Open-Source ATI R500 EXA & XAA Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open-Source ATI R500 EXA & XAA Support

For those of you using the RadeonHD driver with a Radeon X1000 (R500) graphics card, today it has picked up EXA and XAA support! This support is still very initial -- with no EXA accelerated (DMAed) up or download yet -- but it means the start of open-source 2D acceleration for these ATI graphics cards. The git commits pushing this XAA/EXA support were made just minutes ago to xf86-video-radeonhd on FreeDesktop's server...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjMxMQ

[d2kx]

RadeonHD FTW!

Will test this out very soon :D

[Michael]

** Working on a fglrx, radeon, radeonhd 2D comparison. **

[rbmorse]

How do I enable EXA? I'm on Ubuntu 7.10.

[Michael]

Once you're running the latest xf86-video-radeonhd code, add:

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

to your radeonhd device section of the xorg.conf.

[rbmorse]

Tks. Do you have to do anything to disable XAA, which is enabled by default, or can they co-exist?

[Michael]

Tks. Do you have to do anything to disable XAA, which is enabled by default, or can they co-exist?

The AccelMethod tells it all, if it's XAA it's XAA. If it's EXA, it's EXA. If you use ShadowFB, it's ShadowFB.

[sundown]

Do I need to build the driver again or can I just do a git update?

[Michael]

Do I need to build the driver again or can I just do a git update?

You need to rebuild and reinstall the driver every time after a git update.

[rbmorse]

The AccelMethod tells it all, if it's XAA it's XAA. If it's EXA, it's EXA. If you use ShadowFB, it's ShadowFB.

Ok...yes. If you don't specify anything you get XAA, according to the log. In any case, for my R580+ on Ubuntu 7.10, XAA subjectively "feels" much faster than EXA. Video has fewer defects, too.

[airlied]

I'd be interested in making sure the radeon driver CP support was actually enabled (the r500 support is now in DRM master).

If it was it might be worth comparing CPU usage on both tests to see if there is a big difference.

[ejs1920]

It might be worth adding the option for EXA:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

and seeing if that brings the EXA performance closer to that of XAA. That's what I use with the radeon driver using EXA on an RV350, and it seems to provide a significant speedup, gtkperf results are comparable to XAA.

[givemesugarr]

It might be worth adding the option for EXA:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

and seeing if that brings the EXA performance closer to that of XAA. That's what I use with the radeon driver using EXA on an RV350, and it seems to provide a significant speedup, gtkperf results are comparable to XAA.

does someone know how to fix the offscreen pixmaps on exa?! on xaa i got them fixed with xaanooffscreenpixmaps but on exa the same option doesn't work. i suspect it isn't supported.

[vrodic]

does someone know how to fix the offscreen pixmaps on exa?! on xaa i got them fixed with xaanooffscreenpixmaps but on exa the same option doesn't work. i suspect it isn't supported.

They work differently so the same option doesn't make any sense.

[d2kx]

I've read something about "EXANoOffscreenPixmaps"...

[ejs1920]

I don't know why you'd want to disable the offscreen pixmap memory management, but you could try the FBTexPercent option from man radeon.

Option "FBTexPercent" "100"

should assign all memory for OpenGL textures and none for EXA offscreen. I've not tested this!

[givemesugarr]

I don't know why you'd want to disable the offscreen pixmap memory management, but you could try the FBTexPercent option from man radeon.

Option "FBTexPercent" "100"

should assign all memory for OpenGL textures and none for EXA offscreen. I've not tested this!

i'll give it a shot and see what happens.

[GhePeU]

i'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Don't, you're disabling EXA that way. XAANoOffscreenPixmaps is needed because XAA is not good and the software implementation is faster than the "acceleration", but EXA works, so you don't need to tweak FBTexPercent.

That said, this article is pointless! There's no EXA render acceleration for R500 with the xf86-video-ati driver, just check the sources (radeon_exa_funcs.c)!

[bridgman]

Right. AFAIK there are some EXA calls implemented (solid fills and copy) but without render the performance is still pretty slow. The missing EXA calls are the ones which need the 3d engine, so they won't be enabled yet.

We are trying to keep the 2d accel implementations in radeon and radeonhd compatible so that improvements in either one can be pushed easily across to the other as well.

[rbmorse]

XAANoOffscreenPixmaps is needed because XAA is not good and the software implementation is faster than the "acceleration", but EXA works, so you don't need to tweak FBTexPercent.

What's the syntax for the

XAANoOffscreenPixmaps

option? Is it:

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "enable"

[givemesugarr]

What's the syntax for the

XAANoOffscreenPixmaps

option? Is it:

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "enable"

Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true" but also enable should work. look into the xorg log and see if it skips the option or not. if it is not skipped then the syntax is correct.

[rbmorse]

Tks. Subjectively, enabling that makes things noticeably faster.

[rbmorse]

Here's some informal GTKperf results (default settings), radeonHD (latest from git), ATI X1950XTX, Intel Core2Duo E6600, Ubuntu 7.10:

ShadowFB 6.02
XAA (XAANoOffscreenPixmmaps) 11.7
XAA 17.74

[sundown]

I don't know if it's always been like this, but latest driver from git with "AccelMethod" "EXA" added, cripples my computer to the max.