[AshamedCaptain]

My suspicion is that you'd be lucky if there are only Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and sleep issues.

Considering that the GPU is completely properietary, without specs, and only used in a couple models, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see any driver in a working state for it. I mean, etnaviv and the like do exist, but it's definitely NOT in the same state as say intel or amd.

And if there's any type of roadblock (say signed firmware like nvidia) then goodbye.

[marcan_42]

There aren't any roadblocks; we already have the signed firmware situation worked out, and Alyssa's Mesa driver is passing >90% of the GLES2 tests under macOS (Apple kernel, open userspace not using Metal). What's left is the kernel side driver.

Your "highly unlikely" is my "I'm aiming for an accelerated desktop by the end of the year" ;)

[AshamedCaptain]

Sure, and you will succeed where countless others have miserably failed because ... ?

The PowerVR driver is the oldest of the bunch, has been a FSF priority project for like _a decade_ and has produced exactly 0 usable results (but a lot of prototypes!), and the hardware was of such popularity that it is the one used by Apple before they looted Imgtech. So why expect a usable driver when tens of people have failed on literally more popular hardware? What's different this time? The planets are better aligned?

For the people who expect to ever have a RE'd driver that is on the level of Intel or AMD's, just go and use any of the existing RE'd drivers on your favourite ARM platform, and check for yourself. Try Etnaviv on a Purism for a couple days. If you think the AMD drivers are crashy, or slow, or use a lot of power..

And ironically poster was complaining about potentially unstable Wi-Fi, which is several orders of magnitude easier to RE than a GPU.

[neilalexander]

I am really not sure what your problem is. You are bitter because, what, they're actually managing it this time? This entire project so far has been an absolutely incredible exercise in reverse engineering, with excellent results, from a whole range of people. It should be applauded.

[AshamedCaptain]

Bitter? I am just warning that it's highly unlikely that they will be succesful, and that even the meaning of succesful does not mean exactly what the poster has in mind if he thinks "Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or sleep problems" are relevant. The problems that you are to expect are in an entirely different league, it will not be "yet another slightly non-functional x86 laptop" like the previous Macs. We are talking about a graphics card with fully RE drivers and if it is actually usable it would be a _FIRST_ in the community -- so yes, I'm skeptical. Even Larabel agrees with me:

> the elephant in the room will be the custom Apple graphics hardware and the significant resources there needed to bring up a new driver stack for Apple M1 without any support or documentation from Apple. The reverse-engineering is more complicated there than the likes of other ARM SoCs where at least there is generally closed-source Linux blobs to plug into and slowly replace. Even in those other ARM cases like with Panfrost, V3DV, Freedreno, and Etnaviv it's been a multi-year effort and that is with having a better starting point than Linux on the M1.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-A...

And it is not like people weren't trying "hard enough" before.

[marcan_42]

You do realize the same person working on the Panfrost driver is working on Asahi, right?

We aren't a bunch of random people; we've been in this game for years. I think we have a better idea about the development effort required, likely timelines, and what project structure works than Larabel, who runs a blog.

As I said, we already have the userspace graphics stack passing a big chunk of basic test suites. We're already a good part of the way to getting this to work, in ~8 months including all of the hardware bring-up, not just GPU.

[AshamedCaptain]

Yes, and the infrastructure(Mesa, LLVM) and the like is much better, or at least much better than during the PowerVR MBX days, almost 20 years ago, when I was in the game. I have no doubt that something is going to come out of this. But really, are you going to claim that you have the people to make a RE driver on the level of, say, the Intel one?

For someone who is complaining about "sleep issues", I'm quite sure he is not understanding how different the situation is going to look.

[neilalexander]

So they shouldn't try? What exactly is your point, other than being obtuse?

[AshamedCaptain]

Please, look at the post I'm replying to

> I’m so worried this project will get 95% of the way there, and then all the fun issues will run out and the M1 will be just another MacBook with WiFi, Bluetooth and sleep issues.

I'm saying if you end up with only Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and sleep issues you will be lucky, since to have a problem-free RE'd GPU driver would be a first, while plenty of laptops have problem-free Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and sleep. So it is definitely not Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and sleep that should make you afraid.