Composition Bypass Support Lands To Speed Up Mir

[LinuxGamer]

knowing michael's propensity for this stuff ... he is probably benchmarking this right now :P

lets see if they really fixed it for are just out for some more PR but anyways this looks bad as it's going to be slower in a battle of Xorg vs Xmir as of now it's Xorg>Xmir (or the Xwayland Hack job that when bad)

I'm running the unity-system-compositor, so on Xmir. It runs with around 20 fps, which is okay because I'm not playing on my Laptop anyway, I was just testing it.

what FPS do you get on the Xorg server?

[GreatEmerald]

Anyone have any dates when we should expect to have something alpha'ish to benchmark against?

Around the middle of 2014. That's when Ubuntu 14.10 alphas should be up. Before that there is nothing that can run on Mir, thus XMir needs a full DE, and therefore before that date there is no point on comparing XMir and XWayland (XWayland is always going to be faster).

[LinuxGamer]

Around the middle of 2014. That's when Ubuntu 14.10 alphas should be up. Before that there is nothing that can run on Mir, thus XMir needs a full DE, and therefore before that date there is no point on comparing XMir and XWayland (XWayland is always going to be faster).

this will be the pre-alpha will it not? (like most Ubuntu Releases)

[Weegee]

what FPS do you get on the Xorg server?

Around 30, so it's nearly a 66% performance drop from X.org to Mir. I haven't tested it with the new bypass support though because I got several artifacts with this update, which made the desktop unusable.

[allenmaher]

Around 30, so it's nearly a 66% performance drop from X.org to Mir. I haven't tested it with the new bypass support though because I got several artifacts with this update, which made the desktop unusable.

20/30 fps=66% of the frame rate or a 33% drop. I hate to be the math stickler but it is as though basic math skills are thrown out the window whenever Ubuntu is discussed (a lot of it in this thread today). I am sure someone will find a way to blame that on Shuttleworth though this is forum abounding in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

I am waiting to test Xmir until closer to the 13.10 date of arrival. So I applaud you for wading in early though, I am not usually that brave with really new software.

[Weegee]

20/30 fps=66% of the frame rate or a 33% drop. I hate to be the math stickler but it is as though basic math skills are thrown out the window whenever Ubuntu is discussed (a lot of it in this thread today). I am sure someone will find a way to blame that on Shuttleworth though this is forum abounding in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

Eeeh, that's actually what I wanted to write. Dunno how I got the 66% in there, I'll edit my post before someone tries to use it as a news article or something like that. Sorry about that.

But yeah, the confirmation bias and conspiracy theories are strong in here ...

EDIT: Seems like you can't edit posts after 30 minutes of their existence anymore. Great, now I look like a total dumbass

[mrugiero]

There are two things I don't get. The first one, Mir for Android? Is it meant to run on Android, or it was talking about running with Android drivers (which are not the same thing)? And the other thing, wasn't the big focus to get the phones version ready first? Shouldn't it be a priority to allow composition bypass there, even before enabling it on desktops?

[MrTheSoulz]

There are two things I don't get. The first one, Mir for Android? Is it meant to run on Android, or it was talking about running with Android drivers (which are not the same thing)? And the other thing, wasn't the big focus to get the phones version ready first? Shouldn't it be a priority to allow composition bypass there, even before enabling it on desktops?

ubuntu touch for phones are on android phones... there isnt any ubuntu phone yet, only after 2014.

[mrugiero]

ubuntu touch for phones are on android phones... there isnt any ubuntu phone yet, only after 2014.

Yes, but "Android phones" and "Android" are not the same thing, thus my question. Android is an OS, Android phones are hardware devices. Or is Ubuntu Touch running on top of Android? If that's the case, I don't see the point on having another display server running on top of it.

[DDF420]

Yes, but "Android phones" and "Android" are not the same thing, thus my question. Android is an OS, Android phones are hardware devices. Or is Ubuntu Touch running on top of Android? If that's the case, I don't see the point on having another display server running on top of it.

"How is Ubuntu Touch connected to Android?
The independent open source project CyanogenMod which is based on Android and tries to improve and extend the existing Android Basis has been taken by the developers as a kind of underlaying basis for Ubuntu Touch. The kernel and a few low level drivers for network, video, audio and some other hardware features are taken, all the higher level parts have been taken out. On top of this the whole Ubuntu is started in an chroot environment.
Does that mean that only Android Devices are able to run Ubuntu Touch?
No. For the Ubuntu Touch developer preview canonical developer had obviously focused on only very few well supported models. In order to enable easy support of all existing closed source drivers the decision has been taken to use lower level parts of android. This does not mean that only android devices will be able to run Ubuntu Touch in the future. It might be equally possible to replace the android low level part and boot directly with the kernel into the Ubuntu environment.
Did you consider using some of the android components (eg surfaceflinger) instead of writing Mir?
Yes we did. We found that:
Surfaceflinger is very tied to the android system and would take a large amount of porting work to run inside of Ubuntu Touch.
Surfaceflinger is currently focused on a simplistic z-order based compositing, we needed something that can support the full Unity experience you expect on a desktop. The complex ?launchers? you use in android are not part of surfaceflinger.
Finally, adapting surfaceflinger to use mesa/gbm drivers is a ton of work (and probably not possible). We love the free stack drivers and need to support them for the desktop.
Do Mir clients care what platform (Android or mesa/GBM) they are running on?
Nope! A mir client will be able to run on a mesa/gbm platform or an android platform. We took great care to make sure that the clients are agnostic to the underlying OpenGLES driver model. There is no recompilation and no platform detection needed."