Intel Revs Linux Patches For Per-Client Engine Busyness - Allowing For Great GPU Insight

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Revs Linux Patches For Per-Client Engine Busyness - Allowing For Great GPU Insight

One of the set of patches for Intel's Linux kernel graphics driver that have been floating around for more than one year is about exposing per-client (process) statistics in how each application is making use of the GPU's render/blitter/video hardware and various insightful statistics related to that. The patches aren't queued for mainline yet but at least a new revision of the work was published...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-GPU-2020-Per-Client-Stat

[lowlands]

Not a dev. I guess GPU/Mesa driver developers and game developers can use this to analyse where things go right/wrong?

[tildearrow]

"Busy-ness"? Isn't "business" the right term? (because business means the act of being busy)

[numacross]

"Busy-ness"? Isn't "business" the right term? (because business means the act of being busy)

Looks like busyness is correct in this context:

• busyness
• business

[Tomin]

I read the commit messages (not code yet) but I could not figure out which GPUs can be used with this feature. Is this supported with all hardware using i915 driver or just some subset?

[polarathene]

I read the commit messages (not code yet) but I could not figure out which GPUs can be used with this feature. Is this supported with all hardware using i915 driver or just some subset?

Anything with GuC I think? At least for the feature the article is about. GuC is firmware that comes with CPUs with Gen9 graphics or newer. So Skylake and onwards afaik, although GuC firmware is still in development and an Intel dev has said it's not ready to make use of, with no ETA when to expect it to be. There's a way to enable it but it's said can be buggy atm and cause problems on the system, so it's best to wait until it's ready in future and enabled by default according to the dev.

[tursulin]

lowlands - not so much interesting for game devs, they should be diving deeper into the usage of GPU blocks and EUs. Think about it as normal top, not a profiler.

Tomin - Broadwell (Gen8) onwards.

polarathene - works better without GuC for now.