[v3,0/4] Rate-limit shadow-FB-to-console-update to screen refresh

Message

Thomas Zimmermann Dec. 5, 2019, 4:01 p.m. UTC

A full-screen memcpy() moves the console's shadow buffer to hardware; with
possibly significant runtime overhead. [1] Synchronizing the screen update
with VBLANK events can hopefully reduce the number of screen updates.

The patchset first adds vblank support to mgag200 as the problem was
initially reported for Matrox hardware.

The console's dirty worker now waits for the vblank to rate limit the
output frequency. Screen output can pile up while waiting and there's a
chance that multiple screen updates can be handled with a single memcpy().
Note that this has no effect on tearing: while the dirty worker updates
the hardware buffer, new data can still arrive in the shadow buffer. This
can create a tearing effcet, even though console output is synchronized
to vblank.

In version 2 of this patchset, fbdev emulation missed the first vblank
event because mgag200 initialized the fbdev console before the irq.
Initializing fbdev last fixes this problem. If other drivers now start
reporting a missed vblank during boot, this might be the reason.

The patchset was tested by running fbdev emulation and Gnome (X11) on
mgag200 HW.

v3:
	* fbdev: hold helper->mutex
	* fbdev: acquire DRM master so other masters cannot interfere
	* mgag200: init fbdev after irq avoids missing first vblank
	* mgag200: trigger irq at <vdisplay> + 1 matches vblank
v2:
	* remove locking from fbdev patch
	* use constants for mgag200 register names and fields
	* double-check that VLINE irq is active on mgag200
	* only signal vblank on CRTC 0 of mgag200
	* coding-style fixes

[1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2019-July/228663.html

Thomas Zimmermann (4):
  drm/mgag200: Create fbdev console after registering device
  drm/mgag200: Rename constant MGAREG_Status to MGAREG_STATUS
  drm/mgag200: Add vblank support
  drm/fb-helper: Synchronize dirty worker with vblank

 drivers/gpu/drm/drm_fb_helper.c        | 21 ++++++++++
 drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_drv.c  |  7 ++++
 drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_drv.h  |  1 +
 drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_main.c | 38 +++++++++++++++++-
 drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_mode.c | 54 ++++++++++++++++++++++----
 drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_reg.h  |  7 +++-
 6 files changed, 119 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

--
2.23.0

Comments

Sam Ravnborg Dec. 5, 2019, 5:31 p.m. UTC | #1

Hi Thomas.


On Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 05:01:38PM +0100, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> A full-screen memcpy() moves the console's shadow buffer to hardware; with
> possibly significant runtime overhead. [1] Synchronizing the screen update
> with VBLANK events can hopefully reduce the number of screen updates.
> 
> The patchset first adds vblank support to mgag200 as the problem was
> initially reported for Matrox hardware.
> 
> The console's dirty worker now waits for the vblank to rate limit the
> output frequency. Screen output can pile up while waiting and there's a
> chance that multiple screen updates can be handled with a single memcpy().
> Note that this has no effect on tearing: while the dirty worker updates
> the hardware buffer, new data can still arrive in the shadow buffer. This
> can create a tearing effcet, even though console output is synchronized
> to vblank.
> 
> In version 2 of this patchset, fbdev emulation missed the first vblank
> event because mgag200 initialized the fbdev console before the irq.
> Initializing fbdev last fixes this problem. If other drivers now start
> reporting a missed vblank during boot, this might be the reason.
> 
> The patchset was tested by running fbdev emulation and Gnome (X11) on
> mgag200 HW.
> 
> v3:
> 	* fbdev: hold helper->mutex
> 	* fbdev: acquire DRM master so other masters cannot interfere
> 	* mgag200: init fbdev after irq avoids missing first vblank
> 	* mgag200: trigger irq at <vdisplay> + 1 matches vblank
> v2:
> 	* remove locking from fbdev patch
> 	* use constants for mgag200 register names and fields
> 	* double-check that VLINE irq is active on mgag200
> 	* only signal vblank on CRTC 0 of mgag200
> 	* coding-style fixes
> 
> [1] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2019-July/228663.html
> 
> Thomas Zimmermann (4):
>   drm/mgag200: Create fbdev console after registering device
>   drm/mgag200: Rename constant MGAREG_Status to MGAREG_STATUS
>   drm/mgag200: Add vblank support
>   drm/fb-helper: Synchronize dirty worker with vblank
Whole series is:
Acked-by: Sam Ravnborg <[e-mail]>

The code all looked good, but  I am not familiar enough
with the code to say I reviewed it all.
A few nits in one patch sent in a separate mail.

	Sam