I was wondering if the BeagleBoard has GPU accelerated EGL OpenVG support. I know it uses a PowerVR SGX530 GPU that on paper supports OpenVG, https://www.khronos.org/news/permalink/imagination_technologies_announces_openvg_1.1_conformance_for_powervr_sgx_r. I was wondering if there was software support, perhaps in the Beagleboard linux distro http://beagleboard.org/linux, https://github.com/beagleboard, or if independent implementation is feasible. I could not find any indication of OpenVG APIs existing, doing a quick search through the github repos that were labelled as being C code. Maybe there is a binary? I suppose the# Ångström Distribution might have support, http://beagleboard.org/project/angstrom/, https://github.com/Angstrom-distribution, but it appears to be no longer in common use by Beagleboard. One person commented that Debian was shipped with their board, and another recent comment said that the newer versions are stable and not bricking their device.
I know that the Raspberry Pi’s Broadcom GPU has EGL OpenVG support http://elinux.org/Raspberry_Pi_VideoCore_APIs, https://github.com/raspberrypi/userland. I’ve been using it successfully for a personal project in C, and I would like to port the project to other embedded platforms.
However, the Odroid for example, which uses a Mali GPU, even though the GPU manufacturer claims to have OpenVG 1.1 support, http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-gpu/ultra-low-power/mali-450.php, there is no actual API and there is no way of independently implementing it:
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http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=112&t=7915, Odroid’s lack of OpenVG support
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https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-mali/issues/3, people having trouble using the Mali GPU due to licensing issues
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http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/01/19/gpus-comparison-arm-mali-vs-vivante-gcxxx-vs-powervr-sgx-vs-nvidia-geforce-ulp/, in the comments there is discussion about the lack of Mali OpenVG support. Simon’s comment is especially pertinent. OpenVG is not implemented and you need the proprietary DDK to implement it.
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https://community.arm.com/thread/5763.person wondering if they can get the DDK for Mali
The Crank Storyboard on the BeagleBoard mentions OpenVG, http://www.cranksoftware.com/beagleboard. I know Qt has OpenVG support implemented on top of OpenGL, ShivaVG, https://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/openvg.html. Looking through the forums, there is some mention of OpenVG, but I think that might be all in reference to the Qt version. There is a similar discussion on the forums from six years ago, “OpenVG and Qt”, which mentions Angstrom as having support, see grande blanca hamburguesa’s comment, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/beagleboard/Ly6x0zEPhy4, but I don’t know if he was referring to a non-EGL version. The SGX530 does not appear to have OpenGL support, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR, so I guess the “OpenVG and Qt” forum people must be referring to native support. I also know that there is a partial OpenGL ES implementation of OpenVG, https://github.com/micahpearlman/MonkVG. But non-EGL implementations are beside the question, since those are achieving OpenVG in a non-native, roundabout way, not really taking full advantage of the GPU, as far as I am aware.