Collabora’s Recent Advances in Open Source Boot Chains and Vulkan Drivers
Feb 28, 2024 — by Giorgio Mendoza 181 views
This month, Collabora has announced two significant advancements in open-source technology. Firstly, the integration of the NVK project, an open-source Vulkan driver for NVIDIA GPUs, into Mesa 24.1 marks a major development in graphics driver technology. Secondly, Collabora has improved the boot process for Rockchip’s RK3588 by including an open-source BL31 (Boot Loader stage 3.1) in their Debian images, replacing closed-source binary blobs to enhance transparency and modifiability.
Enhancements to Rockchip’s RK3588 Boot Chain
Last week, Collabora revealed their progress in developing a nearly fully open-source boot chain for Rockchip’s RK3588. Key aspects of this development include:
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- Enhanced Boot Chain: Integration of open-source BL31 from TF-A, improving boot process transparency. See their GitLab for more details.
- Active Contributions to TF-A: Patches contributed for RK3588 support, enhancing trusted firmware capabilities for ARM SoCs.
- Increased Transparency and Flexibility: Transitioning to open-source binaries improves reliability and security, encouraging community-driven improvements.
Challenges remain, notably the still closed-source DDR training blob and differences in HDMI-RX PHY access and cpufreq support between the binary and open-source BL31.
Collabora’s NVK Project Achievements
More recently, Collabora has reached a milestone with their NVK project:
- Vulkan 1.3 Conformance: Achieved on NVIDIA’s Turing, Ampere, and Ada GPUs, reflecting major advancements from the initial Vulkan 1.0 conformance.
- Integration into Mesa: NVK’s status upgrade from ‘experimental’ to standard in Mesa indicates readiness for broader distribution.
- DXVK and D3D12 Emulation Progress: Substantial advancements in integrating DXVK for D3D11 games, with ongoing work on D3D12 emulation via VKD3D-Proton.
- OpenGL Support via Zink + NVK: Aiming to provide robust OpenGL 4.6 support, surpassing older drivers in performance.
- Ongoing Performance Improvements: Continuous enhancements with many games running smoothly on recent GPUs, though some bottlenecks are being addressed.
