It's not so bad to not have a GPU at all (though given that ARM owns Mali and you're licensing from ARM anyway, it seems prudent to have one if you can). The real problem is not being able to use the hardware that is there due to driver issues.
The GPU is still an ARM Mali T6xx which is mostly unsupported, i.e. removing Chrome OS and running "pure" linux is going to be dreadfully slow for lack of 2D/3D acceleration. It's a shame that ARM hasn't released any technical datasheets for their Mali GPUs.
If you buy a cheap ARM SoC, there's a decent chance that you get a GPU "for free" (in the sense that chips without a GPU turn out to be more expensive).
Most linux desktops work fine on ARM chips FYI. GPUs in the ARM world are usually just for OpenGL used by video games.
Video decoding/encoding is handled by a VPU (not GPU), HDMI is handled by a separate HDMI PHY, and most of these components have mainline, libre kernel support if you use an Allwinner based single board computer.
Microsoft has started branding some Mali GPUs as DirectX 11 capable, though YMMV on using these features.
A comment yesterday in the other thread mentions that ARM currently sells their ARM CPU plus Mali GPU IP in a single package. Buying the IP together is much cheaper than buying just the CPU IP. This is why nearly every ARM CPU maker uses the Mali cores, and why PowerVR as a company is nearly dead.
Reading this comment from Huang, I read it as if Nvidia wants to sell this package, but with Geforce IP instead of Mali IP.
eGPU support will depend on if they have a way to work around the need for a PCIe I/O BAR. Many GPUs require that to initialize and as far as I know no ARM cpus support it since it's a legacy-ish x86 thing. It'll be the same problem that prevents gpu use on raspberry pi 4s still. I bet you can make a controller that'll provide a mapping for that to allow it but that'll mean needing a new enclosure (probably not a huge deal) and new silicon and drivers.
It really does need a GPU. Tried it on a laptop with integrated graphics and it crashed completely. Didn't even give a BSOD, machine just went dead and rebooted.
In a sense yes, and this has already happened. It's just that GPUs are under lock and key just like early processors were. There are interesting development leaks you can find, like NVIDIA cards supporting USB connectors on some models, implying you can use just the GPU as a full computer.
Nice! There aren't too many SoCs using the lower end a
ARM cores like A3x. Weird that they avoid mentioning the specifics of the GPU. I hope it's something with decent open-source drivers.
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