I am moments away from buying one of these boards but it all hinges on 1 simple question;
What is the current state of gpu hardware acceleration on the available images?
I couldn’t find any information in the documentation (maybe I missed it?) or in the forum yet.
TL;DR I like games, will they run with hardware acceleration on the Ubuntu image?
Hey @elsattchmo - great question!
Currently, GPU hardware acceleration is fully enabled on this build, but with a few important caveats.
On Linux, it really depends on the graphics driver and the desktop environment you’re targeting. Specifically for Ubuntu 20.04 (which is what we’re currently using), the Wayland GPU composition acceleration isn’t present. That means while the GPU is technically fully functional - however, getting a game to render properly on the desktop requires blending in software, which unfortunately defeats the purpose of GPU hardware acceleration.
In contrast, this situation improves significantly in Ubuntu 24.04, where Wayland has been updated and hardware composition is better supported. The chipset we’re using (and its Android siblings using the same Adreno GPU core) has well-documented benchmark results. We did confirm the GPU benchmarks on the device using EGL libraries on the device as well.
Running full games on Ubuntu, however, isn’t trivial unless the desktop composition framework is playing nicely. So while Tachyon is quite capable, if gaming is your primary use case, I’d recommend keeping an eye on this forum for updates, especially around Ubuntu 24.04 and any community progress in this area.
Just to round it out gently: gaming performance isn’t the main market we’re targeting with Tachyon, but the chipset is powerful and the Android build already supports GPU acceleration out of the box. So if you’re into experimenting, there’s definitely potential, but it’s not quite plug-and-play for desktop gaming just yet.
Hope that helps!
Another vote here for Ubuntu 24 and good GPU support! (see my other post on the topic: Expected availability of Ubuntu 24 build - #14 by Duncan-Cragg)