Status of marvell-ipp

[James B]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2014 16:19:19 +1100
James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:

> 
> The marvell-ipp binaries we host for Fedora builds are not public.
> 
> olpc-os-builder can be configured to pull private resources, and the
> Wiki page describes how that is done.

Thank you for the explanation.

> 
> The marvell-ipp binaries we host for Android builds are public, as Ben
> has said.  There's a license file in the same directory.
> 

Thank you. Android drivers are interesting but they aren't usable directly, we have to go a roundabout way to use it (using libhybris and whatnot). It's something of last resort if we don't have access to the Linux version; which in this case, we do (or do not, depending on the license... ).

> 
> I doubt if the Fedora marvell-ipp binaries are distributable, given
> how they are currently hosted, and the text of the Wiki page.  "These
> are closed source libraries provided by Marvell."

Well, closed-source does not always mean not-redistributable. For example, the Vivante 3D driver is a also another closed source drop from Marvell, but it is available in rpmdropbox (and I assume its licensing allows it so). Perhaps re-distributable (and being stored in public repository) is a too-strong word. The question really boils down to this: can the marvell-ipp be used in alternative distributions (that runs on OLPC) other than the official Fedora? And if yes, which whom (email address) can I ask to get them? 

> 
> No, I work for OLPC in Miami, in the United States, not OLPC
> Australia.  I just happen to live in Australia.  ;-)  Confusing, I
> know.

Haha, yeah. Thanks for the explanation :)

> 
> Good to know.
> 
> Are there H.264 codecs and the like you can obtain from other places?

Well yes, ffmpeg or libav provides software decoder for h.264. I already have this in my current build, so it's not a problem really a problem, except for one thing: software decoding is slow. That's why I would like to get the hardware to do the decoding, and the only way to do hardware decoding is through marvell-ipp - there is no alternative, unfortunately.

cheers!

-- 
James B <jamesbond3142 at gmail.com>