Improvements for AST2600

[Borley]

The Aspeed display driver is supposedly getting some work. I wonder if this could translate into a more usable desktop experience on Blackbird?

[ClassicHasClass]

I hope so, though keep in mind it will still never be as fast as a GPU. But I use my Blackbird only with AST graphics, so I look forward to this work.

[Borley]

Would Kestral replace AST as graphics adapter? Or does that remain board-side?

[ClassicHasClass]

Not that I know of, but Libre-SoC might eventually.

[Borley]

Somebody mentioned in IRC that there's a new AST2510 PCIe card from ASRock Rack. Maybe if something like that gets produced with a newer Aspeed chip, we can have an option for a free "graphics card".

[ClassicHasClass]

I think that would be mostly just a second head. What we really need is a libre GPU, and the AST chips are just framebuffers. llvmpipe isn't a lot of fun on those.