernel 5.6, which was released over the weekend. View the full article

A high-level introduction of the Linux graphics stack, how it is used within ChromeOS, and the work done to improve software rendering (while simultaneously improving GPU rendering by reducing the boilerplate needed in applications). View the full article

Collabora's main testing laboratory has grown to automate testing on over 150 devices of about 30 different types. The lab receives job submissions from several CI systems, e.g. KernelCI, MesaCI, and Apertis QA. View the full article

Collabora is headed to Tokyo for the Linux Plumbers Conference! Join us for our talks exploring stability for Rockchip boards, the latest Tyr Rust-based GPU, and more. View the full article

Getting ChromiumOS building is reasonably easy, but running it under QEMU requires some work. Here's a guide to help you build all of the software needed to do so. View the full article

If you're looking to change the Android boot animation to something other than the stock one, here's a hands-on guide to help you to do it. View the full article

Running crosvm outside Chromium OS is quite easy, with the only complication being that minijail isn't widely packaged in distros. In these instructions, we hack around the issue with linker environment variables so we don't have to install it properly. View the full article

Working with a git based project that has a defacto upstream repository means that you perioducally want to fetch the canonical master branch. This can be simplified with a .gitconfig alias. View the full article

A well-known Linux kernel developer once said, a poor craftsman famously complains about his tools, but a good craftsman knows how to choose excellent tools. Here's a python-based tool that integrates git and patchwork, and can greatly improve your toolbox. View the full article

DKMS is a framework that is mostly used to build and install external kernel modules. It can also be used to install a specific patch to the modules of the current kernel, such as applying a specific fix to the Bluetooth USB subsystem. View the full article

Debugging graphics performance in a simple and high-level manner is possible for all Gallium based Mesa drivers using GALLIUM_HUD, a feature that adds performance graphs to applications. View the full article

How to create your custom Android image, and APK app(s), all at once. View the full article

With just a few simple steps, you can compile and boot a Raspberry Pi using the Linux kernel mainline source code. Here's how. View the full article

Before being able to write firmware data to any production Chromebook device, the Write-Protect screw has to be removed. View the full article

How to set up a fully functional ChromiumOS development environment on actual Chromebook hardware. View the full article

Did you know you could register your own PC, or a spare laptop collecting dust in a drawer, to get instant CI going on GitLab? Not only will you get faster CI, but you'll also reduce the queue on the shared runner for others! View the full article

This past May, we met with the community at the GStreamer Spring Hackfest in Nice, France, and were able to make great strides, including the integration of AI/ML workflows in GStreamer. View the full article

The Tyr prototype has now progressed from basic GPU job execution to running GNOME, Weston, and full-screen 3D games like SuperTuxKart, demonstrating a functional, high-performance Rust driver that matches C-driver performance! View the full article

Work continues on the Radxa ROCK5B RK388, as PCIe and RTL8125B networking support in U-boot have now been added. Publishing code as Open Source can benefit many different other projects, and allows anyone to benefit. View the full article

I previously talked about getting the bigger brother Rock 5B into mainline U-boot; this time I worked on the Rock 5A, an even tinier SBC based on Rockchip's RK3588S SoC that is one step closer to getting accepted. View the full article

Our commitment to open source extends beyond contributing code. We are dedicated to upholding the highest standards of license compliance throughout our development processes. View the full article

It is no great secret that my colleagues at Collabora have been doing work with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. View the full article

While I managed to land support for two extensions, implementing control flow re-convergence in NVK did not go as planned. This is the story of what went wrong and how we fixed it. View the full article

Working closely with Google, we built the first RDK-based Chrobalt reference platform for third-party devices, enabling Chromium-based YouTube support, certification, and automation on embedded TVs and set-top boxes. View the full article

Working closely with Google, we built the first RDK-based Chrobalt reference platform for third-party devices, enabling Chromium-based YouTube support, certification, and automation on embedded TVs and set-top boxes. View the full article

PanVK’s new framebuffer abstraction for Mali GPUs removes OpenGL-specific constraints, unlocking more flexible tiled rendering features in Vulkan. View the full article

It is with the utmost excitement that we witness the release of PipeWire 1.0, the first officially stable release of this noteworthy inter-process multimedia streaming framework after many years of development. View the full article

