Re: [PATCH] Workaround for flicker with panning on the i830

[Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch>]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2013 at 04:25:01PM +0100, Thomas Richter wrote:
> Hi Daniel, dear intel-experts,
> 
> please find a revised patch attached that addresses the flicker with
> panning on the i830 chipset. This patch has now been tested
> on various screen layouts and seems to be quite reliable, i.e. I
> haven't seen the flicker since.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a good workaround for
> the same problem on a tiled framebuffer, the pattern there, i.e.
> when
> the flicker appears, is quite irregular, and it is unclear how to
> address it. The situation is even worse for 8bit/pixel framebuffers
> where,
> for some panning positions, the display remains completely blank. It
> flickers once or twice, then gets a hick-up, and then stays off.
> 
> The patch is currently only active on the i830, and only on
> pipelines using the VGA or DVO output. Strangely enough, LVDS does
> not
> seem to be affected, so maybe it is some memory/prefetch related
> problem. I also checked the debug output, though I found no
> suspicious activity while the screen flickers or is off. For a
> linear framebuffer, it seems to be enough to position the start of
> the
> pipeline ahead of the desired position, wait one vertical blank, and
> then adjust it to the correct position. For tiling or 8bit modes,
> this does not work.
> 
> Sorry if the formatting is off. This is just what emacs left me
> with. Please feel free to reformat as you prefer.

Kernel has a tool in scripts/checkpatch.pl which will tell you what's all
off ;-) Also sob line and similar essential things are missing, but the
script should notice this all.

Also I think it'd be good to extract this hack into a little helper
function, maybe called i830_plane_panning_hack or so. That way it's out of
the normal code flow and clearly marked as something exceptionel.

> As a related question: Is there possibly a command line tool that
> would allow me to modify the intel chipset registers on the fly
> without going through a kernel recompile? It would make some
> experiments just so much simpler.

intel-gpu-tools has intel_reg_read/write tools. That should help ;-)

Cheers, Daniel
> 
> Greetings,
>     Thomas
> 

> diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
> index e5eb11d..e98298f 100644
> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
> @@ -2087,8 +2087,44 @@ static int i9xx_update_plane(struct drm_crtc *crtc, struct drm_framebuffer *fb,
>  				     i915_gem_obj_ggtt_offset(obj) + intel_crtc->dspaddr_offset);
>  		I915_WRITE(DSPTILEOFF(plane), (y << 16) | x);
>  		I915_WRITE(DSPLINOFF(plane), linear_offset);
> -	} else
> -		I915_WRITE(DSPADDR(plane), i915_gem_obj_ggtt_offset(obj) + linear_offset);
> +	} else if (INTEL_INFO(dev)->gen == 2 && IS_I830(dev) && !intel_pipe_has_type(crtc, INTEL_OUTPUT_LVDS)) {
> +	  unsigned long planeadr = i915_gem_obj_ggtt_offset(obj) + linear_offset;
> +	  DRM_DEBUG_KMS("Plane address is 0x%lx",planeadr);
> +	  // I830 panning flicker work around. Only for non-LVDS output, only for i830.
> +	  if (obj->tiling_mode != I915_TILING_NONE) {
> +	    if ((planeadr & 0x40)) {
> +	      DRM_DEBUG_KMS("Detected potential flicker in tiling mode");
> +	      DRM_DEBUG_KMS("No workaround available");
> +	      DRM_DEBUG_KMS("Use a linear frame buffer");
> +	    }
> +	  } else {
> +	    switch (fb->pixel_format) {
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_XRGB1555:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_ARGB1555:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_RGB565:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_XRGB8888:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_ARGB8888:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_XBGR8888:
> +	    case DRM_FORMAT_ABGR8888:
> +	      {
> +		unsigned long int oldadr = I915_READ(DSPADDR(plane));
> +		if (((oldadr ^ planeadr) & 0x40) && (planeadr & 0xc0) == 0xc0) {
> +		  DRM_DEBUG_KMS("Detected potential flicker in linear mode");
> +		  I915_WRITE(DSPADDR(plane), planeadr & (~(0x80)));
> +		  POSTING_READ(reg);
> +		  intel_wait_for_vblank(dev,intel_crtc->pipe);
> +		}
> +	      }
> +	      break;
> +	    default:
> +	      DRM_DEBUG_KMS("No flicker workaround available\n");
> +	      break;
> +	    }
> +	  }
> +	  I915_WRITE(DSPADDR(plane), planeadr);
> +	} else {
> +	  I915_WRITE(DSPADDR(plane), i915_gem_obj_ggtt_offset(obj) + linear_offset);
> +	}
>  	POSTING_READ(reg);
>  
>  	return 0;


-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch