[RFC PATCH 0/4] hw/display/virtio-gpu: Introducing asynchronous guest display render

[dongwon.kim@intel.com]

From: Dongwon Kim <dongwon.kim@intel.com>

Introducing new virtio-gpu param, 'render_sync' when guest scanout blob
is used (blob=true). The new param is used to specify when to start
rendering a guest scanout frame.

By default (and so far) rendering of the guest frame is started in
the draw event to make sure guest display update is sychronized with
host's vsync. But this method inevitably brings some extra wait because
most of time, the draw event is not happening right after the guest
scanout frame is flushed.

This delay often makes the guest stuck at certain frame for too long and
causes general performance degradation of graphic workloads on the guest's
side especially when the display update rate is high. This unwanted perf
drop can be reduced if the guest scanout frame is rendered as soon as it is
flushed through 'VIRTIO_GPU_CMD_RESOURCE_FLUSH' msg. The gl display
pipeline can be unblocked a lot earlier in this case so that guest can
move to the next display frame right away.

However, this "asynchrounous" render mode may cause some waste of resources
as the guest could produce more frames than what are actually displayed
on the host display. This is similar as running rendering apps with no vblank
or vsync option. This is why this feature should stay as optional.

The param 'render_sync' is set to 'true' by default and this is in line
with traditional way while setting it to 'false' is basically enabling
this asynchronouse mode.

Dongwon Kim (4):
  hw/display/virtio-gpu: Introducing render_sync param
  ui/egl-helpers: Consolidates create-sync and create-fence
  ui/gtk-egl: Start rendering of guest blob scanout if render_sync is
    off
  ui/gtk-gl-draw: Start rendering of guest blob scanout if render_sync
    is off

 include/hw/virtio/virtio-gpu.h  |  3 ++
 include/ui/dmabuf.h             |  4 +-
 include/ui/egl-helpers.h        |  3 +-
 hw/display/vhost-user-gpu.c     |  3 +-
 hw/display/virtio-gpu-udmabuf.c |  3 +-
 hw/display/virtio-gpu.c         |  2 +
 hw/vfio/display.c               |  3 +-
 ui/dbus-listener.c              |  2 +-
 ui/dmabuf.c                     | 11 +++-
 ui/egl-helpers.c                | 27 ++++------
 ui/gtk-egl.c                    | 93 ++++++++++++++++++---------------
 ui/gtk-gl-area.c                | 90 +++++++++++++++++++------------
 12 files changed, 146 insertions(+), 98 deletions(-)

-- 
2.34.1