Re: sun4m cgfourteen sx wscons issues

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hello,

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:19:37 +0200
victor%bubbleverse.eu@localhost wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 10:04:50 -0400
> Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> > I finally got around to hack up the Xorg driver:
> > ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/macallan/sparc/suncg14_drv.so.1.gz
> > 
> > Please give it a try.
> > 
> > If it works properly please enable Xrender acceleration ( Option
> > "XRender" "true" in the Device section ) and run x11perf -aaftext.
> > I'm curious if there are any performance differences between r25 and
> > r27 SX.
> 
> It does work indeed. x11perf -aaftext says the following:
> without xrender:
> Sync time adjustment is 1.7279 msecs.
> 
>   24000 reps @   0.2883 msec (  3470.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   24000 reps @   0.2882 msec (  3470.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   24000 reps @   0.3069 msec (  3260.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   24000 reps @   0.2880 msec (  3470.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   24000 reps @   0.2898 msec (  3450.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>  120000 trep @   0.2923 msec (  3420.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
> 
> with xrender:
> Sync time adjustment is 1.8104 msecs.
> 
>   48000 reps @   0.1042 msec (  9590.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   48000 reps @   0.1043 msec (  9590.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   48000 reps @   0.1132 msec (  8840.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   48000 reps @   0.1043 msec (  9590.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>   48000 reps @   0.1063 msec (  9410.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
>  240000 trep @   0.1064 msec (  9390.0/sec): Char in 80-char aa line (Courier 
> 12)
> 
> That's with the non-smp kernel you compiled. The userland is NetBSD
> 6.99.26(except for the suncg14_drv.so.1). The video mode is
> r1280x1024x66. If i'm reading that correctly, the improvement i'm
> seeing isn't quite as distinct as the one you wrote about in your blog
> entry[1]. Maybe that's because of the slower cpu, yet, during the test
> with xrender enabled, not all cpu time was used.

That's odd, font rendering should be mostly done by the SX, only
completely opaque and completely transparent pixels are handled by the
CPU ( Because in those cases we can either skip them entirely or just
draw the source pixel unmodified, without all those time consuming
multiplications. Maybe I'm underestimating SX's multipliers though.)
Then again, that's the majority. Maybe I should let SX handle them in
order to avoid CPU access to uncached video memory.

> Currently i'm building a smp kernel and as soon you commited the
> changes to the suncg14 x11 driver, an up-to-date userland will follow.
> Ultimately i'll be on the watch for a cheap hypersparc module. Maybe
> one of these factors will make a difference in the benchmark.

I've got two 125MHz ones, anything faster seems to get ridiculously
expensive. SMP is unstable on HyperSPARCs though, we're not sure why.

> Nevertheless, NetBSD is now perfectly useable on that machine for me.
> Thanks for the work you spent on that.

You're welcome, and thanks for testing & feedback.

have fun
Michael