[Call for testers] The i915 kernel driver as a port on FreeBSD 9.3

[Jean-Sébastien Pédron]

On 25.03.2015 09:45, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> Forgive me for being so dumb, but I don't even know what an "hardware
> context" is (any link appreciated).

Hi!

Hardware context is a feature in the i915 driver which allows GL
applications to switch their context without resubmitting it each time.
It's quite internal to the driver and the hardware; no visible changes
are expected for i915 users.

https://bwidawsk.net/blog/index.php/2013/01/i915-hardware-contexts-and-some-bits-about-batchbuffers/

This feature is required by Mesa 9.2 and later versions. That's why only
Mesa 9.1 is available on FreeBSD 9.x.

> Subject says this is for i915, but Radeon users should test this too.
> I'm confused, as I thought this driver was only for i3/i5/i7 integrated
> graphic card.

Yes, the i915 driver is only for Intel GPUs. However, the packaged
kernel module (i915kms_port.ko) depends on a new drm2 module (also
packaged as drm2_port.ko). Because of that, we also need to ship a
Radeon kernel module (radeonkms_port.ko) just to set the dependency to
drm2_port.ko instead of drm2_port.ko. Radeon firmwares are not repackaged.

Radeon owners will see no difference. But this is required for users
having both an Intel GPU and a Radeon GPU in the same computer: drm2.ko
and drm2_port.ko can't be loaded at the same time.

> In any case, I have a Radeon card on an AMD Phenom based system. Should
> I try this?

Yes, the goal is to verify that the dependency is set correctly and
nothing breaks.

> What benefits/differences should I expect?

Hopefully nothing changes.

However, the next step, getting rid of Mesa 9.1 and pushing Mesa 10.x on
all versions of FreeBSD, will greatly benefit you. Mesa 10.x is *way*
more stable and performs better than Mesa 9.x.

Sorry, the article lacks explanations...

-- 
Jean-Sébastien Pédron

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