Include ASPEED ast-drm 1.15.1 video driver in kernel tree

Mon Mar 3 10:16:58 UTC 2025

(cc'ing Jocelyn)

Am 03.03.25 um 09:44 schrieb 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

Great. You'll find a patch attached against the 6.13 kernel. Let me know 
if it doesn't apply.

If it applies, please run your performance test and look at the dmesg 
output. It should contain warnings about shared GEM objects. Can you 
please report some of this output?

Best regards
Thomas

>
> 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

-- 
--
Thomas Zimmermann
Graphics Driver Developer
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH
Frankenstrasse 146, 90461 Nuernberg, Germany
GF: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Boudien Moerman
HRB 36809 (AG Nuernberg)
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