Intel's Linux Driver Sees Async Flipping Patches For Better Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel's Linux Driver Sees Async Flipping Patches For Better Performance

The latest Intel Linux graphics driver optimization being worked on is asynchronous page-flipping...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-RFC-Async-Flipping

[brent]

It's quite baffling that this kind of low-hanging fruit optimization is only being done now. Particularly if you consider that Intel iGPUs are often bandwidth starved. At 4Kp60, we're looking at an additional 1.5 GB/s with an extra blit per frame!

[treba]

Nice, hopefully it will land soon. Should give a good combination together with https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutte...e_requests/798

[CommunityMember]

It's quite baffling ....

Not really. Intel substantially increased their investment on their entire graphics team when they decided to get back into performant discrete GPUs. It is not as if the Linux side was ignored, but the priority was always going to be where the money and users are (i.e. Windows), but a rising tide (more/better staff) raises all boats.

[coder]

if you consider that Intel iGPUs are often bandwidth starved. At 4Kp60, we're looking at an additional 1.5 GB/s with an extra blit per frame!

4K is not a use case for iGPU performance optimizations. If you're using an iGPU for 4K, nothing the software team can do to optimize performance will make it not suck.

[brent]

4K is not a use case for iGPU performance optimizations. If you're using an iGPU for 4K, nothing the software team can do to optimize performance will make it not suck.

Wrong. Of course it matters. Desktop environments use the GPU, and they are absolutely used with 4K screens on iGPUs.

[ms178]

Not really. Intel substantially increased their investment on their entire graphics team when they decided to get back into performant discrete GPUs. It is not as if the Linux side was ignored, but the priority was always going to be where the money and users are (i.e. Windows), but a rising tide (more/better staff) raises all boats.

Let's hope they do support their new discrete GPUs longer than their old iGPUs. The HD 3000 is still enough for office use, but as Intel dropped support after three to four years users are left with a bad experience (e.g. no quicksync with the Windows Update supplied driver for Windows 10). More interestingly, the HD 3000 is better featured on Linux (thanks to OpenGL 3.3) than on Windows.

[coder]

Wrong. Of course it matters. Desktop environments use the GPU, and they are absolutely used with 4K screens on iGPUs.

Even then, the case for such an optimization @ 4K is more one of energy-efficiency & laptop battery life.

With DDR4-2666 memory, 1.5 GB/sec only amounts to about 3.6% of total memory bandwidth. So, it's not a big win, but I have a laptop with an Intel iGPU and will certainly welcome the change.

[coder]

Let's hope they do support their new discrete GPUs longer than their old iGPUs.

And why would that be the case? They'll never sell as many dGPUs as they already sell iGPUs, and the folks using dGPUs tend to upgrade them more frequently.

no quicksync with the Windows Update supplied driver for Windows 10

Oh, that kind of support. Don't care.

[caligula]

Not really. Intel substantially increased their investment on their entire graphics team when they decided to get back into performant discrete GPUs. It is not as if the Linux side was ignored, but the priority was always going to be where the money and users are (i.e. Windows), but a rising tide (more/better staff) raises all boats.

Still, page flip is pretty basic stuff. SVGA cards used to have these same techniques some 25 years ago. It's one of the main things I remember from the merry old DOS days and mode 13h & VBE graphics programming. The >320x200 performance would badly suck without efficient page flips.