XO-1.75 relative performance

Mon Nov 7 09:10:27 EST 2011

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 9:06 AM, Tony Anderson <tony_anderson at usa.net> wrote:
> It sounds like the XO-1.75 Sugar will not be operable on XO-1 (and possibly
> XO-1.5). I assume there is a clear commitment to continue support of Sugar
> for XO-1 and XO-1.5.

Not sure why you say this. In any case, we (Sugar Labs) plan to
continue support for XO-1 and XO-1.5 although we hope that over time
that support is in the form of GTK-3-based systems. All my tests so
far seem to suggest that things will run OK on the old hardware.

-walter

>
> Tony
>
> On 11/07/2011 03:26 AM, devel-request at lists.laptop.org wrote:
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>    1. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Peter Robinson)
>>    2. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Jon Nettleton)
>>    3. Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
>>       (Simon Schampijer)
>>    4. Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1 (Peter Robinson)
>>    5. Re: XO-1.75 relative performance (Peter Robinson)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 22:19:36 +0000
>> From: Peter Robinson<pbrobinson at gmail.com>
>> To: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettleton at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<sridhar at laptop.org.au>, Devel
>>        <devel at lists.laptop.org>
>> Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
>> Message-ID:
>>
>>  <CALeDE9PHfDegCJ=seyEecnw-MMrb=VzoLhK9ZiZOhwrfBgcfGw at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Jon Nettleton<jon.nettleton at gmail.com>
>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Jon,
>>>>
>>>> We are doing some forwards-planing with regards to the XO-1.75. Would
>>>> you be able to tell us what kind of performance we can expect from the
>>>> graphics driver that you are working on? Would it support 3D hardware
>>>> acceleration?
>>>
>>> Well yes and no. ?The graphics hardware does support 3d acceleration,
>>> however currently that is only supported via a binary driver. ?We also
>>> don't have all the documentation nor man power to write a 3d driver.
>>> The nouveau team has had 3 to 4 people working full time on a driver
>>> for almost 4 years and their driver is just getting to a stable usage
>>> point for desktop compositing.
>>
>> nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
>> without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
>>
>>> For a general idea of performance our 3d graphics hardware will run
>>> Quake3 at native 1200x900 resolution with medium quality graphics at
>>> about 30fps on average.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> We are considering working to get GNOME 3 running, but for that to
>>>> work well we'll need some good graphics capabilities.
>>>
>>> There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
>>> Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
>>> ?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
>>> time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
>>> running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
>>> clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
>>> backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
>>> changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
>>> demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
>>
>> That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
>> are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
>> totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
>> on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
>> sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
>> in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
>> llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
>>
>>> The bigger concern I have with targeting a compositing window manager
>>> is the amount of RAM that it needs. ?Every window also has a
>>> duplicated texture in memory that is used to create the composited
>>> display. ?Generally gnome-shell will use 100+MB's of RAM just to
>>> display the desktop, and there is no way to tweak around this by using
>>> 16-bit colors as everything is an ARGB texture. ?On a machine with 1GB
>>> of RAM this isn't so bad, but that is a hefty chunk of memory for a
>>> machine with 512MB's of memory. ?Oh and that is just system RAM it
>>> doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
>>> graphics engine.
>>
>> Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
>> different units?
>>
>>> To sum things up. ?Yes the hardware should have the capabilities to
>>> run gnome-shell, again I say should as it is very untested. ?I would
>>> not recommend targetting it's use in any future plans unless you have
>>> GNOME and Xorg hackers lined up to spend a good chunk of time working
>>> on it.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Gnome_shell_software_rendering
>> [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxMTI
>> [3] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAwNTg
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 17:11:50 -0800
>> From: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettleton at gmail.com>
>> To: Peter Robinson<pbrobinson at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<sridhar at laptop.org.au>, Devel
>>        <devel at lists.laptop.org>
>> Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
>> Message-ID:
>>
>>  <CALHpu37pCRRV5bRZOWw-a7ib+_OpaSDp-WyvtTx_=rCTAUGJ_A at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>>>
>>> nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
