Turning a Raspberry Pi Pico into a GPU! 

I made a project using a Pico as HDMI generator, my Samsung TV needed the 5v before it would allow me select the HDMI input. (My monitors work fine without the 5v)

Clem, you are... resolute. Blogging this tomorrow!

It's funny you used the ZX81 as an example, as that machine actually used the Z80 processor to generate the display without a dedicated display chip. It had a shift register and some logic chips, but when it was time to generate the frame, the Z80 would be fed NOP instructions, so it would just increment the value on its address bus and that, plus the 74 series logic would clock out the pixels. It's actually a very cool hack!

I can't wait to run Stable Diffusion on my pi pico!

The term GPU was introduced by Nvidia as a marketing term for GeForce 256 because it was a vector processor. Before that we had "3D accelerators" (with no geometry math) and "video cards" (usually with GDI and overlay acceleration). But there was another unit before officially called the GPU, it was the video subsystem of the original PlayStation. So I think until it does at least 3D, it's just a PPU or VDP or whatever.

Amazing Video Clen.. loved it.. very informative 😃😃 You have passion for your projects and you explain complex topics in an amusing manner.. Loved it. Eagerly waiting for the video part-2 👍👍

Love it! Can't wait to see the board working!

I love your videos and projects. Thank you!

Cool. But can you do one for regular PCI and even ISA for use in old retro computers?

This looks like an interesting project. Hope you get the board soon so we can see the result.

So this is how an open source gpu looks!

me, who just so happened to need a custom GPU:

It can be Integrated with my FPGA board for VIdeo handling. I am amazed how can dual core micro with 256k ram is doing such a wonderful stuff.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing 😊

I recommend you put a pair of psrams and a mux on the PCIe board. That way you can port the Pimoroni PicoVision to this PCI system and have a frame buffer. In their system, the GPU Pico has no flash and is programmed via JTAG from the CPU Pico.

Me: that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard. Also me after watching the video: that's the coolest thing i've ever seen.

this was great !

This is knowledge I will never need, on a video that was randomly recommended to me that still managed to grab my attention. 10/10

This would be awesome to start a new hardware stream specifically for pi and soc pi based computers..

I can actually see real life productive use for the PCIe variant: Open Source test GPU So far the only alternative was stashing old graphics cards for that. And that has its own set of issues.

To be clear: I gave you an instant thumb-up on this video for your Arrow-on-a-Stick! 😁

I love my Pico's. It became MMBasic for everything and I learn a lot.

the funniest part is just yesterday, i hijacked the DDC of my pc's VGA port (while using displayport for video) and then connected a minature display using linux to extend my monitor (although in black and white dither, at 128x64...)

A open source IPMI interface card for server management would be really sweet!

@Element14Presents Thanks for this excellent video. And YES!!! You should most definitively make more "PC Hardware Hacking" videos !!! Please...please please :) Best regards-

There is a significant difference between a high performance 3d accelerator and a display adapter. A lot of arm socs do have gpus embedded. I have old Odriod C1+s.

Try to port Mesa OpenGL. If Pico have enough RAM for double buffer then it can generate 3D graphics using soft renderer in Mesa. All you have to do is to encode OpenGL commands and send from host to "gpu" over I²C.

There seems to be a market for this. Like an board with a spi chip with hdmi output and a 1 mb framebuffer for less than 5 euro.

This actually might be a useful project if you can make it work with a headless server which only needs terminal output.

Some TVs/displays don't even have their SoC talking over I2C, they just have the HDMI linked to an EEPROM.

I have an other idea of achieving the goal of drawing picture to the HDMI LCD: there is RGB on ESP32S3, we can make it with a RGB-to-HDMI chip.

Brilliant... Thank you.

7:12 😂

Thanks for answering my long time question how windows know the resolution, and mess up display when changing monitor !

Looking at the AdaFruit drawing libraries it should be possible to swap out the drawing code with communication to I2C then at the other end decode and send that to HDMI

Would be great if you could make one that could be used with Mame to output 240p RGBS over VGA port

I have a couple of Coral TPUs and a couple Picos, will tinker at some point.

