I would really appreciate on of the Intel developers taking a quick shot at answering these general question. To summarize: do you confirm bad results (typically 1 frame per second) for running remote 3D apps over the network while displaying them locally? If so, is a fix for this performance regression relative to the X Intel stack of several years ago on the agenda?
On 2011-01-19 01:01-0800 Alan W. Irwin wrote:
Three years ago on a Debian testing system that was to become Debian lenny, I made a test of running low-end 3D games (tuxracer and foobillard) on a remote box on my 100Mbit LAN while displaying them on my local Debian testing box X server with g33 chipset. The games were quite playable (in fact indistinguishable from playing the games locally if I recall correctly). Fast forward to today, when I once again tried the foobillard part of the test (I didn't bother with tuxracer) with the same local (g33) hardware but this time with Debian testing (squeeze) installed on that locally displaying box. foobillard has become completely unplayable over the network with the former smooth movement reduced to what looks like a series of snapshots with large gaps in between. The LAN network I have now is 1 gigabit as opposed to the older 100Megabit LAN network I had when the remote 3D games worked well. I can play foobillard and tuxracer just fine locally on that machine so it appears local 3D is in reasonable shape. foobillard and tuxracer are just subjective tests of whether 3D rendering works reasonably efficiently over the network, but my impression is the regression in that regard is at least one or two orders of magnitude in speed in order to reduce smooth effects to a series of snapshots. Thus, objective tests of remote 3D efficiency of the old Intel stack from three years ago versus the current one should pick up this performance regression easily. I recently bought another computer (ASUS Eee Box with 945GME chipset) that shows foobillard is unplayable over the network in the same way while local running of that game is fine on that box. I have now configured that box to be an X-terminal (a configuration I far prefer because it reduces sysadmin issues a lot). The 2D KDE desktop displays well for that configuration, but I have extreme doubts (haven't tried them yet) about whether remote 3D desktop effects will work at all considering this huge slowdown I get with remote running of foobillard over the local 1 Gigabit LAN with that X-terminal. One possibility is there may be something extra I have to do now to make remote 3D display efficient over an ssh connection. Advice in that regard would be helpful. (Currently, I just set ForwardX11 yes and ForwardAgent yes for the host in question in .ssh/config for the local computer.) But if ssh configuration is not the issue, then it appears there has been an efficiency regression for remote 3D at least for the 945GME (GMA 950) and g33 (GMA 3100) chipsets. Has anyone here found foobillard or similar low-end 3D games to be playable or 3D desktop effects to work reasonably efficiently over fast LAN networks with today's Intel graphics driver? Of course, if this really turns out to be a general regression in remote 3D display efficiency, then that regression obviously corresponds with the X stack reorganization by Intel that has occurred over the last 3 years. I expect making local 3D display efficient for that newly organized stack is still one of the top priorities for Intel developers, but I hope dealing with this efficiency regression for remote 3D (if that is what it is) is at least on the agenda. After all, with 3D desktop effects becoming more and more important and with low-end 3D games as a "would be nice", reasonably efficient X network transparency for 3D display is an important issue for those using X terminals. Let me know if there are more quantitative tests of efficiency you would like me to run between local and remote display of 3D on either the 945GME or g33 boxes. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ _______________________________________________ Intel-gfx mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx
__________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ _______________________________________________ Intel-gfx mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/intel-gfx
