[RFC v1 0/4] drm: Add support for DRM_CAP_DEFERRED_OUT_FENCE capability

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> > That sounds sensible to me.  Fence the virtio commands, make sure (on
> > the host side) the command completes only when the work is actually done
> > not only submitted.  Has recently been added to qemu for RESOURCE_FLUSH
> > (aka frontbuffer rendering) and doing the same for SET_SCANOUT (aka
> > pageflipping), then send vblank events to userspace on command
> > completion certainly makes sense.
> 
> Hm how does this all work? At least drm/virtio uses
> drm_atomic_helper_dirtyfb, so both DIRTYFB ioctl and atomic flips all end
> up in the same driver path for everything. Or do you just combine the
> resource_flush with the flip as needed and let the host side figure it all
> out? From a quick read of virtgpu_plane.c that seems to be the case ...

virtio_gpu_primary_plane_update() will send RESOURCE_FLUSH only for
DIRTYFB and both SET_SCANOUT + RESOURCE_FLUSH for page-flip, and I
think for the page-flip case the host (aka qemu) doesn't get the
"wait until old framebuffer is not in use any more" right yet.

So we'll need a host-side fix for that and a guest-side fix to switch
from a blocking wait on the fence to vblank events.

> Also to make this work we don't just need the fence, we need the timestamp
> (in a clock domain the guest can correct for ofc) of the host side kms
> driver flip completion. If you just have the fence then the jitter from
> going through all the layers will most likely make it unusable.

Well, there are no timestamps in the virtio-gpu protocol ...

Also I'm not sure they would be that helpful, any timing is *much* less
predictable in a virtual machine, especially in case the host machine is
loaded.

take care,
  Gerd