Hello
here is the status of the Graphics group. Latest meeting minutes can be found in
https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Graphics/Notes/2012-02-22
= Highlights =
- related to the 12.02 release the group managed to release the intended components: libmatrix, glcompbench, glmark2, glproxy. Details are in the 12.02 release highlights - https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1202/Release/Highlights
- On the Unity/Nux/Compiz front: we are discussing the way forward related to compiz-core with Ubuntu DX. There is a patch from our side, based on earlier work done while Travis was still working for GFX - in discussions this is the 'distro' or 'ifdef' patch, which is rather large and work has been going on to split it into parts.
One part introduces an API which does not affect Compiz or Unity per se. The objective is to have Unity using the new API. In doing so, Unity will be loosing its fixed function OpenGL code and it will start to use a more recent part of the OpenGL API that is more compatible with OpenGL ES (it would turn the compiz package into a compiz-gles2). This will reduce the difference in code between Unity on the desktop and Unity on ARM.
The point is this API patch won't be used right away when it is proposed. So there aren't any existing automated DX tests to exercise it in Unity immediately. This is an issue since the DX team are trying to achieve working unity-3d for 12.04 before anything else, and they are past feature freeze.
It has now been agreed to work on getting the 'distro' patch landed as soon as possible. The API patch will be worked on at a later stage.
- dmabuf plans: the points from the discussions at Connect are being collected at https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Graphics/UMM/Status, and a number of blueprints are being created and discussed to reflect the work under https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linaro-mm-sig/
- 12.03 plans: apart from the compiz and dmabuf work which was mentioned above, the group will focus on working towards glmark2 backlog items, glcompbench + glproxy.
- GFX LAVA dashboard: Alexandros has given a private demo of the dashboard to a number of people. It is clear that the tests employed are really useful in discovering regressions and issues with performance, comparing daily test-run results. The development strategy is to focus on the glmark2 benchmark first. After the glmark2 visualization is in a good state, the team will start looking into visualizing additional benchmarks. Due to the Linaro data policy there is also some polishing needed - perhaps there will be 2 versions of the dashboard with the externally available being completely compliant with the data policy.
Please note that the requirement to make a private version available under permission is proving challenging, seems we would be spending much time protecting the private dashboard view
- Finally related to prototyping around perf events (Mali): currently this is bit stuck in not getting much data across the GPUs (information is different between GPUs as well as the way to get the information is different for different GPUs), trying to solve this in a good way. Requires some driver specific modifications to generate the data correctly, we will continue piloting this.
Questions, issues please let me know.
Best regards