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Which are the main reasons of the poor performance of open graphics driver?

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  • Which are the main reasons of the poor performance of open graphics driver?

    Is it mainly a matter of too many layer?
    Or algorithms don't sufficiently flexible to be able to use at best the hardware?
    Or both?

    Note:
    I speak for situations when the documentation is present as happen on Intel (at least on most part) and partially on Amd.

  • #2
    Originally posted by alelinuxbsd View Post
    as happen on Intel
    Intel linux drivers are as fast as windows ones on sandy bridge hardware, sometimes even faster!
    ## VGA ##
    AMD: X1950XTX, HD3870, HD5870
    Intel: GMA45, HD3000 (Core i5 2500K)

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    • #3
      And as i noticed here:
      Could you put more benchmark comparison using open graphics driver?
      despite intel seem (at least based on the only same test between the benchmarks present on both article) even better then amd, remain a very huge difference against proprietary driver.

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      • #4
        A lack of manpower.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Qaridarium
          benchmarked on obsolete software like quake3 LOL...
          No, benchmarked on shader intensive games like xonotic.
          ## VGA ##
          AMD: X1950XTX, HD3870, HD5870
          Intel: GMA45, HD3000 (Core i5 2500K)

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by marek View Post
            A lack of manpower.
            This. We have easily less than a tenth of the number of developers that work on the proprietary drivers.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by marek View Post
              A lack of manpower.
              How is possible?
              Generally important open project have many collaboration around the world.Even more respect proprietary software.
              Anyway often proprietary driver on linux aren't good (for bugs), only nVidia make a little better, because they have few interest on Linux.
              The group that work on linux driver usually are limited even on proprietary driver.
              Other hypothesis:
              - argument too difficult so is a big limit at partecipation of a certain level?
              - slow decision-making in the direction (feautures, etc) to be taken during developing?
              - development process does not efficiently structured to avoid the task carried out by a developer does not block the work of another if it isn't concluded? (This problem for example happen for Gimp while after the 2.8 release perhaps will be solved).

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              • #8
                Originally posted by alelinuxbsd View Post
                The group that work on linux driver usually are limited even on proprietary driver.
                Yes, but 90% of the code is shared with the windows driver.
                ## VGA ##
                AMD: X1950XTX, HD3870, HD5870
                Intel: GMA45, HD3000 (Core i5 2500K)

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by darkbasic View Post
                  Yes, but 90% of the code is shared with the windows driver.
                  Even on Amd or only on nVidia?
                  Given that the main part of the code is shared why amd is always so behind nVidia?

                  And about the other hypothesisf the distance on the open source driver?
                  Was i right or wrong?

                  Generally i think that once is known the main problems is possible move on, so perhaps could be helpful known the reasons behind this huge lack of performance.

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                  • #10
                    On the ATI/AMD side we only started serious code sharing relatively recently -- the Sep 2007 driver was the first time that real benefits were visible although work started a couple of years before that. Remember that we focused on open source drivers for Linux until ~2002 when we started working with proprietary drivers as a consequence of bringing FireGL into ATI, and that by 2007 we had re-started the open source support efforts.

                    Before looking for a single big reason why the open source drivers are slow relative to proprietary it's probably worth taking a fresh look at Michael's last benchmark report :

                    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


                    The delta between open and closed drivers has dropped to what can be explained by "a few hundred developer years of optimization" on the pre-6xx side. Drivers for the 6xx and higher generations are moving towards the same point, although they'll probably need a shader compiler revamp before they get there. The 3xx-5xx driver stacks had a fairly sophisticated shader compiler, while the shader compiler for 6xx and higher is not at the same level yet.

                    The secret to driver performance is not that different from the secret to a good English lawn - "just seed and roll for 150 years"
                    Last edited by bridgman; 07 September 2011, 04:11 PM.
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