[Mesa-dev] [PATCH] i965: Disable guardband clipping on SNB unless workaround is present.

[Kenneth Graunke]

On 10/07/2012 06:06 PM, Paul Berry wrote:
> On 7 October 2012 15:38, Kenneth Graunke <kenneth at whitecape.org
> <mailto:kenneth at whitecape.org>> wrote:
>
>     On 10/07/2012 02:40 PM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>
>         On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 05:08:04PM -0700, Kenneth Graunke wrote:
>
>             According to internal bug reports, guardband clipping sometimes
>             incorrectly discards triangles unless bit 5 of 3D_CHICKEN3
>             ("SF Disable
>             fastclip optimization when culled") is set.
>
>             Experimentally, this appears to be true.  With guardband
>             clipping
>             enabled, Dante randomly loses triangles unless bit 5 is set.
>
>             The BSpec indicates that the default value of the register
>             is supposed
>             to be 0x20 (just bit 5), but on my Lenovo X220 it appears to
>             be 0.
>
>             Daniel attempted to implement the workaround via a kernel
>             patch named
>                  drm/i915: implement w/a for incorrect guarband clipping
>             but unfortunately, the write isn't taking effect for some
>             reason.
>
>             Fixes clipping issues in Dante.
>
>             Bugzilla:
>             https://bugs.freedesktop.org/__show_bug.cgi?id=53946
>             <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53946>
>             Bugzilla:
>             https://bugs.freedesktop.org/__show_bug.cgi?id=55523
>             <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55523>
>             Cc: Oliver McFadden <oliver.mcfadden at linux.intel.__com
>             <mailto:oliver.mcfadden at linux.intel.com>>
>             Cc: nkalkhof at web.de <mailto:nkalkhof at web.de>
>             Cc: Eric Anholt <eric at anholt.net <mailto:eric at anholt.net>>
>             Signed-off-by: Kenneth Graunke <kenneth at whitecape.org
>             <mailto:kenneth at whitecape.org>>
>
>
>         Does this really work as advertised?
>
>         The reg_read_ioctl is brand-new, only merged into 3.7. And it has a
>         whitelist of registers that userspace is allowed to read, and
>         CHICKEN_3 is
>         not on it.
>         -Daniel
>
>
>     Oh.  Damn.  I neglected to check that it ever returned success.
>
>     The fact that it's new is fine, as the fix is newer.  If the ioctl
>     didn't exist, it would simply turn off guardband clipping.
>
>     But you're right, since we can't read 3D_CHICKEN3, we'd just turn it
>     off unilaterally.  That sucks.
>
>     I'm not sure what to do then.
>
>
> Can we make a kernel patch that adds 3D_CHICKEN3 to the whitelist?  That
> would at least allow guardband clipping to work with future kernels.

That would definitely work.  It's a bit ironic though: assuming the 
kernel fix to apply the workaround went in before the whitelist change, 
we wouldn't even need to check the value returned.  We could simply 
check whether drm_intel_reg_read returned -EINVAL or 0, as the mere 
ability to read the register would prove that the kernel was new enough 
that we could safely use guardband clipping.  (One could argue that we 
*should* check the value to guard against future kernel bugs, but...)

What do you think, Daniel?  Should we whitelist 3D_CHICKEN3 and check 
for bit 5 in Mesa?  Do you have a better idea?