2D slowness in r500 radeon EXA?

[curaga]

OK, just finished. BTW, 6.10.0 would not compile with that defined. Patch for that:

diff -Naur xf86-video-ati-6.10.0/src/radeon_exa_render.c xf86-video-ati-6.10.0.fixed/src/radeon_exa_render.c
--- xf86-video-ati-6.10.0/src/radeon_exa_render.c 2009-01-06 21:36:58.000000000 +0200
+++ xf86-video-ati-6.10.0.fixed/src/radeon_exa_render.c 2009-01-21 19:55:52.000000000 +0200
@@ -539,7 +539,7 @@
return FALSE;

if (pDstPicture->format == PICT_a8 && RadeonBlendOp[op].dst_alpha)
- RADEON_FALLBACK("Can't dst alpha blend A8\n");
+ RADEON_FALLBACK(("Can't dst alpha blend A8\n"));

if (pMask)
info->accel_state->has_mask = TRUE;
@@ -847,7 +847,7 @@
return FALSE;

if (pDstPicture->format == PICT_a8 && RadeonBlendOp[op].dst_alpha)
- RADEON_FALLBACK("Can't dst alpha blend A8\n");
+ RADEON_FALLBACK(("Can't dst alpha blend A8\n"));

if (pMask)
info->accel_state->has_mask = TRUE;

[oibaf]

Running 1.5.1 currently, I'll wait till a formal release of 1.6 is out before wandering there

Trying different things from git trunks has the tendency of checking out during times when components do not work together well, or right in the middle of a commit series, etc.

Is the X server the only cause?

Note that 1.5.3 includes at least one EXA performance fix:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse...e421247acfea11

With 1.5.3 I got a nice speedup over 1.5.2:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...671/comments/6

[curaga]

Well, I wanted to give it a day's use before showing the log. Xorg.0.log was 500kb instead of the usual 25kb.

As far as I can see, the only message from that debug option repeating is:

R300CheckCompositeTexture: Unsupported picture format 0x1011000

I wonder why it says composite, since JWM does not do compositing. Anyway, in the case I missed something, here's the log uniq'd:
http://rapidshare.com/files/18764351...ebug.uniq.html

(no pastebin, for the X copy buffer seems to be too small for the log)

[agd5f]

As far as I can see, the only message from that debug option repeating is:

R300CheckCompositeTexture: Unsupported picture format 0x1011000

That's the a1 (single bit alpha) format, which EXA doesn't accelerate yet.

I wonder why it says composite, since JWM does not do compositing.

The EXA hooks for RENDER acceleration are called composite. Doesn't matter whether you are using a composting manager or not. I'm guessing JWM uses a1 for anti-aliased fonts. kde 4 did something similar and that's why it was slow. They should really be using a8 since both EXA and a lot more hardware can support a8.

[curaga]

Is support for that difficult to implement? Can it happen before 1.6 is out?

[agd5f]

Is support for that difficult to implement? Can it happen before 1.6 is out?

Not likely. Only very recent hw even supports a1 surfaces natively. I suppose you could do some tricks with color expansion on older hw, but core EXA would need a1 support first.

[curaga]

some tricks with color expansion on older hw

Is this how XAA handled it?

[agd5f]

XAA is mostly sw. It's faster in some cases because it doesn't even attempt to accelerate most things so there's no migration of data between vram and system ram (which is where you lose).

[panda84]

EXA has preformed well for me for a while now. xserver 1.5 should be fine for the most part. 1.6 mainly improves font rendering preformance. Are you using kde 4 by any chance? IIRC kde 4 uses render bits that aren't accelerated with EXA at the moment.

Mmm... this could be the cause of KDE 4 running sluggishly with radeon with EXA and running amazingly fast with vesa.

[agd5f]

Mmm... this could be the cause of KDE 4 running sluggishly with radeon with EXA and running amazingly fast with vesa.

that's exactly why. kde4 uses a1 surfaces.