On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Tom Cooksey <tom.cooksey@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Rob, > > +linux-media, +linaro-mm-sig for discussion of video/camera > buffer constraints... > > >> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Tom Cooksey <tom.cooksey@xxxxxxx> >> wrote: >> >> > * It abuses flags parameter of DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB to also >> >> > allocate buffers for the GPU. Still not sure how to resolve >> >> > this as we don't use DRM for our GPU driver. >> >> >> >> any thoughts/plans about a DRM GPU driver? Ideally long term (esp. >> >> once the dma-fence stuff is in place), we'd have gpu-specific drm >> >> (gpu-only, no kms) driver, and SoC/display specific drm/kms driver, >> >> using prime/dmabuf to share between the two. >> > >> > The "extra" buffers we were allocating from armsoc DDX were really >> > being allocated through DRM/GEM so we could get an flink name >> > for them and pass a reference to them back to our GPU driver on >> > the client side. If it weren't for our need to access those >> > extra off-screen buffers with the GPU we wouldn't need to >> > allocate them with DRM at all. So, given they are really "GPU" >> > buffers, it does absolutely make sense to allocate them in a >> > different driver to the display driver. >> > >> > However, to avoid unnecessary memcpys & related cache >> > maintenance ops, we'd also like the GPU to render into buffers >> > which are scanned out by the display controller. So let's say >> > we continue using DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB to allocate scan >> > out buffers with the display's DRM driver but a custom ioctl >> > on the GPU's DRM driver to allocate non scanout, off-screen >> > buffers. Sounds great, but I don't think that really works >> > with DRI2. If we used two drivers to allocate buffers, which >> > of those drivers do we return in DRI2ConnectReply? Even if we >> > solve that somehow, GEM flink names are name-spaced to a >> > single device node (AFAIK). So when we do a DRI2GetBuffers, >> > how does the EGL in the client know which DRM device owns GEM >> > flink name "1234"? We'd need some pretty dirty hacks. >> >> You would return the name of the display driver allocating the >> buffers. On the client side you can use generic ioctls to go from >> flink -> handle -> dmabuf. So the client side would end up opening >> both the display drm device and the gpu, but without needing to know >> too much about the display. > > I think the bit I was missing was that a GEM bo for a buffer imported > using dma_buf/PRIME can still be flink'd. So the display controller's > DRM driver allocates scan-out buffers via the DUMB buffer allocate > ioctl. Those scan-out buffers than then be exported from the > dispaly's DRM driver and imported into the GPU's DRM driver using > PRIME. Once imported into the GPU's driver, we can use flink to get a > name for that buffer within the GPU DRM driver's name-space to return > to the DRI2 client. That same namespace is also what DRI2 back-buffers > are allocated from, so I think that could work... Except... > (and.. the general direction is that things will move more to just use dmabuf directly, ie. wayland or dri3) > >> > Anyway, that latter case also gets quite difficult. The "GPU" >> > DRM driver would need to know the constraints of the display >> > controller when allocating buffers intended to be scanned out. >> > For example, pl111 typically isn't behind an IOMMU and so >> > requires physically contiguous memory. We'd have to teach the >> > GPU's DRM driver about the constraints of the display HW. Not >> > exactly a clean driver model. :-( >> > >> > I'm still a little stuck on how to proceed, so any ideas >> > would greatly appreciated! My current train of thought is >> > having a kind of SoC-specific DRM driver which allocates >> > buffers for both display and GPU within a single GEM >> > namespace. That SoC-specific DRM driver could then know the >> > constraints of both the GPU and the display HW. We could then >> > use PRIME to export buffers allocated with the SoC DRM driver >> > and import them into the GPU and/or display DRM driver. >> >> Usually if the display drm driver is allocating the buffers that might >> be scanned out, it just needs to have minimal knowledge of the GPU >> (pitch alignment constraints). I don't think we need a 3rd device >> just to allocate buffers. > > While Mali can render to pretty much any buffer, there is a mild > performance improvement to be had if the buffer stride is aligned to > the AXI bus's max burst length when drawing to the buffer. I suspect the display controllers might frequently benefit if the pitch is aligned to AXI burst length too.. > So in some respects, there is a constraint on how buffers which will > be drawn to using the GPU are allocated. I don't really like the idea > of teaching the display controller DRM driver about the GPU buffer > constraints, even if they are fairly trivial like this. If the same > display HW IP is being used on several SoCs, it seems wrong somehow > to enforce those GPU constraints if some of those SoCs don't have a > GPU. Well, I suppose you could get min_pitch_alignment from devicetree, or something like this.. In the end, the easy solution is just to make the display allocate to the worst-case pitch alignment. In the early days of dma-buf discussions, we kicked around the idea of negotiating or programatically describing the constraints, but that didn't really seem like a bounded problem. > We may also then have additional constraints when sharing buffers > between the display HW and video decode or even camera ISP HW. > Programmatically describing buffer allocation constraints is very > difficult and I'm not sure you can actually do it - there's some > pretty complex constraints out there! E.g. I believe there's a > platform where Y and UV planes of the reference frame need to be in > separate DRAM banks for real-time 1080p decode, or something like > that? yes, this was discussed. This is different from pitch/format/size constraints.. it is really just a placement constraint (ie. where do the physical pages go). IIRC the conclusion was to use a dummy devices with it's own CMA pool for attaching the Y vs UV buffers. > Anyway, I guess my point is that even if we solve how to allocate > buffers which will be shared between the GPU and display HW such that > both sets of constraints are satisfied, that may not be the end of > the story. > that was part of the reason to punt this problem to userspace ;-) In practice, the kernel drivers doesn't usually know too much about the dimensions/format/etc.. that is really userspace level knowledge. There are a few exceptions when the kernel needs to know how to setup GTT/etc for tiled buffers, but normally this sort of information is up at the next level up (userspace, and drm_framebuffer in case of scanout). Userspace media frameworks like GStreamer already have a concept of format/caps negotiation. For non-display<->gpu sharing, I think this is probably where this sort of constraint negotiation should be handled. BR, -R > > Cheers, > > Tom > > > > > _______________________________________________ dri-devel mailing list dri-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