>>> without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
>>
>> What have you been using it for? Gnome-shell didn't exist back then.
>> They have been incrementally adding features but it has taken time.  I
>> have never used nouveau because there has been no power control
>> features, not something we I can do without.  I am not trying to say
>> something negative on the project, I just think it is a good barometer
>> for people to realistically grasp how long it takes to mature modern
>> graphics drivers without documentation.
>>
>>>>
>>>> There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
>>>> Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
>>>> ?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
>>>> time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
>>>> running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
>>>> clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
>>>> backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
>>>> changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
>>>> demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
>>>
>>> That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
>>> are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
>>> totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
>>> on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
>>> sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
>>> in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
>>> llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
>>
>> Is this argument for or against GNOME 3?  You point out a lot of
>> libraries that require clutter, but none that are hard dependencies of
>> GNOME.  I understand a lot of projects are dependant on clutter, but
>> none are hard dependencies of the GNOME project.
>>
>> The use of software rendering via llvm is great, but unfortunately
>> that is targeted at modern multi-core processors that have cycles to
>> spare.  This does not target at the limited resources an XO has
>> available.
>>
>>>> ?Oh and that is just system RAM it
>>>> doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
>>>> graphics engine.
>>>
>>> Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
>>> different units?
>>
>> Not that I have heard but we will see.  Regardless I don't see any
>> justification that would suggest we should target gnome-shell as a
>> desktop.
>>
>> I understand the push to proliferate GNOME, however as Linus and many
>> other GNOME expatriates have emphasized it is not the right fit for
>> everyone.   I have been a gnome-shell contributor and propenent from
>> early on, but I can' t suggest it is a good alternative for limited
>> resource computers, when it continually fails me on my quad-core
>> desktop with a top of the line video card, which I originally ran the
>> nouveau drivers on but had to switch to the binary nvidia drivers
>> because it ran the fan at 100% the entire time.
>>
>> -Jon
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:38:23 +0100
>> From: Simon Schampijer<simon at schampijer.de>
>> To: devel at lists.laptop.org
>> Subject: Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
>> Message-ID:<4EB78AEF.5010400 at schampijer.de>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> On 11/04/2011 09:45 PM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
>>>
>>> Martin,
>>> In 11.3.0 a few activities didn't include translations because of
>>> problems
>>> with packaging of the activities.
>>> Probably will be a good idea update these activities.
>>> I can prepare a list of recommended activities if you want.
>>>
>>> Gonzalo
>>
>> Are those really critical items?  I would only do the really really must
>> do changes besides any 1.75 bug fixes. Because (a) this release should
>> be only about bug fixes in my opinion and (b) preparing/testing/shipping
>> this takes time away from our new dev cycle.
>>
>> Regards,
>>     Simon
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 4
>> Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 08:09:36 +0000
>> From: Peter Robinson<pbrobinson at gmail.com>
>> To: Simon Schampijer<simon at schampijer.de>
>> Cc: devel at lists.laptop.org
>> Subject: Re: Announcing the development of OLPC OS 11.3.1
>> Message-ID:
>>
>>  <CALeDE9O5thCj7WcfUnK+aAg8KhSUecwSrh9MYONXQQDjmfpxTg at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 7:38 AM, Simon Schampijer<simon at schampijer.de>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 11/04/2011 09:45 PM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Martin,
>>>> In 11.3.0 a few activities didn't include translations because of
>>>> problems
>>>> with packaging of the activities.
>>>> Probably will be a good idea update these activities.
>>>> I can prepare a list of recommended activities if you want.
>>>>
>>>> Gonzalo
>>>
>>> Are those really critical items? ?I would only do the really really must
>>> do
>>> changes besides any 1.75 bug fixes. Because (a) this release should be
>>> only
>>> about bug fixes in my opinion and (b) preparing/testing/shipping this
>>> takes
>>> time away from our new dev cycle.
>>
>> I think translation updates should be OK but only in the form of
>> translations in a dot release of the existing version of Activities we
>> ship.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 5
>> Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2011 08:27:24 +0000
>> From: Peter Robinson<pbrobinson at gmail.com>
>> To: Jon Nettleton<jon.nettleton at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Sridhar Dhanapalan<sridhar at laptop.org.au>, Devel
>>        <devel at lists.laptop.org>
