Include ASPEED ast-drm 1.15.1 video driver in kernel tree

[Nicolas Baranger]

Hi Thomas

> I do have an idea what might be happening here. You are using 6.13.1, 
> right?  If I give you a patch file for this kernel, are you able to 
> apply it (with 'git am') for testing and report the kernel's logging 
> output?

Yes I'm using Linux 6.13.1 but I can also test with the latest 
linux-stable 6.13.5 or on mainline, whatever help you the best.
The only thing is I cannot go before Linux 6.13+ because it it fix DIO 
write on netfs (regression introduced in 6.10) and I'm using this 
feature for backups.

I think I should be able to patch and use 'git am' (In the worst there's 
always https://git-scm.com/docs/git-am), and I would be happy to report 
the kernel logging output

Thanks again for help

Kind regards
Nicolas Baranger

Le 2025-03-03 09:19, Thomas Zimmermann a écrit :

> Hi
> 
> Am 03.03.25 um 09:07 schrieb Nicolas Baranger: Dear Thomas
> 
> You are using NVidia's proprietary driver, right? Did you reach out to 
> them wrt this problem? Or searched their support forums, online help, 
> etc? If so, what are the results?
> Yes I'm using NVidia propriétary driver.
> Maybe I'm wrong but I did not ask their support directly because first, 
> for me it seems that there is no issue with the NVidia driver and 
> unfortunately NVidia is not as opensource mind as Linux kernel 
> community (as an example you can have a look on my last PR here 
> https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/pull/783 which had 
> not been reviewed since 3+ weeks... and without this PR, it's 
> impossible to build open or closed source NVidia drivers on mainline)

I see.

I do have an idea what might be happening here. You are using 6.13.1, 
right?  If I give you a patch file for this kernel, are you able to 
apply it (with 'git am') for testing and report the kernel's logging 
output?

Best regards
Thomas

> Second, I thought I already report it here but on my system using a 
> recent kernel and embeded ast 0.1.0 driver has a very poor rendering 
> and graphic is very slow, twinkle is high, had poor colors and it's 
> happenning even if the NVidia driver is unloaded
> The screen flickering is high too and it's like if I was using an old 
> cathode ray tube monitor (I'm using an LCD monitor which display a nice 
> and eyes confortable picture when using ast 1.15.1 driver or when 
> displaying directly the video output of the Nvidia GPU(using HDMI 
> output)).
> Third, approximately from Linux 6.10+ using the embeded ast driver I 
> have some lag when sliding a window on Gnome desktop (Xorg not Wayland) 
> and CPU is highly used (some coreS at 100%), but I do not have those 
> lag with ast 1.15.1 and CPU is less used (1 core at less than 80% max)
> For the moment, I think Linux 6.12.9 is the worst I constat
> 
> Last, I found that Linux 6.1.128 is working perfectly out of the box 
> with embeded ast 0.1.0 driver and there is a manifest lost of 
> performances with Vulkan and Nvidia prime render offload when upgrading 
> to Linux 6.2 (using same NVidia driver version, I did test those 3 
> versions  535.216.01, 550.142, and 550.144.03 with similar results).
> But in Linux 6.2, except the lost of performances, I did not constat 
> the poor rendering and twinkle on the screen nor lag when sliding a 
> window on the desktop or too high CPU usage.
> 
> So I suspect there is something else introduced between Linux 6.2 and 
> mainline which cause this behavior.
> 
> I'm continuing bissection and I'm sorry, it's not as fast as I would as 
> each tests tooks some times and I must never tell something wrong to 
> git if I don't want to restart all the work...
> 
> Thanks again for answer and help
> 
> Kind regards
> Nicolas Baranger
> 
> Le 2025-02-28 11:06, Thomas Zimmermann a écrit :
> 
> Hi
> 
> Am 11.02.25 um 19:15 schrieb Nicolas Baranger:
> 
> Dear maintener
> 
> For my own usage, I did make work the ASPEED ast-drm 1.15.1 video 
> driver on mainline kernel (6.13.0 + 6.13.1).
> 
> ASPEED video driver is availiable here:
> https://www.aspeedtech.com/file/support/Linux_DRM_1.15.1_4.tar.gz
> 
> But it only work for LTS kernel
> So I modify the DKMS package and I build a new Debian DKMS package with 
> the adapted  source.
> My patch can be find here :
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/nba-dkms/astdiff.patch
> See the README:
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/nba-dkms/README
> 
> Using this new 'ast 1.15.1' driver, performance are amazing compared to 
> the 'ast' driver include in kernel tree, specially when using a 
> discrete GPU and offloading VULKAN / 3D on it but using AST VGA card as 
> the main video card and as the main and only video output (the discrete 
> GPU is used only for offloading 3D or for cuda/opencl)
> You are using NVidia's proprietary driver, right? Did you reach out to 
> them wrt this problem? Or searched their support forums, online help, 
> etc? If so, what are the results?
> 
> Best regards
> Thomas
> 
> So to make things easier, I include the new 'ast 1.15.1' driver in 
> kernel tree as AST_NEW : linux-6.13.1-ast/drivers/gpu/drm/ast_new'
> It's working fine as you can see on this video :
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/vulcan_nvidia_prime_render_offload_on_ast_vga_card.webm 
> I upload all the work I've done here :
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/
> 
> See the global README :
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/README
> 
> and the README in nba-kernel sub-directory :
> https://xba.soartist.net/ast-drm_nba_20250211/nba-kernel/README
> 
> I'm not a developer so please let me know if I made the things the 
> right way and if this new 'ast 1.15.1' driver can be ported to 
> linux-next or linux-? ?
> If you need more explanations, do not hesitate to contact me, I would 
> be happy to help
> 
> Kind regards
> Nicolas Baranger