Set in the captivating city of Berlin, All Systems Go! is ready to explore foundational user-space Linux technologies after a 4-year hiatus. View the full article

Taking place at the Prague Congress Centre from June 27 to 30, this new 4-day umbrella event brings multiple conferences, including Automotive Linux Summit (ALS) and Embedded Linux Conference (ELC), all under one roof. View the full article

With GStreamer you can easily receive a AES67 stream, the standard which allows inter-operability between different IP based audio networking systems and transfers of live audio between profesionnal grade systems. View the full article

libnice upstream improvements done at Collabora View the full article

After I started working for Collabora in April, I've finally been able to put some time on maintenance and development of Geoclue again. While I've fixed quite a few issues on the backlog, there has been some significant changes as of late. View the full article

With Rust gaining traction among the GStreamer community as an alternative to C to write applications and plugins, we began wondering, could the size of such Rust plugins be a problem for embedded systems? View the full article

Late last week, the long-awaited kernel driver supporting 10th-generation Arm Mali GPUs was merged into drm-misc. The existing Gallium driver support has also been extended, effectively enabling GPUs on Rockchip's RK3588 platforms. View the full article

Today, Olivier Crête, libnice maintainer and Collabora Multimedia Lead, announced the availability of libnice 0.1.14, the latest release of the NAT traversal library implementing the RFC for Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE). View the full article

After a month of reverse-engineering the Arm Mali G78, we’re excited to release documentation on the Valhall instruction set, available as a PDF, as well as a Valhall assembler and disassembler to be used as a reverse-engineering aid. View the full article

Support for Rockchip’s VDPU381 and VDPU383 decoders is now upstream in Linux, bringing mainline H.264/HEVC decode support, robust IOMMU-reset recovery, and new HEVC V4L2 UAPI controls aligned with Vulkan Video. View the full article

Maintaining a non-trivial set of GStreamer patches can be tricky. Thanks to the recent move to a single, unified git repo, you can now easily run a GStreamer continuous integration pipeline on your own GitLab instance. Here's how. View the full article

A previous post introduced the SPURV Android compatibility layer for Wayland based Linux environment. In this post, we're going to dig into how you can run an Android application on the very common i.MX6 based Nitrogen6_MAX board. View the full article

It's now possible to run Android applications in the same graphical environment as regular Wayland Linux applications with full 3D acceleration. Here's a look at SPURV, our experimental containerized Android environment. View the full article

Ozone is Chromium’s next-gen platform abstraction layer for graphics and input. When developing either Ozone itself or an application that uses Ozone, it is often beneficial to be able to run the code on the development machine, which is usually a typical GNU/Linux desktop system, since doing so speeds up the development cycle. View the full article

With openwrt-one-debian, you can now install and run a full Debian system leveraging the OpenWrt One’s NVMe storage, enabling everything from custom services and containers to development tools and lightweight server workloads, all on open hardware. View the full article

Get the recap of Nicolas Frattaroli's FOSDEM talk detailing Rockchip’s mainline progress, including Vulkan 1.4 and NPU support as a vital path to sustainable, affordable hardware. View the full article

Progress in they VC4 graphics camp and the Wayland camp now enables us to run Weston on top of the drm backend for VC4 platforms. Previously software acceleration using pixman was needed, but this is no longer the case. Let's explore running hardware accelerated Weston on the Raspberry Pi. View the full article

Earlier this year, the Rust compiler gained support for LLVM source-base code coverage. In this post we'll explain how to setup a CI job in a Rust project to feed source-base coverage information to GitLab. View the full article

At this year's edition of FOSDEM Collabora will be present with 6 talks! Join us to get the latest on video capture on Rockchip SoCs, Tyr, machine learning in GStreamer, and more! View the full article

In these times of disruption and uncertainty, how about some positive news for a change? Let's take a moment to celebrate the newest members of our engineering and administration teams: Mylène, Christopher, Melissa, Ricardo and Leandro! View the full article

Join us next week for Open Source 101, a one-day conference where we'll dive into the latest around FOSS virtual & augmented reality, and look at the implications of enabling automated testing upstream. View the full article

