Roadmap 2023

[Sebastian Sumpf]

Hi all,

On 12/26/22 16:58, Norman Feske wrote:

> What about you?
> ---------------
> 
> Even though I hope that the thoughts above resonate with you, I'm pretty sure 
> you have different perspectives. Please share them!
> 
> How did you perceive the Genode year 2022?

2022 has been a year divided between the PinePhone and Intel's Tigerlake 
platform for me. On the PinePhone I enabled the basic Quectel modem support 
(power, access to the AT-command interface, LTE data support via USB) as well as 
the audio parts which consist of routing the speakers/microphone's audio data 
to/from the modem while also giving Genode access to the phones audio interface 
via I2S.

As for Tigerlake, I ported the Linux audio driver to Genode. This was necessary 
because newer HDA hardware now uses Sound Open Firmware (SoF) and requires ACPI 
in order to locate digital microphones which have become the norm. This all was 
not supported by our BSD based driver port (dde_bsd). Additionally, I enabled 
Intel Xe graphics cards (GEN12) within our native GPU multiplexer while also 
improving the performance and reliability of our Mesa library port.

Organizing the FOSDEM`22 microkernel devroom together with Martin Děcký has also 
been a joyful experience.

> What directions are you most excited about?

For 2023 I am of course excited about our upcoming PinePhone field test, where 
we will use the phone on a daily basis. With the goal to make system updates 
easy I hope we will find a workflow where bugs can be fixed and features be 
added quickly in order to make the phone as reliable and fast as we aim for.

> Which topics do you deem as interesting to explore yourself?
> Do you already happen to have rough plans about 2023?

Can it run Doom? Better question: Can it run Doom3?

I have ported the Doom3 dhewm3 [1] engine to Genode as a Goa [2] project [3] 
which I used as a meaningful 3D workload in order to test feature completeness 
and performance of our Intel based 3D stack. By now it runs at 60 FPS on newer 
Intel hardware, proofing this is a feasible way. Having dug more deeply into the 
3D graphics area during the last few years, the Vulkan API comes to mind. The 
direction Vulkan is taking feels like the right way to go at the moment and I 
would like to enable support for Vulkan within our Mesa library port. I am still 
looking for a suitable workload, though.

Cheers,

Sebastian

[1] https://dhewm3.org
[2] https://genodians.org/nfeske/2019-11-25-goa
[3] https://github.com/ssumpf/doom3-playground


-- 
Sebastian Sumpf
Genode Labs

http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth