[meta-freescale] Any hope of vblank-synchronized rendering (from vivante) on i.MX6 soon?

[Gerard Bucas]

I agree Carlos!

This is a show-stopper for applications in markets like the Digital Signage market - which could be huge for the i.MX6. The i.MX6 could be the best "media player" out there but the problems related to video playback in a browser (like Chrome/Chromium) needs to be solved wih the highest priority and at the highest level.

There seem to be TWO main issues:

1. Lack of vsync synchronized support for video playback in vivante graphics libraries. This is causing serious tearing on video playback in Chromium (which is dependent on this support in X11 or ozone-wayland). In X11 this requires support for DRI2 in the vivante GPU/graphics libraries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Infrastructure for more details.

2. More hardware acceleration support in the GPU/VPU libraries (also mostly in the domain of vivante I guess). We need a clear summary (LIST) of:
- What exactly is currently being "hardware accelerated" (latest V5.x graphics libraries were a great step forward!)
- What additional support is required in the GPU/VPU libraries to further improve performance in X11 and ozone-wayland.

In my opinion, we need to appoint a "point person" at freescale and vivante to clearly focus on raising the priority of these issues, and keep focus on them with a clearly defined roadmap (timeline) and in parallel bring this to the attention of the most senior i.MX6 product manager (and marketing people) at freescale so that they realize the significant market opportunities they are missing (eg: Digital Signage) by ignoring these issues. The i.MX6 could be the best HRML5 "playback device" (which is dependent on a browser like Chrome/Chromium and hence X11 and/or ozone-wayland) for a number of industries. Having been the CEO of Scala (www.scala.com ) for 10 years, I know the Digital Signage industry very well and it is hungrily waiting for a good ARM-based "HTML5 playback device" to replace the current options available (which require more power, generate more heat, need fans which have high maintenance problems in industrial/commercial environments, are more expensive). I am REALLY surprised that freescale (and vivante!) is not putting more focus on  this!

Let’s get everyone on board with this and start applying some serious pressure on ALL parties involved!!!

Regards

Gerard Bucas   


-----Original Message-----
From: meta-freescale-bounces at yoctoproject.org [mailto:meta-freescale-bounces at yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Carlos Rafael Giani
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 10:00 AM
To: meta-freescale at yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [meta-freescale] Any hope of vblank-synchronized rendering (from vivante) on i.MX6 soon?

Perhaps there is still time left to notify Freescale how critical this feature is for several people. Imagine tearing on huge displays for example ... this can easily become a showstopper. Freescale should consider this one of the most critical features to introduce in 3.10.31 GA.

On 09/23/2014 03:04 PM, Gerard Bucas wrote:
> Thanks Daiane - will do.
>
> When is the next such meeting and who is actually the interface with Vivante that could put some pressure on them!?
>
> DRI2 is used all over in the X11 code according to this so I think this is a critical area to solve the serious shortcomings and performance in the current X11 port on the I.MX6. See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRI2 for more details.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Gerard Bucas
> TekMagic
>
>
>
>> On 23 Sep 2014, at 07:45, Daiane Angolini <daiane.list at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 1:31 AM, Gerard Bucas <gerard.b at tekmagic.net> wrote:
>>> On X.11 and Chromium there is still "tearing" of videos played back 
>>> in Chromium (on X11). From what I have read and been told by others 
>>> this is caused by the lack of DRI2 support in the Vivante graphics 
>>> libraries (even in the latest V5.x libraries included in the latest 
>>> fsl-yocto-3.10.31-1.1.0_beta BSP).
>>>
>>> Is there any hope of Vivante implementing DRI2 soon or some other 
>>> way to implement vblank-synchronized rendering ("vsync") on the 
>>> i.MX6 so that Chrome/Chromium can playback videos without this serious "tearing" problem?
>>>
>>> How do we convince Vivante to give this a high priority!?
>> This is a interesting topic, and i think there is room for a healthy 
>> discussion in our next community meeting. Please, keep a list of 
>> issues and suggest it when the next agenda is published.
>>
>>
>> for now, let´s wait if someone else has some word on this thread.
>>
>> Daiane

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