External graphics hardware make sense for ARM?

[jeffstory]

ARM GPU driver situation for x11 Linux sucks ..... nuff said.

What if there was external GPU hardware plugged into the HDMI port with 3.4 Gbit/s throughput?

Workable or possible for 2 and 3D hardware accelerated graphics?

What if the GPU was completely open source so Linux devs could develop x11 drivers?

How about using a GPU that already has drivers developed for x86, any easier?

ARM GPU's just seems like they're telling us "we'll give you the hardware" but "cant use it"

Other than the obvious, no x11, why can't the drivers used in Android be hacked to work on our Linux Pandaboards?

[WarheadsSE]

Some of these have PCIe, you could attempt to hook a low end board to that, and then *attempt* to compile the drivers for it.

[jeffstory]

Yea I was recently looking at this. http://www.element14.com/community/docs ... node-group

It has a 1 channel PCIE X1 interface. Not sure it would support an add on video card. It also has a SATA interface.

Also from the product PDF:

The i.MX 6Dual/6Quad processors incorporate the following hardware accelerators:

VPU--Video Processing Unit
IPUv3H--Image Processing Unit version 3H (2 IPUs)
GPU3Dv4--3D Graphics Processing Unit (OpenGL ES 2.0) version
GPU2Dv2--2D Graphics Processing Unit (BitBlt)
GPUVG—Open VG 1.1 Graphics Processing Unit

If I didn't already have my panda, this sounds interesting. My next build will likely be back to an x86, probably an atom based SBC unless ARM gets some reasonable GPU driver support. I'm afraid I'm a bit over my head in ARM land by not having some basic (or advanced, I'd program my own GPU drivers ...lol) programming skills...