The new gma500 driver

Display driver and X11
monnier
Posts: 42
Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:08 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by monnier »

prj wrote:
Is there some way I can tell the module manually which resolution to use?
There is no module parameter for that. Perhaps there is a way to inject modelines (xrandr?) but I haven't played with that.
Good news: I just tried "video=1600x1200" and it worked great.
I learned about this parameter recently (as part of tracking down a problem with the nouveau fb). I tried to play with the "RM" and "@<hz>" options and they work as well. OTOH the "-<bpp>" option doesn't work, or more precisely seems to be ignored, e.g. "video=1600x1200-16" still gives me a 24bpp framebuffer. See Documentation/fb/modedb.txt for a description of the format you can use for this argument.

prj
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 9:13 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by prj »

Good work! What would you say about the speed of the driver in higher resolutions? Is it still usable?

Haven't had much time to work on the SDVO support but I now have some experimental code that seems ok. Will post here when things are ready for inclusion in staging.

prj
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 9:13 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by prj »

Status update:

Just sent in patches for SDVO support on Fit-PC2, and things seems to work fine now. I get modes from all monitors I've tried with. There are some issues with higher resolutions like 1920x1080 but I'm working on fixing them.

With some luck this will end up in Linux 3.2 but it might be too late for that since it is prefered that the code lives in staging-next for a while before being merged into mainline (Fingers crossed).

cbgoodbuddy
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:51 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by cbgoodbuddy »

prj, could you give us an idea about who would stand to benefit from these new GMA500 drivers?

My sense is that the fit-pc community might gain a more maintainable, more reliable, driver that works in future versions of Ubuntu/Mint/Xorg. But from my understanding, we would probably also lose video acceleration features [*], and maybe also lose 2D acceleration, compared to the EMGD drivers. Is that a fair statement?

Thanks,
CB

[* Mind you, I never got reliable accelerated video from mplayer-vaapi anyway. ]

prj
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 9:13 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by prj »

For me personally, I'm working on this because it's fun and good learning. But also I see these devices very suitable for industry applications where 3D and video decoding isn't very useful. Some of my customers are asking for these kind of devices but I rather not support something where I cannot guarantee stability, or fix issues myself. Some customers just doesn't accept a "Sorry, it cannot be fixed".

Let's say you are manufacturing something in a dusty environment and need to be able to input data into a MIS (Management Information System), then these devices are perfect since they are fanless and very durable. They also make perfect thin clients. If you're looking for a Linux Media Center solution, IMO there are better options.

Also, in order to get 3D support and Video acceleration you need proper KMS. Will there ever be an open PowerVR userspace then we could just stick it into this driver (assuming GEM can handle it).

Been testing latest version of Ubuntu with my patches and at 1920x1200 it's still very snappy so 2D acceleration isn't something I see as required to get a good experience. Your arguments of maintainability is also important. It's nice to be able to say that this device will still work 10 years from now.

cbgoodbuddy
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:51 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by cbgoodbuddy »

OK, thanks for your thoughts.
CB

monnier
Posts: 42
Joined: Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:08 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by monnier »

cbgoodbuddy wrote:prj, could you give us an idea about who would stand to benefit from these new GMA500 drivers?
It's pretty difficult (nightmarish is closer to the truth) in my experience to install the proprietary drivers, those drivers have a reputation of being buggy, and I want to run Free Software. So the benefit is very significant. When compared to the plain vesa/fbdev driver, the benefit of working in "any" resolution and any combination of resolution and pixel depth is also very significant.

Looking forward to getting rid of my "video=..." workaround in a future version of the kernel, so thank you "prj".

prj
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue May 12, 2009 9:13 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by prj »

Looking forward to getting rid of my "video=..." workaround in a future version of the kernel, so thank you "prj".
You're welcome. All patches for properly getting video modes are in Dave Airlies drm-next so if you would like to check it out you can do a git clone on git://people.freedesktop.org/~airlied/linux and checkout drm-next.

Alan Cox reported some trouble with allocating memory for the framebuffer outside of what is initially allocated by the bios (called stolen memory) so we don't support some high resolutions (like 1920x1080, 1920x1200) since they don't fit in stolen memory. The driver silently fails when this happens. We are working on fixing this.

I've started looking into video decoding and it looks quite promising. There is a vaapi driver for PVR at http://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/pvr-driver/ so my next step is to get the kernel driver to be able to hook up to that backend. Together with overlay support and a dedicated xorg driver we might have something that can give the closed drivers a run for it's money.

jhealy
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 5:25 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by jhealy »

I just installed debian testing on my fit-pc2 with a stock 3.1 kernel and it worked perfectly.

I had to use the video=xxx trick to get the correct resolution, but hopefully that'll be fixed once a 3.2 kernel is available in wheezy.

Thanks to everyone involved, this will make maintaining my pc2's infinitely easier.

opencompany
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:41 am

Re: The new gma500 driver

Post by opencompany »

Have anyone successfully setup the new driver on a 3.0 kernel system?
Is this possible or do we need a 3.1+ kernel?

We are kinda stock with a 3.0 kernel on an Enterprise Linux system (SUSE) and are struggling getting proper 1920x1200 video support on fit-PC2.

Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks in advance :)
Kind Regards,
Kevin Peter Gade

CompuLab Nordic A/S (www.compulabnordic.dk)
Danish distributor of fit-PC and other products from CompuLab since 2008.

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