Very interesting content. I have another idea as make special (linux)image which will allow to connect arm with gpu through tyceC. (Redmi9 and pi4 my victims)

... Honestly I could see the utility of a little X1 card like that, for driving an in-case micro-display, for instance. Have it read CPU temps or whatever. the idea of making a PCIE device in KiCad never occured to me... that's above my knowledge grade.

8:30 “Is it a GPU?” Well, at least a GIU - ‘Graphics Interface Unit”, not really processing so much… I guess it is _translating_ its input to something viewable on a screen, like bitmaps of ASCII character set, and timing-generating the expected compound signal? Some load taken off the tiny ESP32 impersonating a dedicated CPU… 🤓

I made a 3D render engine for the pico! It is a raytracer.

Awesome!

"Get into the chopper!" Thx for the content, though. Austrian english is always a drag, I know

It does have it's own built-in GPU. It's not like you're turning it into a GPU but rather you're using it's already existing GPU.

At the rate RP2040 PIO based projects are advancing, soon we'll see whole clusters of them doing real-time ray tracing on the PIO pins somehow /s

6:33 those cables send data, not "video signals." a VGA cable does that, but DVI and on it's all digital data.. no analogue at all.

using a pico as the graphics chip in a retro computer would be cool, like what if someone made something like ARMSID but for the Vic-II chip in C64s and gave native hdmi out too.

you look like young Steve Jobs

Build a gpu mining rig out of them.

awesome

Hmm... would be cool do some kind of old school (GPU like stuff)... 1 of the processor could emulate the hardware for example of the Amiga with fixed resolution (320*200 NTSC or 320*256 PAL) with really optimized assembler (128 colors, you might getaway with 32k emulator and the rest is a framebuffer=100k) (Blitter, and copper and other stuff) and then with the leftover (100k?) the other processor runs a ported AROS Amiga libraries that has some stuff for computing and drawing to the "buffer" with modern addons ofc (basic 3D stuff Voodoo)... Then the "computer" side which could also be ESP32 kind of thing could run a mini miniGL sort of thing. Or just make the smallest rasterizer with 1 processor and then make a custom fit "GPU" with the other processor with all the RAM left over... then do some sort of graphics library that would fit... and make sense But the "dream" would be make use of both processors and make it so if connect 2 ESP32's (Pico Pi variants) it does everything just a bit faster... and you could just "SLI" with more Pico Pi's... but that would be a serious undertaking... fun... and maybe if done right, it could be the bomb... because the basic concept then could be transferred to a sellable product... getting a "daughterboard" GPU for you computer and then add just mass produced (+2 Ghz) cheapish arms processors cards get your GPU (with the exact driver) a bit faster... I do wonder what lets say a 16 cheap ARM SoCS (quad core with cheap GPU cores) connected the best way possible and shared lets say 6 GB fast RAM (but cheap again)... and with a controller (also a ARM processor) could do with a driver that built for the purpose... lets say it only does 1080p and this driver knows what it has and how to achieve it best way possible. I guess you could do some "SLI" thing or PowerVR might be even better... 64 general processors could make the driver updates fun (someone will in the end will do every trick possible and lets say the cheapish arm SoCS has 2 GPU cores... so 32 GPU cores... so they have to deal with a 60*33 pixel square in the best case... I think that would be really cheap very upgradeable "GPU" and do at least as good as lets say a 10 year old GPU... with some tricks (because of all the general purpose CPU's) it could probably be a bit futureproof... The GPU i'm sitting on atm is pretty much 10 years old... and it's pretty much fixed in stone it seems... but a card like this "dream" card would be software upgradable much more then this... and people would love to tinker with it... all opensource... Maybe get manufacturer to get perfect "ARM" spec, maybe cheapish GPU design SoC that has more GPU power and less general purpose CPU... like dual CPU and quad GPU if that would make it better.. But I guess it all has to to with connectivity (fastest possible way every SoC has access to RAM) and then some software wizardry (but if that software wizardry is opensource, it will find "life" and get really cool I think... and if it's done right the possibility is endless... We really need "GPU's" today that are not that pricey but still can run stuff... and has upgradeability... I think... a good framework for "PowerVR"/SLI kind of stuff that works... Then the fun can begin :-)

we need to see a followup , where is the pico pci card? :)

that must be the reason why you're wearing glasses I guess

Don't know much about hacking electronics, but is it possible to make a networked cluster of these Pico's to do real-time 3D software rendering?

why is everything i think of now being turned into youtube videos?! so creepy/cool

Why did you usedthe 12V power from the PCIe slot when it also provides 3.3V?

