When will we see a VIM4?

General Discussion
43

InterestingšŸ‘€

http://dl.khadas.com/Firmware/Krescue/images/VIM4_Ubuntu-minimal-focal_Linux-5.4_arm64_EMMC_V1.0.7-220304-develop.raw.img.xz

44

Interesting to see kernel 5.4 image which means upstreaming the support wonā€™t be much.

45

Half the drivers in the Amlogic 5.4 codebase pre-date modern kernel frameworks so they donā€™t use them which means you need hacked versions of e.g. ffmpeg/gstreamer to match them (not upstream versions). Amlogicā€™s codebase also has little concept of backwards compatibility so for distroā€™s that need to support a wide range of hardware you will only ever get half the devices working. Older devices (not that old) will need 4.9 to be useable.

TL/DR: Linux 5.4 doesnā€™t mean anything when the driver code is forward ported from the 4.9 BSP which in-turn was forward ported from the 3.14 BSP which in-turn was forward ported from ā€¦ :frowning:

2 Likes
46

Hi Khadas Team,

When would be VIM4 available for sale?
We are looking forward.

47

@Parul The related work has come to an end. will see soon

1 Like
48

Thanks for the update.

49
50

Will that work with hulu and netflix?

51

Netflix no on atv app, but phone app works max SD quality.
Hulu i donā€™t know since i never used it.

1 Like
52

Hi,

Will the USB-C have ā€œAlternate Modeā€ in order to use ā€œDisplayPortā€ over USB-C?

53

Frank, any new updates on features plus the release date?

54

@Silver It will be released this month, and the basic work has been done.

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55

is it possible to power VIM4 with 5V via 40pin header like we could do with VIM1? has been a valuable property for meā€¦

56

@ufneeme This information can be confirmed when it is released, and it is currently confidential.

57

Thank you! I canā€™t wait to see some benchmarks.

58

My Vim3 runs Linux Khadas 5.15.0+ #2 SMP Tue Nov 9 09:13:20 CET 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux

I am not understanding why A311D2 couldnā€™t also run 5.15.

59

5.4 isnā€™t really mainline (atleast for us), its just been copy pasta from previous BSP version, so even though it doesnā€™t need to be mainlined from the ground up, it still has a couple new components that must come to upstream

60

Your incorrect assumption is that A311D (which has upstream support) is basically the same chip as the A311D2 (which has no upstream support and requires the 5.4 vendor kernel). Despite the similar name itā€™s an entirely new chip and aside from basic board and core peripherals which have some similarities to older chips there are some non-trivial all-new drivers that will need to be written (once you find someone to write them). I wouldnā€™t expect to see upstream kernel support anytime soon.

2 Likes
61

+100500 :slight_smile: Looking into the datasheet - it seems that Amlogic added a lot of functionality which seems to have documentation not being made public. At least I noticed in audio section of SOC - they have introduced 2 new DSP in the signal pathā€¦ but their commands and instructions, and what they are doing - isnā€™t documented in reference manual. Even same functions which were in the previous chips changed , for example number of audio FIFOā€™s increased to 5 now and so on.

1 Like
62

That is one of my concerns too, did order one and will try it out. They might release some stuff when they get caught up.