Valve Eyeing "Exclusive GPU Access" To Boost SteamVR Linux Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Eyeing "Exclusive GPU Access" To Boost SteamVR Linux Performance

Andres Rodriguez of Valve's Linux GPU driver team is looking at "exclusive GPU access" support in order to boost the AMDGPU+RADV SteamVR performance...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-Ex-GPU-Access-RFC

[Shevchen]

Isn't mesa taking over AMDGPU and hasn't Steam OS swichted to mesa lately? Am I missing something here?

[starshipeleven]

Isn't mesa taking over AMDGPU and hasn't Steam OS swichted to mesa lately? Am I missing something here?

AMDGPU is the kernel component, AMDGPU+Mesa (radeonsi) is taking over the AMDGPU-PRO which is the closed driver (that has a modified AMDGPU + proprietary userspace).

[Shevchen]

Ah, gotcha. I'm still getting confused by all those terms. -.-"

[microcode]

I've always thought it would make a lot of sense for games to effectively just be drm_master (minus some things which could make it hard to recover or switch out). No interference from the windowing whatsoever, basically like game consoles.

[FishPls]

I've always thought it would make a lot of sense for games to effectively just be DRM_MASTER (minus some things which could make it hard to recover or switch out). No interference from the windowing whatsoever, basically like game consoles.

That should definitely be a toggleable option, many people perform multitasking while gaming and thus would like to spread the GPU resources accordingly across all programs.

[microcode]

That should definitely be a toggleable option, many people perform multitasking while gaming and thus would like to spread the GPU resources accordingly across all programs.

Fair enough, though I think it makes a lot of sense for VR scenarios, where you're unlikely to have a comfortable VR desktop of any sort which can coexist with your VR application or game.

[FishPls]

Fair enough, though I think it makes a lot of sense for VR scenarios, where you're unlikely to have a comfortable VR desktop of any sort which can coexist with your VR application or game.

Yeah, completely agreed for VR.

[Holograph]

I just hope this isn't going to cause instability with alt tabbing and such, especially when I occasionally do so 2 or 3 or more times in a row (happens sometimes if I select the wrong application). Like if I'm in a fullscreen game and it's got exclusive GPU access, then I alt tab out to check a web browser or something, then almost immediately alt tab back into the game. I hope the new code isn't going to have issues with a scenario like that.

[profoundWHALE]

I've always thought it would make a lot of sense for games to effectively just be drm_master (minus some things which could make it hard to recover or switch out). No interference from the windowing whatsoever, basically like game consoles.

Modern game consoles work almost like two OS controlled by a hypervisor design. When you open the in-game steam menu it functions much like that, except that in a console, there is generally no stuttering or performance loss associated with it, but I think that's because devs code the game to run at a particular resolution with a particular frame rate with particular quality settings under the assumption that it will be able to use 80-90% of the overall hardware. On top of that PC has only just recently gotten the frame-rate limiting abilities, but doesn't (to my knowledge) do anything beyond process priority. With the consoles, the UI (IIRC) gets about 1-2 cores out of 8 cores allocated. I think they have a similar allocation on the GPU, but I don't really understand how.