03:08 <lkcl> edwin: 2D video output is covered by a dedicated controller which can handle 2 simultaneous framebuffers, do rescaling, it's pretty cool, it's well-understood, and has *four* different outputs including RGB/TTL, LVDS, HDMI and PAL/NTSC. it's pretty cool.

03:09 <lkcl> ... and it has *nothing* to do with MALI because it's just bombing through memory 60 times a second (or whatever) a la framebuffer.

03:10 <lkcl> mali *literally* is just told *exactly* the same memory address as that video output engine uses.

03:11 <lkcl> so, anything that's written to that framebuffer, whether it be MALI, or you doing echo "foo" > /dev/fb0 or whether Xorg writes to it, it will end up on the screen.

03:11 <lkcl> ... make sense? :)

03:12 <lkcl> edwin: then also there is something called G2D, that's an accelerated *2D* engine. that's told "here's the address of /dev/fb0 - get to it! go write to it!" :)

03:12 <lkcl> and again, this has *nothing* to do with the *actual* hardware that's *READING* from that same memory area 60 times a second, treating that memory as a framebuffer.

03:14 <lkcl> basically there's an internal memory bus, everybody from that video display unit, the mali 3d engine, the main processor *and* that g2d 2d-graphics engine, they *all* have *SIMULTANEOUS* shared access to the DDR3 RAM.

03:15 <lkcl> this is how pretty much all embedded SoCs do their graphics, and it's also how lower-cost intel and AMD processors do "Integrated Graphics".

03:15 <lkcl> oh - there's a VPU as well (accelerated video decode/encode engine) which *also* has access to the shared memory bus.

14:37 <harrr> Libre Tea Computer and Practically Perfect Computer. What is the difference?

15:32 <edwin> lkcl: thanks a lot for the explanation, all clear now on the 2D side!

15:47 <edwin> lkcl: " it's possible to put in two of those ridiculously-fast Micro-SD cards i mentioned, which go up to something like 256GB each at the time of writing, and can do 80gbytes/sec transfer speeds. pretty amazing, but also it means that having a SATA drive is not so critical." do you have a specific brand name/model in mind, and is the gbytes/sec a typo?

15:48 <edwin> (quote from http://rhombus-tech.net/crowdsupply/#questions)

17:12 <pseudomind> Just to let you guys know, I wrote an email to Michael Larabel who runs the Phoronix website and he did actually get around to creating a post announcing the EOMA68 crowdfunding campaign.

17:12 <pseudomind> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=EOMA68-Campaign-Returns

17:14 <pseudomind> It’s pretty neat because he actually quoted some of the stuff I said in my email to him.

19:29 <arossdotme> oh yea i forgot about the sd slot on the card and the one in the laptop!

19:30 <arossdotme> hmm me thinks i will buying buting that 128gb (cheap ones are around £30) micro sd after all :)

19:53 <lkcl> edwin: if you look up the ultra-high-speed ones, they're like 80mbytes/sec - i've not tried one out yet but... come on! 2.5x faster than SSDs from 4-5 years ago?? :)

19:53 <lkcl> pseudomind: awesome!

19:53 <lkcl> in fact, let me rephrase that... AWESOME!

20:14 <edwin> cool, thought that 80 Gbyte/sec must be a typo :)

21:03 <arossdotme> oow didint know that cool