$99 BeaglePlay Board Achieves "100% Open-Source" Upstream PowerVR Graphics
Going back many years Imagination PowerVR graphics were widely despised by open-source enthusiasts and Linux desktop users for their lack of an open-source GPU driver. But over the past few years the Imagination PowerVR driver focused on their Rogue graphics IP has matured nicely within the Linux kernel and the PowerVR Vulkan driver in Mesa taking shape too. Paired with Zink for OpenGL over Vulkan, there's a robust open-source PowerVR graphics experience now possible. For those interested in trying out said open-source driver stack, the TI AM62-powered BeaglePlay is an affordable way of doing so for that $99 USD single board computer.
Texas Instruments shared the success they've had with running that fully upstream open-source PowerVR graphics driver stack on the BeaglePlay single board computer. The BeaglePlay uses a Texas Instruments AM625 processor. From the CPU side the AM625 SoC isn't all that enticing with just four Arm Cortex-A53 cores and a 400MHz Cortex-M4F, but on the graphics side it has the PowerVR Rogue AXE-1-16M GPU.
That PowerVR Rogue AXE-1-16M GPU is fully supported by the open-source PowerVR DRM kernel driver and the Mesa Vulkan driver. This is running on the $99 BeaglePlay with "100% open-source" Yocto with the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel and Mesa 25.3 driver stack. Texas Instruments reaffirmed that no private code branches or extra patches are needed: everything is upstream. With it full Vulkan 1.2 support is possible thanks to this effort 4+ years in the making.
Texas Instruments kindly shared some screenshots with Phoronix of the open-source graphics stack in action.
Those interested in learning more about the BeaglePlay as a $99 single board computer with the PowerVR Rogue graphics can do so at BeagleBoard.org.
Texas Instruments shared the success they've had with running that fully upstream open-source PowerVR graphics driver stack on the BeaglePlay single board computer. The BeaglePlay uses a Texas Instruments AM625 processor. From the CPU side the AM625 SoC isn't all that enticing with just four Arm Cortex-A53 cores and a 400MHz Cortex-M4F, but on the graphics side it has the PowerVR Rogue AXE-1-16M GPU.
👁 BeaglePlay with open-source Vulkan driver
That PowerVR Rogue AXE-1-16M GPU is fully supported by the open-source PowerVR DRM kernel driver and the Mesa Vulkan driver. This is running on the $99 BeaglePlay with "100% open-source" Yocto with the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel and Mesa 25.3 driver stack. Texas Instruments reaffirmed that no private code branches or extra patches are needed: everything is upstream. With it full Vulkan 1.2 support is possible thanks to this effort 4+ years in the making.
👁 BeaglePlay with fully open-source GPU driver
Texas Instruments kindly shared some screenshots with Phoronix of the open-source graphics stack in action.
👁 BeaglePlay on upstream Linux graphics driver for PowerVR Rogue
Those interested in learning more about the BeaglePlay as a $99 single board computer with the PowerVR Rogue graphics can do so at BeagleBoard.org.