Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Mesa Mega Driver Patches Published

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Mesa Mega Driver Patches Published

    Phoronix: Mesa Mega Driver Patches Published

    Eric Anholt of Intel has published his initial patches for implementing the "mega drivers" concept within Mesa...

    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
    Doesn't seem to make too much sense from a technical point of view. Anybody has an idea about the politics side?

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by not.sure View Post
      Doesn't seem to make too much sense from a technical point of view. Anybody has an idea about the politics side?
      On politics, if forced (i.e., if it's not just a build time option) means you need to rebuild the whole mesa to use any driver that is not upstream.
      On tech, I think it has some security/stability relevance, since they don't need to make all the symbols public.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by not.sure View Post
        Doesn't seem to make too much sense from a technical point of view. Anybody has an idea about the politics side?
        Hiding all the symbols is a huge win on the technical side - although possibly it could be done in another way, i'm not sure about that.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by not.sure View Post
          Doesn't seem to make too much sense from a technical point of view. Anybody has an idea about the politics side?
          um...

          and is noting about a 2.61% performance increase
          It reduces some CPU load due to moving some calls to internal instead of across linked libraries. Also, once Gallium gets added to the mix, it will create a single binary that's about 1/6 the size of the current Mesa package (if you include ALL drivers, like some distros do)

          Comment


          • #6
            Michael, any chances on benchmarking this driver against the ones it merges?

            Comment


            • #7
              I hope this stays optional.

              Mega binaries are not a good practice and the performance benefits seem negligible. Modularization is harder but almost always the better approach.

              Comment


              • #8
                I really hope this is a configurable option

                Originally posted by phoronix View Post
                Eric Anholt of Intel has published his initial patches for implementing the "mega drivers" concept within Mesa...
                This is exactly the kind of thing I don't need when trying to perform a "git bisect".

                Comment


                • #9
                  Is this even a good idea?

                  Big monolithic things are usually bad.

                  Isn't there any alternative ways do accomplish similar benefits without the drawbacks?

                  I don't think anyone else (Apple or Microsoft, etc) would use this solution.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I know the much easier and future proof approach.
                    Gallium.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X