Eduardo García-Mádico Portabella builds Rockchip VA-API driver for RK3588
Eduardo García-Mádico Portabella of EGP Sistemas has developed a new VA-API driver, "rockchip-vaapi," for the Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 SoCs. This driver bridges libva to librockchip-mpp, enabling hardware-accelerated video decoding of H.264, HEVC, VP9, and AV1 codecs in applications like Firefox, at resolutions up to 8K, with zero-copy DRM PRIME 2 surface export. The project was developed with assistance from an AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Key Takeaways
- rockchip-vaapi implements the full VA-API 1.20 `VADriverVTable` (`__vaDriverInit_1_20`) for Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576
- The driver routes decode work from libva to librockchip-mpp, enabling H.264, HEVC, VP9, and AV1 hardware decoding
- Supported codecs include H.264 up to 4K and HEVC, VP9, and AV1 up to 8K
- The project supports zero-copy DRM PRIME 2 surface export using NV12 DMABUF surfaces
- The README says it was developed with Claude Sonnet 4.6 over about 3–4 hours across two sessions
Why It Matters
This gives Rockchip RK3588 and RK3576 boards a missing VA-API path for hardware video decode, including Firefox 128+ and the VA-API PDM route. The ecosystem angle is the direct bridge from libva to librockchip-mpp, plus zero-copy DRM PRIME 2 export for NV12 DMABUF surfaces, which is exactly what streaming playback stacks need. The next concrete signal to watch is whether the project’s Firefox support extends beyond the tested Orange Pi 5 Plus on RK3588 and the untested RK3588S / RK3576 entries.
Read full article at github.com
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