Nvidia drivers source support for Tegra3 - Asus Transformer TF700

Nvidia is notorious for not releasing source codes for community development. My phone has Tegra 2 but we may never see a fully functional CM9 on it because Nvidia is witholding the device driver sources. What I am wondering now is their stance on developments for Tegra3 like the Infinity. Community development such as Ubuntu for this platform would be much easier if devs had access to driver sources.

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NVIDIA drops support for Viewsonic, Advent and Notion ink tablets, falls prey of new

Nvidia dropping support for older tegra 2's
Hi all,
Someone just threw this link up in the #epic irc room.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/04/nvidia-tegra-2-support-stops/
Haven't seen it posted over here yet I figured I'd throw it out there.
skeeterslint said:
Haven't seen it posted over here yet I figured I'd throw it out there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you look?
There are at least 5 topics about it on the first page.
This was posted in the Nvidia forums yesterday:
Mar 16 2011 at 12:07 AM #1
NVIDIA is only supporting the Ventana platform for android releases going forward. At the moment we have released Froyo and Gingerbread OS images for Ventana and will release Honeycomb after Google has done so.
UPDATE 12 APRIL 2011:
Sorry folks looks like I caused a bit of confusion. Since this is a developer forum my comments
were targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana. For shipping or production products, customers should contact the device makers directly for OS support plans. They are responsible for the OS shipping on their device.
In relation to our linux kernel git repository, NVIDIA will continue to provide full open-source support for all of our kernel components and will push more of that upstream over time.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Funny I did look and didn't see anything about it otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to post it.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
UPDATE 4-13 - Nvidia Tegra 2 Harmony Support
This comes from Andrew over at Nvidia (http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony?page=3):
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Now this is a little more in line with what I was hoping for as a response from nvidia.
Robeet, any chance they reached out to you directly?
-Lil'
life02 said:
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonderful news!
life02 said:
This comes from Andrew over at Nvidia (http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony?page=3):
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So does this mean that we may get Gingerbread Hardware acceleration after all? (let alone Honeycomb)
CodeNinja said:
Wonderful news!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly, which puts the ball back in VS's court.
My reading comprehension may be off, but I took this:
Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners.
As meaning we'll have to rely on Viewsonic to get the GPU driver for GB or Honeycomb.
life02 said:
This comes from Andrew over at Nvidia (http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony?page=3):
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Much more like it.. I guess our voice is being heard.. I am impressed Folks.. lets all keep up the good work and thank our devs for making this all possible.
Thanks again to all of you.
best regards
CodeNinja said:
Wonderful news!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IMO the real question is, whether any enhancements made to the BSP (codecs GPU drivers) etc made for Ventana for honeycomb, will also be released for the Harmony.
Sure they will not stop the downloading of existing Harmony drivers, but will they enhance them for Honeycomb? Or at least release the codec, driver code to the OEMs (or general public?).
Does "continue to support" mean add enhancements, or merely fix bugs and make available.
If they do not add enhancements to Harmony, maybe they should rename Harmony based products to have Tegra 1.5
--
we need to continue to keep the pressure on until they release new drivers
dfin13 said:
My reading comprehension may be off, but I took this:
Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners.
As meaning we'll have to rely on Viewsonic to get the GPU driver for GB or Honeycomb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. Viewsonic wants to make a Giner or Honey ROM and Nvidia will support them with the proper driver. Hear that Viewsonic...? HEllllloooooooo?
rbansal2 said:
we need to continue to keep the pressure on until they release new drivers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree with you... We need to stay on top of them to make sure that we are pushing this to the limit.. we want out Gtab with the latest drivers and the latest OS..
cbay said:
IMO the real question is, whether any enhancements made to the BSP (codecs GPU drivers) etc made for Ventana for honeycomb, will also be released for the Harmony.
Sure they will not stop the downloading of existing Harmony drivers, but will they enhance them for Honeycomb? Or at least release the codec, driver code to the OEMs (or general public?).
Does "continue to support" mean add enhancements, or merely fix bugs and make available.
If they do not add enhancements to Harmony, maybe they should rename Harmony based products to have Tegra 1.5
--
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If Harmony is just an SDK then why can't they just use the SDK codenamed Ventana? He eluded to the idea that the hardware hasn't changed and only the SDK has. If this is the case then Viewsonic would just need to use the newer SDK when coding their new ROM's for the Gtab. No?
UPDATE: So after some research these aren't SDK's they are Dev Kit's which basically seem like barebone tablet making kits.
Harmony:
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/tegra/docs/harmony_hw_setup.pdf
Ventana:
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/devkit-ventana
As you can see from the material, they are very different hardware.
whiplash13 said:
If Harmony is just an SDK then why can't they just use the SDK codenamed Ventana? He eluded to the idea that the hardware hasn't changed but maybe the SDK has. If this is the case then Viewsonic would just need to use the newer SDK when coding their new ROM's for the Gtab. No?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think Harmony and Ventana are the same hardware. The chip is the same (Tegra 2), but the hardware around the chip on the board is probably different. This causes low level software like device drivers to be different (not binary compatible) between Harmony and Ventana.
Based on simple browsing, (and someone may correct me on this), it seems that the codecs and drivers are released by Nvidia are in binary form, and not source code, and are therefore not "hackable". Such things are usually proprietary (not open source) and thus only distributed in binary format.
Not sure if the above is true for release to OEMs.
If the OEMs like ViewSonic get the codec/driver source code, they could theoretically adapt it to the new features of Honeycomb, and the burden would be on OEMs like ViewSonic. But it would be more difficult for OEMs.
Post deleted.
NVIDIA drops support for Viewsonic, Advent and Notion ink tablets, falls prey of new Google rules​
NVIDIA has announced that they're dropping driver support for their Harmony line of tablets. This affects the Viewsonic gTablet and ViewPad7, Advent Vega, Toshiba Folio 100, and Notion Ink Adam, as well as the many users that jumped on the mostly cheap-ish tablets, not wanting to wait for Honeycomb. The announcement seals the fate of the above mentioned tablets, as without drivers, no future version of Android will get hardware acceleration. Not that the heavily customized UI they employ that mostly damages the eyes of customers would have ever gotten Rubin's blessing, but this leaves the dev community out of luck, too, pretty much. More info past the break.
Some of the tablets are merely months old and smiten with some pretty ugly UIs, Adam tablet aside (though it looks nicer than it's actually useable), but none are more than a year old. That's a very short shelf life, even for high-tech devices, especially considering a lot of users were hanging on for future updates to finally be able to start enjoying their tablets instead of living with compromises. Sure, there's a bunch of development around these tablets, mostly the Viewsonic and Advent, since they're based on the same exact hardware and fugly UI, but without hardware support, there's not much more coming but bug-fixes. Andrew Edelstein, an NVIDIA employee, posted the following on the developer forum
targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana. For shipping or production products, customers should contact the device makers directly for OS support plans. They are responsible for the OS shipping on their device. [...] In relation to our linux kernel git repository, NVIDIA will continue to provide full open-source support for all of our kernel components and will push more of that upstream over time.
The Ventana platform refers to the XOOM, Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Eee tablets and all other newer tablets for which support will, quite obviously, continue. Older models of phones often get neglected with updates, but nothing of this magnitude so far. NVIDIA's move is pretty clearly a reaction to Google's new policy on who gets updates ; after all, why should they continue spending money on the development of tablets that are never going to see an update again. Of course, Advent and Viewsonic could renounce their Tap-n-Tap UI for something more AOSP-like and beg Google for mercy, but at this point, it seems to late.

