[Mesa-dev] Hardware assisted (VDPAU) decoding of MPEG-2 causes GPU lockup on Radeon HD6320

[Will DeBerry]

>
> well that's the very first APU generation and unfortunately nobody is
> working on that old hardware any more.
>

Agreed, definitely old hardware. Unfortunately we have 10,000 of these
things in production and they have been playing hardware accelerated mpeg2
fine until we upgraded to Ubuntu 16.04 and the new mesa package. Now to be
specific, our previous version of linux on these systems we were using an
older software stack and video acceleration pipeline but it worked
perfectly, so we know the hardware is capable.

*Old Software Stack:*

   - vlc 2.1.5
   - mesa 11.0.6
   - va-api hardware acceleration
   - libva info: VA-API version 0.38.1
   libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
   libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/va/drivers/r600_drv_video.so
   libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_35
   libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
   vainfo: VA-API version: 0.38 (libva 1.6.2)
   vainfo: Driver version: Splitted-Desktop Systems VDPAU backend for
   VA-API - 0.7.4
   vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
         VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileMPEG4Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileMPEG4AdvancedSimple    : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileH264Baseline           : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
         VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD

*New Software Stack:*

   - vlc 2.2.2
   - mesa 18.2.8-2~bpo9+1
   - vdpau hardware acceleration

The reason we had to switch to VDPAU with Ubuntu 16.04 is that we saw a
major regression with mpeg2 playback using va-api. It was capable of
playing back mpeg4 without any issues. Now that we have switched to VDPAU
however, we are seeing this GPU thread lockup bug and thus causing X and
other GUI related programs to crash and requiring a reboot to recover.

Changing out hardware for the next best thing is not an option at our scale
and we know that the hardware is capable due to past experiences. We are
just in need of assistance with someone or some party that knows that stack
a lot more than us to help dig to the core issue of the lockup or help us
get VA-API working for mpeg2 in 16.04.

So the best approach is probably to not use hardware acceleration for MPEG2
> clips in general.
>

With software decoding, the performance doesn't produce something that is
watchable. One interesting tidbit to note. During our testing we put Ubuntu
19.10 on one of these boxes and noticed that full software acceleration has
improved to the point that VA-API nor VDPAU was required for VLC to render
the mpeg2 and mpeg4 streams correctly. Is this something that could
potentially be backported to Ubuntu 16.04? I know this is a much bigger
task that the one sentence ask alludes to, but figured I'd ask anyway.

We are more than welcome to work together on this, especially since the
hardware is older and probably hard to find. Just needing to find a
solution so we can move forward on upgrading the software and on these
older hardware.

On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 7:15 AM Christian König <
ckoenig.leichtzumerken at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Will,
>
> well that's the very first APU generation and unfortunately nobody is
> working on that old hardware any more.
>
> MPEG2 is known to not be fully supported by that chipset in general. So
> the best approach is probably to not use hardware acceleration for MPEG2
> clips in general.
>
> Regards,
> Christian.
>
> Am 27.11.19 um 18:35 schrieb Will DeBerry:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I am reaching out hoping to get some assistance with resolving a bug/crash
> that we see with the GPU when using VDPAU hardware acceleration on Ubuntu
> 16.04. This is specific to the r600 drivers interacting with VDPAU when
> trying to playback certain mpeg2 content.
>
> *GPU in question per lscpi: *
> 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
> Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]
>
> We are highly invested in this GPU and would love to get this addressed as
> soon as possible and are also willing to sponsor this work if needed.
>
> *Steps to Recreate:*
>
>    1. Launch VLC with VDPAU hardware acceleration and deinterlacing
>    enabled
>    2. Play the attached piece of known bad content
>    3. Wait for GPU lockup
>
> Per dmesg, the GPU thread gets locked up within the kernel and thus breaks
> all GUI related activities until the PC is rebooted.
>
> *Mesa Version Tested:*
> 18.0.5-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
> 18.2.8-2~bpo9+1
>
> Let me know if you have any questions or are interested in discussing this
> further.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
>
> *Will DeBerry*
>
> Manager, Client Devices
>
> GetWellNetwork
>
> o: 240.482.4237 | m: 813.330.0121 | getwellnetwork.com
> <https://www.getwellnetwork.com/>
>
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>

-- 

*Will DeBerry*

Manager, Client Devices

GetWellNetwork

o: 240.482.4237 | m: 813.330.0121 | getwellnetwork.com
<https://www.getwellnetwork.com/>

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