client-side font rendering very very slow in X.org xserver 1.5.3 w/r200: massive fetches from VRAM, why?

[Michel Dänzer]

On Thu, 2009-01-29 at 23:02 +0100, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> > Are you using the same version of kde on both systems?  IIRC kde 4
> > switched to using a1 surfaces for font rendering which isn't currently
> > accelerated by EXA.  Notice the _a1 fetch below.
> I've seen quite many different reports about slow EXA which turned out
> to be caused by the A1 mask format (I haven't seen anybody using A4).
> 
> Wouldn't it be possible to re-direct A1 allocation to an A8 pixmap,
> and convert at up- and downloading?
> At least for text, where pixmaps can't be accessed anyway?

The EXA glyph cache code in the upcoming xserver 1.6 does precisely that
when possible.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer           |                http://www.vmware.com
Libre software enthusiast         |          Debian, X and DRI developer