There are a number of small, low-power computing devices powered by Allwinner processors, including single-board computers from CHIP, Pine64, Orange Pi, and others.

But whenever I write about one of these products, someone invariably points out that while they can technically run both Android and Linux, you only get hardware-accelerated graphics if you use Android.

Now a team of developers is working on an open source VPU driver that will enable support for hardware-accelerated video playback on devices with Allwinner processors. Some of the work is already done, but the folks at Bootlin want to raise about $22,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for additional development, with the goal of releasing a functional driver by June, 2018.

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That initial goal would bring a driver that lets the mainline Linux kernel leverage Allwinner’s video processing unit (VPU) for hardware-accelerated decoding of MPEG2 and H.264 video without overtaxing the CPU.

At launch, the idea is to support a bunch of older processors, including the Allwinner A10, A13, A20, A33, R8, and R16.

But if the campaign has a few stretch goals that the team would hope to deliver by December if it raises extra money, including:

Support Allwinner’s newer H3, H5, and A64 chips

H.265 decoding support

H.264 encoding support

Note that this is all about the VPU, and not the GPU (graphics processing unit), so don’t expect Bootlin’s “sunxi-cedrus” development to result in hardware-accelerated 3D graphics for gaming and other applications. We’re just talking about video here. But it’d still make those inexpensive single-board computers with Allwinner chips a bit more usable as Linux-based media centers or general-purpose Linux machines.

via CNX-Software

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