Re: X11 performance / NVIDIA driver

From: Christopher Browne (cbbrowne_at_acm.org)
Date: 07/08/04 

Date: 8 Jul 2004 11:53:06 GMT

Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw when John Thompson <john@starfleet.os2.dhs.org> would write:
> On 2004-07-07, Timo Nentwig <tcn@spamgourmet.org> wrote:
>
>> I read that too, but I refer to 2D/desktop performance. I assume that
>> it's Microsofts sophisticated DirectX utilization what makes their UI so
>> fast, i.e. the work is done by the GPU rather than the CPU.
>
> No. With an accellerated server like nVidia's or the nv server the grunt
> work is done by the GPU just like in Windows. The speed difference may be
> due to the fact that Microsoft runs the graphics drivers in kernel space
> space rather than user space. This improves performance but at the risk
> of a driver problem being able to crash the whole kernel rather than just
> user processes.

The "kernel part" _isn't_ what would improve performance. Indeed, it
is entirely likely having it in the kernel would degrade performance
somewhat because every interaction with the graphics system requires
the context switch of crossing the threshold between user processes
and kernel mode.

No, the thing that _really degrades_ performance is that there are
performance bottlenecks resulting from questionable implementation
techniques in common graphics libraries like GTK and Qt that make it
easy for application performance to "suck." (Look at the GTK release
notes and see how often they mention performance improvements
surrounding redraws...)

People used to bash X because Netscape Navigator was so slow; the
_true_ problem was that there was plenty of blame to distribute
liberally:

 - X has its "coding challenges" that make it challenging for
   developers to write efficient code;

 - Motif has much the same, and adds in deeply entrenched
   bugs-as-features;

 - Netscape were not innocent, either; while they suffered from the
   challenges of trying to write code that worked well atop Motif,
   this provided enough distractions that Navigator had misfeatures
   leading to it being a bloated slow pig of an application.

Some idiots would, of course, attribute this _totally_ to "X not being
in the OS kernel". That's what idiots are for... Drawing stupid
conclusions not based on any actual evidence... 

-- 
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"...I'm not one  of those who think Bill Gates is  the devil. I simply
suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need
an interpreter." -- Nicholas Petreley, InfoWorld, Sept 16, 1996

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