[Mesa-dev] glxgears is faster but 3D render is so slow

[Brian Paul]

On 03/21/2013 03:51 AM, jupiter wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> On 3/21/13, Brian Paul<brianp at vmware.com>  wrote:
>> On 03/20/2013 04:07 AM, jupiter wrote:
>>> Hi Brian,
>>>
>>> On 3/19/13, Brian Paul<brianp at vmware.com>   wrote:
>>>>> It is fair to say, if running llvm driver in my local machine (a
>>>>> 32-bit CentOS 6.2 without VNC connection), it was indeed faster than
>>>>> the xlib driver.
>>>>>
>>>>> Seems to me that the llvm driver broken the xlib VNC connection which
>>>>> could be caused by either I haven't configure the llvm correctly, or
>>>>> mesa llvm compile process may have bugs.
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand what you mean by "llvm driver broken the xlib VNC
>>>> connection".
>>>
>>> I have tested llvm driver in two platforms:
>>>
>>> (1) A local computer running on CentOS 6.2 which does not have
>>> hardware acceleration, but I can directly access it. The llvm driver
>>> is indeed much faster than the swrast, I could run an  application
>>> with 3D structure rotation.
>>>
>>> (2) A virtual machine running on CentOS 6.2, I have to access it via
>>> VNC. I was not able to run the 3D application, the graphic jerky and
>>> could not respond. If I changed to run swrast, the 3D application
>>> graphic could be run much smoothly and response was normal, but the 3D
>>> rotation was stopped because it was too slower to rotate the 3D
>>> structure.
>>>
>>> That was what I mean the llvm broken the xlib VNC connection. Have you
>>> tested the llvm driver in VNC connection?
>>
>> No, I haven't.  I'm really not sure what's happening in this
>> situation.  My only totally wild guess is there's competition between
>> the VNC server and Mesa for CPU time.  The llvmpipe driver is threaded
>> and creates as many threads as there are CPU cores.  You can set the
>> LP_NUM_THREADS to tell llvmpipe how many threads to use (0 for no
>> threading).  How many CPU cores do you have?
>
> The virtual machine I tested has only one CPU, but we can make it more
> cups if it helps. I'll try to set up LP_NUM_THREADS tomorrow, but I
> don't expect it caused the problem. One thing I have to address is
> that xlib swrast is running very well in VNC connection despite it is
> too slower to do 3D structure rotation. May be you can look at the
> difference between the xlib LLVM driver and xlib swrast driver.

The drivers are totally different, but underneath both they render 
into shared X images which are then copied to the on-screen window 
during glXSwapBuffers.  That code is pretty much the same.

I don't know what else would account for the difference you're seeing.


> I'll be happy to help testing or debugging llvm driver on VNC
> connection if you are going to resolve the issues seriously and if you
> can tell me the procedure and data collection you need.

I'm just way too busy right now to dig into this.  Hopefully you can 
make some progress playing with virtual CPUs and LP_NUM_THREADS.

-Brian