The Arm Manga Guide to the Mali GPU (2021)

https://interactive.arm.com/story/the-arm-manga-guide-to-the-mali-gpu/page/1

by yulle • 3 years ago

114 27 3 years ago

interactive.arm.com

Arm should rather invest some effort in providing documentation on programming their GPUs instead of comics...

mouse_• 3 years ago

ARM is a CPU architecture; honestly it should have nothing to do with GPUs. In practice, GPUs on ARM have served as hardware DRM. Want to update your cool Linux SBC? Haha, better hope the OEM wants to also, otherwise you're screwed. Want to develop a custom OS for your smartphone? Haha, "NO"!

einpoklum2• 3 years ago

ARM is a company, not an architecture. They offer processor core designs in several architectures of theirs. Here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_processors

is a list of their CPUs, and CPUs based on their work.

They also offer GPUs, e.g. the Mali line, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_(processor)

gsliepen2• 3 years ago

While the situation is definitely undesirable, it's not Arm's fault that it is hard to update your SBC. Arm doesn't make the single board computers (SBCs), they just license processor designs to system-on-chip (SoC) vendors, and then other vendors build SBCs around the SoCs. You buy something from the SBC vendor, and they should ultimately provide you with support, but most of them just don't care.

Ideally Arm would have created fully open source drivers, but they might have reasons not to, like having to protect their intellectual property (IP), or perhaps even IP they licensed from third parties that is included in their own products. Also, if no customer of Arm (and remember, you are not a customer of Arm, SoC vendors are) asks for an open source driver, they might not want to spend the effort making one.

Arm is certainly not alone in this, it's the same for virtually all other mobile GPU vendor, and also NVIDIA doesn't provide open source drivers. Note that Arm does make updates to their closed-source user-space driver available (see https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/mali-drivers/user-spac..., it also depends on a kernel driver but that one is open source) for some SBCs, however with SoCs, the problem is that there is a tight integration between components, and the GPU itself for example might depend on clock and voltage regulators added by the SoC vendor that the GPU has no control over, so only the SoC vendor can provide the software/patches necessary to make everything work together. Ideally the SoC vendor provides regular updates, which the SBC vendor passes on to you, but they often don't.

Luckily, the open source community is working towards upstreaming all the various bits that the proprietary vendors neglect to, and there is the open-source Panfrost driver which is working for a wide range of Mali GPUs already. So some boards, for example the ASUS TinkerBoard, now fully work with upgradable, upstream kernels.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 3 years ago

The comics are part of their developer outreach effort.

justinjlynn2• 3 years ago

I've always thought that "developer outreach" was an interesting way to spell "the sales department making engineers create marketing material to order in order to target their customer's engineering departments' engineers".

flykespice• 3 years ago

Do they think developers are kids?

If you want to reach developers, offer high detailed documentation that covers all the aspects of the GPU workings

gsliepen2• 3 years ago

What makes you think they don't? A quick search will reveal things like: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/101897/0301

amelius• 3 years ago

The (necessary) limitations in the programming models of GPUs give me nightmarish flashbacks of 8086 segmented memory.

pjmlp• 3 years ago

SYSCL, CUDA and Metal Shaders are quite close to regular CPUs.

endisneigh• 3 years ago

I wonder if there is some sort of theory on graphical representation of complexity vs text.

Is it possible to have a comic that explains something better than text alone, while being easier to understand?

Usually these comics tend to hide complexity by simplifying things, which is fine. It’s an interesting thought to consider a man page as a comic.

hummus_bae• 3 years ago

It's been tried. The problem is that you need artists of a very high skill level to really make it work, and even then it takes a while to perfect that level of artistry. It's definitely something I would love to see, but my guess is that the ROI on that type of tertiary content just isn't profitable enough right now.

qbasic_forever• 3 years ago

Yes, read the classic 'book' Understanding Comics, which is itself a comic/graphic novel about theories and practice behind creating graphic novels and telling stories with the medium.

As plain text it would be very dull and difficult to get the main points, but as a graphic novel it directly demonstrates how and why things work in the graphic medium.

It's really an incredible book that should be read by anyone doing creative things. https://scottmccloud.com/2-print/1-uc/

riffraff• 3 years ago

I thought of the same book as I was reading GP's comment, it's a perfect example, and a very engaging read.

layer8• 3 years ago

The Cartoon Guide to Computer Science is pretty good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34748916

einpoklum2• 3 years ago

They lost me at "playing games on the mobile is so convenient".

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

It is, though: Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game boy Advance, DS, 3DS, Switch, PSP, PS Vita, Steam Deck, smartphones, et al.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

If anyone else is having trouble loading the site, my pihole was blocking turtl.co that they seem to be using.

tommica• 3 years ago

Neat, manga guides in general can be quite entertaining!

corysama• 3 years ago

The Manga Guide to Databases really is a solid first introduction to the concept.

SinePost• 3 years ago

Captain Zilog, anyone? https://www.zilog.com/captain_zilog/

TazeTSchnitzel2• 3 years ago

There's meant to be a third part but all the links to it are dead…

The Arm Manga Guide to the Mali GPU (2021)

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