If you are able to run w-okada voice-changer on a raspberry pi (no matter what model) you would drive me crazy. I remembered why this program depends on the GPU XD.

I vote YES for more hardware hacking! I love repurposing old hardware so the more hacks the better!

@element14, have been wondering who i could ask this question for a while .. Pico-schmico! Can i take my Ryzen APU / mini-pc and use its nvme socket to connect it to the PCI-E of a PC as a device or to another Ryzen APU as a peer (or device etc.) ?

Pls give us the results, really want to know the result of PCI eith this board

They actually did that before, haven't they?

Given you intense experience with boards, I have 2 RTX A4000, that have connectors for nVlink but it is officially unsupported, would you know a way to make it 'supported' given the already existing physical connections, or would it work out of the box?

you should take the worlds most powerfull microcontroller or anything like that to make it an actual GPU so it can do 3D rendering

Hello, I hae a question. On the pcie card are you just using the power pins to get power and using the usb on the pico to connect to the pc internal USB for the data?

Bloody hell. That's like a cliffhanger worthy of the latest HBO series!

So how many times per second will you be able to push a 240p 24bit frame buffer through pcie i2c at 1MHz? If my calculations are right less than 1fps which is a bit underwhelming? Am I correct?

Could a version with multiple Picos work? Could this be done with an arduino?

anyway to add 16mb of ram to it? asrock has a m2 gpu for servers, which would be pretty handy if cheap. M2_VGA is what asrock rack calls it

Check out the extended code videos! Link in description!😊

someone has to try running doom on one of these.

maybe an fpga into gpu on a pci-e connector. or a gpu on soc fpga using it on the hps operating system linux. or make a gpu as mister core and use it on hps. yes opengl shader gpu with cores. not only the output video signal. well usb-c video output.

What is the cryptic 14th Element. Is it Silicon or Silicone?

I watched this, but I'm too ignorant of all the elements at play So I don't understand....

What about PCI DMA? Is it possible with Raspberry Pi Pico?

Imagine using this on an se/30 macintosh 🤔🤓

Is this a pigeon?

How much would you charge ro make a half hwifhr pico gpu? I am a disabled IT student.f

But can it play Doom?

SPI from pico to pico might have been better.

cool but... can it run crysis?

Can you turn a pico into a 4090?

Hey there, I am building AI Hardware would love to connect and collaborate

Instead of a PI pico and some library you can also consider a FTDI EVE FT8XX series: "FTDI Chip has ... with Embedded Video Engine (EVE) technology. The EVE family combines display, audio and touch into a single chip, providing an optimized solution with high quality graphics that output to 1/16th pixel resolution for WVGA, VGA, SVGA (FT81x), WQVGA and QVGA (FT80x) TFT display panels." It has everything on board including a frame buffer and extensive graphics operations and anti-aliased text output.

But can it play Doom 🤔

I need windows 2000 drivers

Can you send pictures?

According to Nvidia, a GPU isnt a GPU unless it does 4D rendering.

You know you have an acid trap on that pseudo board right?

why not actually put the part two? on RU-vid where you put what ended up only being part one part one? I like this project, but am not search all over different platforms for something than never published? I sub-scribed your channel here? and would expect any up dates, follow-ups yo at least have something published here, even only the content is somewhere else, if if you want go have a look? 🙂rant over, can we have the part two here to, please?

'ice cross sea' .. what is it? ... is this how you spelling I2C? it gets me confused every time you pronounce it..

You see no difference? Clean your glasses then 🤪

But does it run DOOM?

But can it run crysis? 😂

the amount of bleeding edge cringe on this video from such a once great channel is disappointing 👀

Just dont post the video if your content isnt complete...

just like you more then likely;y see nothing different between men and women

Excellent! .. Now do VGA.