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Shader Optimization Back-End Might Go In For R600g

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  • Shader Optimization Back-End Might Go In For R600g

    Phoronix: Shader Optimization Back-End Might Go In For R600g

    For many months there has been a "shader optimization" branch of Mesa/R600g that sought to rather noticeably boost the performance of the AMD R600 Gallium3D driver. While this work by Vadim Girlin didn't look like it would be merged, after being revived and cleaned-up, it might reach mainline Mesa/Gallium3D as a new performance-boosting option...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    For those too lazy to look up the link

    It probably won't make much of a difference on Quake3, but here are some results:

    Oh, and in case it wasn't clear from Michael's article, this code runs on the hardware instructions, which means it can be run after getting the output of either the old compiler backend or the new llvm one. It doesn't care about that.

    Originally posted by vadim
    Below are some quick benchmarks for shader performance and compilation
    time, to demonstrate that currently r600-sb might provide better
    performance for users, at least in some cases.

    As an example of the shaders with good optimization opportunities I used
    the application that computes and renders atmospheric scattering
    effects, it was mentioned in the previous thread:


    Here are current results for that app (Main.noprecompute, frames per
    second) with default backend, default backend + r600-sb, and llvm backend:
    def def+sb llvm
    240 590 248

    Another quick benchmark is an OpenCL kernel performance with bfgminer
    (megahash/s):
    llvm llvm+sb
    68 87

    One more benchmark is for compilation speed/overhead - I used two piglit
    tests, first compiles a lot of shaders (IIRC more than thousand), second
    compiles a few huge shaders. Result is a test run time in seconds, this
    includes not only the compilation time but anyway shows the difference:
    def def+sb llvm
    tfb max-varyings 10 14 53
    fp-long-alu 0.17 0.38 0.68

    This is especially important for GL apps, because longer compilation
    time results in the more significant freezes in the games etc. As for
    the quality of the compiled code in this test, of course generally llvm
    backend is already able to produce better code in some cases, but e.g.
    for the longest shader from the fp-long-alu test both backends optimize
    it to the two alu instructions.

    Of course this branch won't magically make all applications faster, many
    older apps are not really limited by the shader performance at all, but
    I think it might improve performance for many relatively modern
    applications/engines, e.g. for the applications based on the Unigine and
    Source engines.

    Comment


    • #3
      Please merge, and make it the default for 9.2. The lack of an optimizing r600 backend for all this time has been a huge bottleneck, the elephant in the room.

      Comment


      • #4
        I'd be interested to see 3-way benchmarks for this (r600g with or without r600-sb, fglrx). Not necessarily a full benchmark, just Unigine, a couple older games, and perhaps an opencl benchmark, if there is one already.

        It's sounding like it brings r600g close to Catalyst in terms of performance.

        Comment


        • #5
          WOW! Now I can use High shaders for StarCraft2 under Wine. r600-sb very cool! Need merge now and enable by default.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Ibidem View Post
            I'd be interested to see 3-way benchmarks for this (r600g with or without r600-sb, fglrx). Not necessarily a full benchmark, just Unigine, a couple older games, and perhaps an opencl benchmark, if there is one already.

            It's sounding like it brings r600g close to Catalyst in terms of performance.
            unigine 3.0
            r600 - 558
            r600-sb - 784
            windows 7 - 789

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by pontostroy View Post
              unigine 3.0
              r600 - 558
              r600-sb - 784
              windows 7 - 789
              WOW! Respect!!

              Comment


              • #8
                That's awesome

                Originally posted by Pontostroy View Post
                unigine 3.0
                r600 - 558
                r600-sb - 784
                windows 7 - 789
                What card?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
                  What card?
                  hd6770
                  heave 3.0 1920x1080 opengl

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Pontostroy View Post
                    unigine 3.0
                    r600 - 558
                    r600-sb - 784
                    windows 7 - 789
                    What about heat production?

                    Comment

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