Panfrost for Bifrost GPUs - Big improvements

[Strit]

@TheMojoMan

‘meson-sm1-sei610.dtb

This DTB is in our kernel, so you should be able to use your custom one with our kernel aswell.

[TheMojoMan]

@Strit

I’m using KDE Plasma 5.20.2 with SDDM as my display-manager.
Enabling Panfrost results in fonts being misrendered in SDDM.
When logging into X11, Kwin crashes immediately.
When logging into Wayland session, it’s just a black screen, with hot corners and a mouse cursor. So I assume plasmashell crashes in this case.

It’s about a week ago I last had a sneak into the Panfrost dev IRC channel and then they were talking about that further work for G52 still has to be done because it adds some new stuff to the table. At that time they were focusing on G31 and general fixes.

@Strit

But, by disabling 3d acceleration in Plasma (with QT_QUICK_RENDERER=software in /etc/environment) I get my working desktop back. Sure it’s not hardware accelereted, but apps seem to be, as in my Element client was suddenly smooth.

Sounds great!

[TheMojoMan]

@Strit

@TheMojoMan

‘meson-sm1-sei610.dtb

This DTB is in our kernel, so you should be able to use your custom one with our kernel aswell.

Thanks for the info! Next I will try to switch to linux package and unstable branch then …

And: It’s time for me to buy you some coffee Thank you so much for your work, dedication and support!

[TheMojoMan]

@spikerguy

Kodi might do ui over hw but not video playback.

superpowter77 at Odroid N2 forum reports: ‘Video playback is currently rock solid.’
I think they are talking about gbm version of kodi that is in the repo at http://archlinuxdroid.tk/archlinuxdroid/aarch64

[SickOS]

Thanks a lot. It’s like mine, but I have and error on the L2 line. I think now this is why the driver is missing in my box.

[TheMojoMan]

I have installed linux package this morning (which automatically uninstalled linux-vim) and after restart my box did not boot anymore with my ‘meson-sm1-sei610-2.dtb’ (same problem with the other ‘meson-sm1-___.dtb’ files).

BUT IT DOES START with ‘meson-g12a-sei510.dtb’!!!
Although I do not have working ethernet and sound with this .dtb, fortunately my old Realtek USB Wifi dongle works out of the box. So I am back in business

I am now still using stable branch with 5.9.1-3-MANJARO-ARM kernel, mesa-arm-git package and XFCE and here comes the good news:

• The System does not crash anymore!
• All the games I have installed from the archlinuxdroid.tk repo (Supertuxkart, Retux, OpenArena and Cendric) are working perfectly (with some minor graphical glitches in Supertuxkart)!
• [Edit: Cendric seems to be broken now but it worked yesterday]

Unbelievable! Again, thank you guys so much for your work on Manjaro ARM and much love to the developers of the Panfrost driver!!!

I am gonna check for performance of kodi/video playback next.

[Strit]

@TheMojoMan

fter restart my box did not boot anymore with my ‘meson-sm1-sei610-2.dtb’ (same problem with the other ‘meson-sm1-___.dtb’ files).

BUT IT DOES START with ‘meson-g12a-sei510.dtb’!!!

I wonder why though. But glad it’s working.

@TheMojoMan

I am now still using stable branch with 5.9.1-3-MANJARO-ARM kernel, mesa-arm-git package and XFCE and here comes the good news:

If you want to be more “on the edge” you can switch to testing or unstable branch and installed our mesa-git package.

@TheMojoMan

I am gonna check for performance of kodi/video playback next.

Panfrost has nothing to do with video decoding btw.

[TheMojoMan]

@Strit

I wonder why though. But glad it’s working.

Me too!

@Strit

f you want to be more “on the edge” you can switch to testing or unstable branch and installed our mesa-git package.

I’m planning to join the ‘unstable club’ soon. But I think I might first try to hack my .dtb file to get ethernet and sound working.

@Strit

Panfrost has nothing to do with video decoding btw.

Ah, O.K.! But MESA does, right?
Panfrost is for OpenGL 3D graphics acc. (and maybe Vulkan in the future) on Mali GPUs.

[Strit]

@TheMojoMan

Ah, O.K.! But MESA does, right?