Launched by Haivision in 2017, and freely available on GitHub via the Mozilla Public License 2.0, SRT is an innovative UDP-based protocol enabling high-quality, low-latency video streaming across unpredictable networks. View the full article

Clear your schedules, this weekend's Capitole du Libre is calling your name for all things open source! Gathering in the "Pink City" of Toulouse, participants are welcome to attend with free admission from November 19 to 20 at the INP-ENSEEIHT View the full article

A new monado-service binary and out of process compositor has landed in Monado, the fully Open Source OpenXR runtime for Linux! Here's a demo of the compositor's new abilities running with the new Blender OpenXR VR Session. View the full article

A look at the fundamentals of building and booting a kernel in QEMU using debootstrap, so you have the needed infrastructure to test your kernel changes in QEMU. View the full article

Coming up next week at the Automotive Linux Summit in Yokohama and virtually, Marius Vlad and Daniel Stone will present the latest on the AGL Wayland compositor, and the current state of graphics virtualization upstream. View the full article

As a recent new member of STMicroelectronics' Partner Program, we're excited to be showcasing the STM32MP1 at Embedded World this week, our first demo featuring the STM32 platform. View the full article

New upstream BlueZ documentation helps simplify Bluetooth qualification for Linux-based products by mapping supported profiles, test requirements, software versions, and manual steps in one place. View the full article

WirePlumber 0.5 arrived recently with many new and essential features including the Smart Filter Policy, enabling audio filters to automatically insert themselves in between client streams and devices. View the full article

With adversity comes the need to rise to the challenge. As the tech climate continues to shift, our talented new joiners have readily jumped in to advance the open source mission. View the full article

Looking to use hardware-backed and virtual SocketCAN interfaces inside your Kubernetes Pods? A new device plugin now allows processes inside a pod to communicate with each other using the full Linux SocketCAN API. View the full article

When developing an application or a library, it is very common to want to run it without installing it, or to install it into a custom prefix rather than on the system. Here's how Meson can help with that. View the full article

Collabora presents "Bringing BitNet to ExecuTorch via Vulkan" at PyTorch Conference Europe in Paris (April 7-8) and attends ICLR in Rio de Janeiro (April 23-27). Connect with our team to discuss machine learning and open source innovation! View the full article

Transmitting low delay, high quality video over the Internet is hard. The trade-off is normally between video quality and transmission delay (or latency). Internet video has up to now been segregated into two segments: video streaming and video calls. View the full article

Released earlier this month, the latest version of VLC, the free & open source multimedia player (which also uses the GStreamer framework) now contains SRT modules which had been in development in VLC's master branch. View the full article

The development of Monado's inside-out tracking solution keeps improving and more devices are now supported. Here's an overview of where things stand, as presented at the FOSS XR conference in October. View the full article

Highlighting some of the key changes Collabora worked on with Valve to improve the system update tooling on SteamOS, including the move to Desync, making applying system updates significantly faster and more reliable. View the full article

Collabora’s long-term leadership in KernelCI has delivered a completely revamped architecture, new tooling, stronger infrastructure, and deeper integrations—modernizing the entire ecosystem and enabling reliable, scalable upstream kernel testing. View the full article

I’ve been fortunate enough lately to attend the largest virtual reality professional event/conference : SVVR. This virtual reality conference’s been held each year in the Silicon Valley for 3 years now. This year, it showcased more than 100 VR companies on the exhibit floor and welcomed more than 1400 VR professionals and enthusiasts from all around the world. View the full article

Less than a day away, May 18th looks to be a very busy time. With Live Embedded Event and Embedded Vision Summit taking place almost simultaneously, Collabora will be presenting four different talks! View the full article

The Panthor kernel driver and Mesa Panfrost driver have passed numerous test cases to achieve official conformance for OpenGL ES 3.1 on the Mali-G610 chip, ensuring reliable performance for users on Mesa version 24.1.1. View the full article

Addressing the need for reliable hardware testing for RISC-V adoption, the RISE Project and Collabora added two RISC-V boards to Collabora's LAVA testing lab. View the full article

Initiated as a joint effort by the Google Chrome OS team and Collabora, the recent KernelCI hackfest brought the addition of new tests including the ability to detect regressions on the Linux kernel that can directly affect cameras. View the full article