Ubuntu Decides To Turn On Intel SNA

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Decides To Turn On Intel SNA

If you are an Ubuntu Linux user and rely upon Intel integrated graphics, Ubuntu developers could use your help in trying out Intel's SNA as they decide whether to enable this experimental acceleration architecture in Ubuntu 13.04...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI3Nzk

[ChrisXY]

And just like that amd will have to make powerxpress work with sna, because they officially support ubuntu. Nice.

[mdias]

And just like that amd will have to make powerxpress work with sna, because they officially support ubuntu. Nice.

I don't get it. What does enabling SNA by default on xf86-video-intel has to do with AMD?

[bridgman]

I think ChrisXY is talking about hybrid graphics systems with an Intel IGP and AMD dGPU.

[mdias]

Ahh, I see. Thank you for clarifying.

[ChrisXY]

Yes, powerxpress is the hybrid graphics. And as I learned today, X will not even start with the powerxpress settings set to use the amd card for rendering if the intel driver uses sna.

And I think AMD would want to keep hybrid graphics working in the default settings.

[tmpdir]

Just Enabled SNA on ubuntu 12.10 with a 3.8RC4 kernel. My old 965GM GPU, seems stable but with some small artifacts when refressing texts on places like the tabs in chromium. This seems like a good reason the buy a new laptop >

I'll check if this is reported before, anyone else getting artifacts with SNA enabled?

[ChrisXY]

With multiple monitors and chrome/chromium I often get artifacts on an unrelated screen when doing something with tabs, if using sna. With uxa it's ok. Sometimes the whole content of the chromium window is rendered on the wrong screen until I scroll a bit or something like that. On Ivy Bridge.

[Linuxhippy]

Please report your issues at the freedesktop bugzilla, Chris Wilson (the main SNA developer) is always extremly responsive to bug-reports.
I submitted somewhere between 10-20 (and sometimes those were real nitpicker reports) and they got fixed in next to no time.