Harmony tablets unite for a macro bounty!

Hello there,
I am a user of another Harmony tablet, the Advent Vega. As I suspected, ViewSonic has adopted the same stance as other Harmony tablet sellers: simce nVidia has no longer the initiative of providing new drivers, all development for our purchased tabs comes to a halt. The small vendors (Advent, POV, ViewSonic) have no own means of providing further ROMs and support, while the bigger brands (Toshiba) which could actually do something of the sort, are already bringing new tablets to the market and forsaking the old models.
Nevertheless, I know, as you all do, that the Harmony tablets CAN run Honeycomb. They have good enough specs to run it, and the main reason why they don't do it now is because of absurd market cycles.
Therefore, my idea is to have all Harmony chipset users unite for a big bounty seeking a team of developers who can create drivers for nvidia Harmony devices on Honeycomb. As it is a cross-device matter, we could even call attention to this iasue and publish this bounty on the XDA homepage. We know already that no commercial house will bring about any new ROM with said drivers. And I think I'm not alone if I say that I don't want my device to be forsaken after just 7 months in the market.
I think we need something like this if we don't want our tabs to turn into obsolete junk, which is what the big companies would like to make us think they are. The XDA community has injected a new breath of life into many devices long forgotten by their makers. I hope this macro-bounty idea can do the same for ours.
What are your thoughts on this?

