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   REPLY: <6664f500@news.ausics.net> 076cf06c   
   PID: SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
   Computer Nerd Kev  wrote:   
   >   
   > Via Mesa drivers, hardware 3D graphics rendering should be supported   
   > in Firefox just like on PC, this has been the case for years. Check   
   > the details on the about:support page to see whether Firefox on your   
   > RPi has detected that it's available.   
   >   
      
   Firefox is Extended Support Release 115.11.0esr(64-bit), installed using   
   apt. There's a checkbox to "use hardware acceleration when available"   
   but no hint whether it _is_ available or in use.   
      
   My browser of choice is chromium Version 124.0.6367.73 (Official Build)   
   Built on Debian , running on Debian 11 (64-bit). It seems a bit faster.   
   It also offers a checkbox "Use graphics acceleration when available"   
   without giving a hint of what it's actually using. I do remember that   
   highligting the button caused trouble around a year ago.   
      
   Both are up-to-date according to apt.   
      
   > Of course it's really a matter of what you mean by "exploits". Even   
   > pure framebuffer mode uses "the VideoCore portion of the Pi", so   
   > what specific exploitation are you looking for?   
      
   AIUI a GPU is a coprocessor with its own registers and cache that   
   can do single-instruction-multiple-data operations in parallel   
   with the CPU such as vector math. That's what I _think_ I'm looking   
   for. Compiler enhancements seem necessary, is that the bottleneck?   
      
   >   
   > I believe Chromium has HW video decoding on the Pi (not sure about   
   > encoding), so that's probably what you mean. A quick search for   
   > "Raspberry pi firefox hardware video decoding" brings up many   
   > results announcing that support was added in Firefox 116. Note that   
   > this means it's not available in the current Firefox ESR releases,   
   > if you're using them.   
   >   
      
   Aye, there's the rub 8-)   
      
   >> It's been a genuine dissapointment that Broadcom failed to open   
   >> VideoCore in a useful way. It's most of the Pi's horsepower. Or,   
   >> am I being unfair?   
   >   
   > If you're talking about video en/decoding, then yes that's a bit   
   > unfair because Broadcom have made the APIs for common functionality   
   > like that available. Also the Raspberry Pi developers have access to   
   > all the secret documentation and development kits from Broadcom, and   
   > it's the code that they've written for their fork of the Linux   
   > kernel which has become some of the unofficial open-source reference   
   > material for talking to the RPi's GPU. As the ones selling the   
   > product, traditionally it's their job to submit code to projects   
   > like Firefox to help get it supported if they so desire, or fork   
   > them like they've done with the Linux kernel. Actually Firefox is   
   > apparantly using a Linux kernel interface for this video decoding   
   > support, so the RPi developers have up an API as conveniently as   
   > possible and left the Firefox developers to take the last step of   
   > using it at their end (quite a few years after Chromium, VLC,   
   > FFmpeg, etc. did). So you could blame Mozilla too for being so   
   > slow. Take your pick.   
   >   
   > What Broadcom would enable by fully open-sourcing their GPU code   
   > and documentation is that the firmware that these APIs talk to   
   > could be expanded as well. Then extra GPU-accellerated functions   
   > could be written such as for newer video codecs, or other things   
   > entirely. By publishing the documentation for the QPU units in the   
   > VideoCore IV GPUs Broadcom did open some doors towards that, but   
   > it's not really enough information for a full open-source GPU   
   > firmware to be independently developed (there's a project for that   
   > with VideoCore IV, but it stalled years ago).   
      
   Do other GPU companies (Nvidia comes to mind) handle things any better?   
      
   Thanks for writing!   
      
   bob prohaska   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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