[Dev] [lemote] [Fwd: Re: Loongson 3A hardware]

[Daniel J Clark]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:

>     I'm getting a sample unit soon to evaluate soon (just did the wire
> transfer
>     yesterday), if that goes well I'll probably start selling the Lemote
> 8133
>     Loongson3a based laptop.
>
> If you are talking about the Yilong, that has a grave flaw:
> the video won't work without a nonfree blob.  Lemote has no interest
> in fixing this.
>

Has someone actually tested the notebook with linux-libre?

According to specs the Lemote 8133 (Yilong) has AMD RS780E + SB710 chipset.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series#780E that
chipset has integrated Radeon HD 3200 video.

According to

http://h-node.org/videocards/view/en/824/Advanced-Micro-Devices--AMD--nee-ATI-RS780--Radeon-HD-3200-/3/1/undef/undef/undef/undef/alphabetically/undef

http://h-node.org/videocards/view/en/274/Advanced-Micro-Devices--AMD--nee-ATI-RS780M-RS780MN--Mobility-Radeon-HD-3200-Graphics-/3/1/undef/undef/undef/undef/alphabetically/undef

Radeon HD 3200 works with linux-libre, which is compiled without

Device Drivers --->
Generic Driver Options --->
 [*]  Include in-kernel firmware blobs in kernel binary
# RadeonHD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series cards:
 (radeon/R600_rlc.bin
                 radeon/R700_rlc.bin) External firmware blobs

Specifically, "works, but without 3D acceleration".

So if this is true for RS780E (the above reports are against
RS780/RS780M/RS780MN) you do get more features if you use nonfree blobs,
but you can just choose to not do that.

Like with the OLPC X01 wireless that would probably make it unendorsable by
you/FSF, but not unusable.

>From a longer term perspective, it looks like the Chinese are developing
their own GPU designs -
http://vr-zone.com/articles/chinese-cpus-are-just-the-beginning...-middle-kingdom-to-go-for-gpus-too/15456.html
-
IMHO it's a better bet that something like that will be used in a Lemote
machine (and not need binary blobs) within the next several years than
Coreboot being preinstalled, or even working well, on Intel-based laptops.
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