JH7110 / VisionFive 2 - PowerVR BXE-4-32 GPU + DC8200 display bring-up

Summary

With a few small kernel changes you can get experimental GPU 3D graphics working on the StarFive VisionFive 2.

vkmark test results

The following results are from vkmark under three configurations: direct KMS scanout (no compositor, no window) and two Wayland compositors, labwc and Weston. The physical screen always runs at its native 1920x1080.

vkmark itself is tested windowed at 1920x1080 and 800x600:

Scene	FPS (KMS, 1920x1080)	FPS (labwc, 1920x1080)	FPS (labwc, 800x600)	FPS (Weston, 800x600)
clear	485	55	215	209
cube	140	30	153	133
shading	84	21	71	61
desktop	19	7	39	30
effect2d	9	5	20	22
texture	78	21	94	80
vertex	124	28	103	81

Command line invocation and output, e.g.:

• vkmark_7scenes_kms_mesa26.2.3-2_1920x1080_20sec_output.txt
• vkmark_7scenes_labwc_mesa26.2.3-2_1920x1080_20sec_output.txt
• vkmark_7scenes_labwc_mesa26.2.3-2_800x600_20sec_output.txt
• vkmark_7scenes_weston_mesa26.2.3-2_800x600_20sec_output.txt

glmark2-es2-wayland test results

The following results are from glmark2-es2-wayland (OpenGL ES via Zink) under two Wayland compositors, Weston and labwc. The physical screen always runs at its native 1920x1080.

glmark2 itself is tested windowed at 1920x1080 and 800x600:

Scene	FPS (Weston, 1920x1080)	FPS (labwc, 1920x1080)	FPS (Weston, 800x600)	FPS (labwc, 800x600)
clear	22	22	54	60
shading	16	18	45	42
bump	16	19	45	50
function	11	16	41	41
texture	15	18	45	44
ideas	7	11	16	14
shadow	5	5	15	14
pulsar	9	12	32	39
refract	3	3	4	4
conditionals	10	16	40	40
effect2d	6	10	37	40
loop	9	14	31	36
buffer	7	9	16	21
desktop	3	3	8	9
terrain	1	1	2	2
build	20	21	46	44
jellyfish	4	5	13	15

Command line invocation and output, e.g.:

• glmark2_jellyfish_weston_zink_mesa26.2.3-2_800x600_20sec_output.txt
• glmark2_jellyfish_labwc_zink_mesa26.2.3-2_800x600_20sec_output.txt

glxgears test results

glxgears renders under labwc at 25 FPS, using indirect GLX via XWayland, translated to Vulkan by Zink.

Hardware

• StarFive VisionFive 2 (SoC: JH7110)
• GPU: Imagination PowerVR BXE-4-32 (BVNC 36.50.54.182)

Firmware

The driver loads rogue_36.50.54.182_v1.fw from /lib/firmware/powervr/. Pinned to commit 8a58f818 (FW version v1.1 (build 6976702 OS)).

Install:

wget https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/imagination/linux-firmware/-/raw/8a58f81883f7be458daa34e418cc4079f995b279/powervr/rogue_36.50.54.182_v1.fw

sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware/powervr
sudo cp rogue_36.50.54.182_v1.fw /lib/firmware/powervr/

Kernel

You need to apply 2 branches to your kernel:

jh7110_dc8200_hdmi_v7.3-rc5 and powervr_on_jh7110_visionfive2_v7.3-rc5

git remote add domibel https://github.com/domibel/linux
git fetch domibel powervr_on_jh7110_visionfive2_v7.3-rc5 jh7110_dc8200_hdmi_v7.3-rc5
git checkout -b test_gpu v7.3-rc5
git merge domibel/powervr_on_jh7110_visionfive2_v7.3-rc5
git merge domibel/jh7110_dc8200_hdmi_v7.3-rc5

and additionally, the following configs:

CONFIG_DRM_POWERVR=m
CONFIG_DRM_VERISILICON_DC=y
CONFIG_CMA=y
CONFIG_ERRATA_SIFIVE=y
CONFIG_ERRATA_SIFIVE_XPBMTUC=y
CONFIG_STARFIVE_STARLINK_CACHE=y  # hack: only way to pull in RISCV_NONSTANDARD_CACHE_OPS below
CONFIG_RISCV_NONSTANDARD_CACHE_OPS=y
CONFIG_DRM_STARFIVE_JH7110_INNO_HDMI=y
CONFIG_PHY_STARFIVE_JH7110_INNO_HDMI=y
CONFIG_SOC_STARFIVE_JH7110_VOUT_SUBSYSTEM=y
CONFIG_SOC_STARFIVE_JH7110_HDMI_SUBSYSTEM=y

The display/HDMI ones are =y (built-in) rather than =m so the framebuffer console comes up early enough to show kernel boot messages on screen. The GPU driver itself stays a module.