Samsung--Android 4.0 Kernel Source Code Released

Anyone?
"Over the past few months there's been a growing trend among manufacturers to play nice with the development community. We've seen Sony release early alpha builds of Android 4.0, Asus bow to community pressure and unlock the Transformer Prime's bootloader, and HTC offer similar unlocks for almost all of its devices. This newly-found openness doesn't seem to be abating: Samsung has made the kernel source code for its Galaxy S II Android 4.0 update available for public download, and HTC has followed suit with similar releases for its Vivid, Sensation, and Sensation XE smartphones.
The kernel source is a valuable tool for developers, providing the code needed to easily modify core device functions, allowing for CPU overclocking and countless other tweaks. Although both companies release kernel source codes for all of their models, these releases are unusually prompt, and hint at a change in attitude towards the development community.
Those of you inclined to trawl through vast sections of code can find the releases in the source below. For the rest of you, stay tuned for news of the first community efforts to come from the releases."
https://opensource.samsung.com/reception/receptionSub.do?method=search&searchValue=GT-I9100
tazbo28 said:
Anyone?
"Over the past few months there's been a growing trend among manufacturers to play nice with the development community. We've seen Sony release early alpha builds of Android 4.0, Asus bow to community pressure and unlock the Transformer Prime's bootloader, and HTC offer similar unlocks for almost all of its devices. This newly-found openness doesn't seem to be abating: Samsung has made the kernel source code for its Galaxy S II Android 4.0 update available for public download, and HTC has followed suit with similar releases for its Vivid, Sensation, and Sensation XE smartphones.
The kernel source is a valuable tool for developers, providing the code needed to easily modify core device functions, allowing for CPU overclocking and countless other tweaks. Although both companies release kernel source codes for all of their models, these releases are unusually prompt, and hint at a change in attitude towards the development community.
Those of you inclined to trawl through vast sections of code can find the releases in the source below. For the rest of you, stay tuned for news of the first community efforts to come from the releases."
https://opensource.samsung.com/reception/receptionSub.do?method=search&searchValue=GT-I9100
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, bro but this is only for the Galaxy S II.
I've seen a couple of these posts pop up in other forums .
Lol i just thought i would throw it out there. since im sure the wagon will begin to fill very quickly round these parts.
took samsung long enough...

[Q] Possible to port Android to Pre / Pre Plus?

Hey All,
Does anyone has information for the progress of porting Android to Pre / Pre Plus?
I find http://code.google.com/p/android-on-pre/ but seems that it it not active...
Actually, HP has released many source codes, but can they be used to build a port?
Link: http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html
the android port is pre-alpha and is dead. but it is very possible
While I believe it is definitely possible to get an Android port working, I believe the chances of someone developing one is very slim for two reasons. First, I don't think the current Pre userbase is large enough to attract a developer who would believe it is worth doing. However, maybe a developer would be willing if enough people pool together money and offer a bounty for a working port? Also, I another reason I believe would be proprietary drivers. While webOS software is now is transitioning to open source, that doesn't necessarily mean the drivers for the various hardware components will become open source as well. My guess is those drivers are property of the respective hardware vendors and they are probably unlikely to release their proprietary driver code to the public. Even with this barrier, I still think some developer would be able to overcome these driver problems if there is a sufficient reward for making a workable port.

NVIDIA To Publicly Release Some Tegra GPU Documentation

NVIDIA To Publicly Release Some Tegra GPU Documentation
"It was revealed today during the annual X.Org Developers' Conference in Germany that NVIDIA will be publicly releasing Tegra graphics programming documentation. Initially this will cover their Tegra 2D engine but it's thought they might also be providing 3D engine documentation too. A slide shown at the conference says NVIDIA is committed to open-source. NVIDIA also allegedly has supplied documentation under NDA to one Nouveau developer and taken other covertly supportive steps. These actions come after NVIDIA has been notoriously unfriendly to open-source and months after Linus Torvalds pubilcly slammed the NVIDIA Linux support."
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/...publicly-release-some-tegra-gpu-documentation
Will this help get hardware acceleration going on the G2x under ICS?
No. Plain and simple no, we need kernel source directly from LG.
Sent from my LG-P999 using xda app-developers app
Totally useless. NDA is not open source, it is like solitary confinement versus the death sentence for independent developers.

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