Not really. It’s usually the kernel video driver, like hantro/rkdec/vdec and then ffmpeg and the media players.

[TheMojoMan]

Thanks for the information! I learn something new every day.

It seems that I must have been mistaken because of talk in the ‘Odroid N2 Panfrost’ thread about hardware accelerated video decoding which I misunderstood to be related to panfrost.

[spikerguy]

Yes odroid n2 post in their forum is using arm blob gpu and vpu drivers and not panfrost and amlvpu which mesa and kernel developers are working on.

It is good to see you helping Manjaro team in testing different hardwares while also helping other manjaro users with their device support.

Much appreciated.
I will test on my vim3l soon.

[TheMojoMan]

@spikerguy

Yes odroid n2 post in their forum is using arm blob gpu and vpu drivers and not panfrost and amlvpu which mesa and kernel developers are working on.

O.K. I must have missed this because they talked about accelerated video playback in the ‘Panfrost Status on Odroid N2’ thread. Thanks for clearing this up.

@spikerguy

It is good to see you helping Manjaro team in testing different hardwares while also helping other manjaro users with their device support.

Much appreciated.

Thank you so much for these kind words!

@spikerguy

I will test on my vim3l soon.

That’s gonna be an interesting comparison. Should more or less perform the same due to Mali G31 and I guess that the S905D3 is not too different to the S905X3.

[TheMojoMan]

I am on the unstable branch now with 5.9.6-1-MANJARO-ARM kernel and mesa-git package. So far, everythings is up and running and stable. I am typing this using my TV box.

While supertuxkart works perfectly, Cendric and Retux do not start up and OpenArena loads but then has massive problems because only the left top quarter of the screen is rendered. Cross-checked with ‘mesa-arm-git’ package from archlinuxdroid.tk repo but same problems here. So there still seem to be some glitches between mesa and new kernel.

Anyway, I think that we just have to wait a little longer before everything matures and is more suitable for daily use. All in all it’s a big step forward!

[Strit]

@TheMojoMan

While supertuxkart works perfectly, Cendric and Retux do not start up and OpenArena loads but then has massive problems because only the left top quarter of the screen is rendered.

Today I have built an tried OpenArena, Xonotic and SuperTuxKart. Xonotic doesn’t launch at all, but the others launch and play just fine, except for a few graphical glitches in SuperTuxKart.

[TheMojoMan]

@Strit

Today I have built an tried OpenArena, Xonotic and SuperTuxKart. Xonotic doesn’t launch at all, but the others launch and play just fine, except for a few graphical glitches in SuperTuxKart.

Great news!

I’m going to install KDE Plasma as well tomorrow and have a look if the archlinuxdroid.tk version of OpenArena will work on my machine with KDE (just for testing - I am actually not really into shooter games).

I guess you will add your build of OpenArena to the official repo as well (if you did not already do so; I’m currently on my iPad so cannot easily check for that)?

[Strit]

@TheMojoMan

I guess you will add your build of OpenArena to the official repo as well

No. Adding games to the repo, will make it grow rapidly and out of control in no time. But I did make a custom repo for the games.

Unofficial games repository

For reasons we can only speculate about, Arch Linux ARM does not really have any games in their repository. And by extension, neither does Manjaro ARM. I don’t want to make our repository go to enourmous size (the games are often 500+ MB each), so I have created a separate repository, just for aarch64 based games. To add this repository on Manjaro ARM all you have to do is this: Add this to your /etc/pacman.conf file: [manjaro-arm-games] Server = https://www.strits.dk/files/manjaro-arm-gam…

[TheMojoMan]

@Strit

No. Adding games to the repo, will make it grow rapidly and out of control in no time. But I did make a custom repo for the games.

Thanks for creating the games repo and the information about it!

[SickOS]

Playing with dtbs has no result for my box, but I’ve realized that in manjaro 20.06 panfrost was up and that updating from kernel 5.7 to 5.9 killed my gpu. Future with 5.10 will be hard also because I don’t expect my dtb working there.

[TheMojoMan]

What box are you using?

[SickOS]

A95x F2 that boots with meson-g12a-u200. dtb and vim3 image.