[gsliepen]

IMO, the GPU is actually a strength. It might not be the most powerful, but it is supported by the mainline kernel and libraries. Many other phone SoCs throw some binary drivers over the wall if you are lucky, and good luck if you ever want to upgrade the OS it came with.

[Lerc]

That was the choice they made, support over performance. It was the right choice, but it doesn't change the fact that it is subpar performance. I am hoping in the future there will be options that allow them to offer both without sacrificing the other.

[gsliepen]

Well, they probably didn't have a choice in which GPU to use. You choose a SoC and then you are stuck with everything it comes with. What is most amazing is that they put in the effort to make a completely open source, upstreamed driver for its GPU.

I see only two possible paths for another GPU on RPis in the future: either Broadcom drops the VideoCore GPU and switches to Mali or Adreno (which I think is unlikely), or RPi stops using Broadcom SoCs and switches to something completely different. Still unlikely, but now that they have the RP1 chip taking over most of the I/O functions, it would not be too hard for them to change and still make boards that retain compatibility with existing hats.

Still, the RPi is made at a certain pricepoint, which very likely precludes putting in a flagship SoC, so even if they change, I'm not sure it will do wonders for GPU performance.