observations with git X server intel/MTRR/performance

[Eric Anholt]

On Thu, 2008-11-06 at 14:03 +0100, Tobias Hain wrote:
> Hello,
> Problem 2: MTRR not being set on intel
> ==========
> 
> My stock 8.10 system adds reg03 to the MTRR regions when launching x-server
> with stock intel 2.4.2 drivers:
> 
> reg00: base=0x000000000 (    0MB), size= 2048MB, count=1: write-back
> reg01: base=0x07f800000 ( 2040MB), size=    8MB, count=1: uncachable
> reg02: base=0x07f700000 ( 2039MB), size=    1MB, count=1: uncachable
> reg03: base=0x0e0000000 ( 3584MB), size=  256MB, count=1: write-combining
> 
> However if I launch the self build git x server stack reg03 is missing and
> only reg00-reg02 being set. Instead I get so error messages in dmesg such
> as:
> 
> [  209.308956] mtrr: base(0xe0000000) is not aligned on a size(0x770000)
> boundary
> [  211.173759] mtrr: no MTRR for e0000000,770000 found
> 
> And on every exit of the x session:
> waiting for X server to shut down error setting MTRR (base = 0xe0000000,
> size = 0x10000000, type = 1) Invalid argument (22)
> 
> and dmesg gets
> mtrr: no MTRR for e0000000,10000000 found
> 
> The intel driver tries to delete the MTRR, but for some reason it failed to
> set it up when launching the X driver. Xorg.0.log doesn't reveal anything
> suspicious. It does that behaviour with a PAT kernel as well as the old
> fashioned MTRR kernel.
> 
> Again: I can fix that manually by writing the appropriate data to
> /proc/mtrr. But how to properly fix that? Who exactly is supposed to set up
> the MTRR registers? libdrm_intel.so? intel_drv.so? Can't be a privilege
> problem sind Xorg is owned by root and +s bit set (see above). Which
> interface does the intel component use to set the mtrr? A kernel API or
> /proc/mtrr?

Getting working MTRRs has been getting harder and harder over time.  So
we're trying to make things work without them.

Things that use libpciaccess (the X Server) should be getting correct wc
mappings thanks to using the resource_wc sysfs file.  If you update your
kernel, the kernel also gets wc mappings using the new io_map_atomic
interfaces.  So at that point, the MTRR shouldn't be necessary.

-- 
Eric Anholt
eric at anholt.net                         eric.anholt at intel.com


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