Append them to your .config, then run:

make ARCH=riscv olddefconfig

The DTB arch/riscv/boot/dts/starfive/jh7110-starfive-visionfive-2-v1.3b.dtb is built from the same tree; where it needs to go depends on how your board's bootloader is set up, on my system it's /boot/efi/dtb/starfive/.

visionfive2-live.dts is the actual devicetree my kernel runs with, dumped with:

sudo dtc -I fs -O dts -o visionfive2-live.dts /sys/firmware/devicetree/base

Compare your own against it if something isn't probing right. I tested this with U-Boot 2025.01-3 (Debian-packaged) and 2026.07.

If your kernel's default CMA reservation is too small, increase it with cma=128M or higher on your kernel cmdline. cma=64M can fail with fbdev: Failed to setup emulation (ret=-12) and no HDMI output at all.

Install userspace packages

sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers vulkan-tools vkmark glmark2-es2-wayland

Loading the driver

sudo insmod powervr.ko

Run vkmark (with winsys backends kms or headless)

All the commands below set MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=1010:36054182, that is vendorID:deviceID, 36054182 is derived from the BXE-4-32's BVNC (36.50.54.182)

export PVR_I_WANT_A_BROKEN_VULKAN_DRIVER=1 MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=1010:36054182

# headless - no root needed
vkmark --winsys headless -s 1920x1080 \
  -b clear:duration=20 -b cube:duration=20 -b shading:duration=20 \
  -b desktop:duration=20 -b effect2d:duration=20 -b texture:duration=20 \
  -b vertex:duration=20

# kms - needs root
# Stop your display manager first, e.g.
# `sudo systemctl stop lightdm`)
sudo env PVR_I_WANT_A_BROKEN_VULKAN_DRIVER=1 MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=1010:36054182 \
vkmark --winsys kms --winsys-options kms-tty=/dev/tty1 -s 1920x1080 \
  -b clear:duration=20 -b cube:duration=20 -b shading:duration=20 \
  -b desktop:duration=20 -b effect2d:duration=20 -b texture:duration=20 \
  -b vertex:duration=20

Sometimes this fails with ErrorOutOfDeviceMemory, especially if you run the scenes independently, e.g

vkmark ...  -b clear:duration=20
vkmark ...  -b cube:duration=20
vkmark ...  -b shading:duration=20

Run under labwc (Wayland compositor)

sudo env XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0 XDG_SEAT=seat0 \
  WLR_LIBINPUT_NO_DEVICES=1 WLR_RENDER_DRM_DEVICE=/dev/dri/renderD128 \
  labwc

sudo env XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0 WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 \
  PVR_I_WANT_A_BROKEN_VULKAN_DRIVER=1 MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=1010:36054182 \
  glmark2-es2-wayland -b jellyfish:duration=20

Run under Weston (Wayland compositor)

sudo env XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0 XDG_SEAT=seat0 \
  weston --backend=drm-backend.so --renderer=gl

sudo env XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0 WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 \
  PVR_I_WANT_A_BROKEN_VULKAN_DRIVER=1 MESA_VK_DEVICE_SELECT=1010:36054182 \
  glmark2-es2-wayland -b jellyfish:duration=20

It is not always wayland-1, sometimes it is wayland-0.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to everyone whose upstream work and advice made this possible, especially:

• Michal Wilczynski
• Icenowy Zheng
• Bo Gan
• Samuel Holland
• Alessio Belle
• Simon Perretta
• Frank Binns

Issues

• Need more user feedback
• Need a riscv64 Chromium build in Debian (for WebGL/WebGPU) - https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=chromium - weak hardware ?
• Need better riscv64 hardware to build heavy packages, any companies listening ?