>> Subject: Re: XO-1.75 relative performance
>> Message-ID:
>>
>>  <CALeDE9Owu1ttnAaSwyGZFyk1aTc-edgECieOogG+C+WH32u8Aw at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 1:11 AM, Jon Nettleton<jon.nettleton at gmail.com>
>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> nouveau has been very usable for quite some time. I was using it
>>>> without issues back in F-12/13 timeframe without too many issues.
>>>
>>> What have you been using it for? Gnome-shell didn't exist back then.
>>> They have been incrementally adding features but it has taken time. ?I
>>> have never used nouveau because there has been no power control
>>> features, not something we I can do without. ?I am not trying to say
>>> something negative on the project, I just think it is a good barometer
>>> for people to realistically grasp how long it takes to mature modern
>>> graphics drivers without documentation.
>>
>> Actually it did! It was the first release that Fedora has it in there
>> [1] , I packaged all the dependencies [2] as I packaged Moblin 2. It
>> worked fine for the testing of Moblin although as you mention the
>> power management was limited. My point still remains it was usable a
>> lot earlier than the 3-4 years you mentioned. They've also had to
>> reverse engineer it without any form of documentation.
>>
>> The gnome team are working for a minimal subset of implemented
>> features for less capable cards so they run faster using SW rendering.
>> See some of the links I provided previously.
>>
>>>>> There should be a distinction between GNOME 3 and gnome-shell.
>>>>> Gnome-shell is the only part of GNOME 3 that requires 3D acceleration.
>>>>> ?Could our hardware run gnome-shell? ?Well that would take a bit of
>>>>> time to figure out. ?To my knowledge nobody has shown gnome-shell
>>>>> running with clutter utilizing the OpenGLES backend. ?Last I remember
>>>>> clutter didn't support texture from pixmap capabilities with their EGL
>>>>> backend, so that may still have to be implemented. ?This may have
>>>>> changed in the last couple of months by I have definitely not seen it
>>>>> demonstrated or talked about anywhere.
>>>>
>>>> That's not exactly entirely true. There's a number of other apps that
>>>> are making using of clutter through clutter-gtk, clutter-gst or MX.
>>>> totem is one of these for example. Also before long gnome is planning
>>>> on deprecating non gnome-shell based UXs and concentrating on getting
>>>> sofware rendering up to a reasonable speed. We can start testing this
>>>> in F-17 as it'll be a feature [1]. Phoronix has more details on
>>>> llvmpipe [2] and the gallium3D bits [3]
>>>
>>> Is this argument for or against GNOME 3? ?You point out a lot of
>>> libraries that require clutter, but none that are hard dependencies of
>>> GNOME. ?I understand a lot of projects are dependant on clutter, but
>>> none are hard dependencies of the GNOME project.
>>
>> No, its not an argument about gnome 3. Its to point out that
>> gnome-shell isn't the only bit of gnome-shell that uses/requires
>> 3D/OpenGL GPU functionality. totem is one of them that we use.
>>
>>> The use of software rendering via llvm is great, but unfortunately
>>> that is targeted at modern multi-core processors that have cycles to
>>> spare. ?This does not target at the limited resources an XO has
>>> available.
>>
>> I don't disagree, my point is though that this is the way the gnome
>> project is going and that its likely fallback mode will soon
>> disappear.
>>
>>>>> ?Oh and that is just system RAM it
>>>>> doesn't take into account the memory that is needed for the actual
>>>>> graphics engine.
>>>>
>>>> Aren't the production 1.75s moving to 1Gb of RAM due to pricing of the
>>>> different units?
>>>
>>> Not that I have heard but we will see. ?Regardless I don't see any
>>> justification that would suggest we should target gnome-shell as a
>>> desktop.
>>
>> I'm staying we should target gnome-shell, my point is that if we want
>> to keep using the gnome desktop in upcoming releases we might not have
>> a choice. Read the previous links and you'll actually see the details
>> of the point that I raised.
>>
>>> I understand the push to proliferate GNOME, however as Linus and many
>>> other GNOME expatriates have emphasized it is not the right fit for
>>> everyone. ? I have been a gnome-shell contributor and propenent from
>>> early on, but I can' t suggest it is a good alternative for limited
>>> resource computers, when it continually fails me on my quad-core
>>> desktop with a top of the line video card, which I originally ran the
>>> nouveau drivers on but had to switch to the binary nvidia drivers
>>> because it ran the fan at 100% the entire time.
>>
>> I'm not and have never said its the right and only desktop. On the
>> flip side I've not had many issues with gnome-shell in the F-15/16
>> timeframe and regularly will suspend/resume my laptop for weeks on end
>> without issues now. Moblin/Meego ran quite happily on my original atom
>> netbook which is of similar vintage and speed as the XO 1.5 without
>> massive issues. I have no doubt issues with some nouveau cards is
>> largely due to they are reverse engineered. The ATI and Intel GPUs
>> which have published docs don't seem to have nearly the amount of
>> issues on the NV based one.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> [1]
>> http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/source/SRPMS/gnome-shell-2.28.0-3.fc12.src.rpm
>> [2]
>> http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/source/SRPMS/mutter-2.28.0-2.fc12.src.rpm
>>
>>
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org