So the adreno libraries are officially available that means full hw acceleration on ics from our gpus
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/qualcomm-releases-adreno-2xx-gpu-binaries-for-ics/
Does the official ics beta include full hardware acceleration or will that come in the final release version
Sent from my Xperia neo using Tapatalk on ICS
well I don't know as I'm not a dev,but it seems that the hw acceleration isn't fully working with some apps and some of the ics current roms...truthfully I don't know,but the hd games won't work on ics based roms too so I think that the full hardware acceleration will come with the final release...I think it's partially working @ the moment.
Related
A lot of ROMs are starting to show up for ICS, but curiously, many of them say something like "Hardware Accelerated, but not completely." I'm rather confused by this.
What's happening? For example, I ran a test ROM for the EVO 4G that was really slick (and I could've been convinced was HW accelerated), although the dev indicated that it is not truly 2d hardware accelerated.
Additionally, I've learnt that unless a ROM shows a gradient in menus (for example, see here: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Android-4.0-ICS-11-Data-Usage-Pe1.jpg it isn't truly HW accelerated.)
Can anyone shed some light on the HW acceleration situation and what the story is?
Shidell said:
A lot of ROMs are starting to show up for ICS, but curiously, many of them say something like "Hardware Accelerated, but not completely." I'm rather confused by this.
What's happening? For example, I ran a test ROM for the EVO 4G that was really slick (and I could've been convinced was HW accelerated), although the dev indicated that it is not truly 2d hardware accelerated.
Additionally, I've learnt that unless a ROM shows a gradient in menus (for example, see here: http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Android-4.0-ICS-11-Data-Usage-Pe1.jpg it isn't truly HW accelerated.)
Can anyone shed some light on the HW acceleration situation and what the story is?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True hardware acceleration was introduced by default in Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich. It may be stated that the rom does not have true hardware acceleration or it's not working 100% yet since it is just being implemented and does not completely work yet. You may soon see ICS roms which say that hardware acceleration is now working properly, etc. It's not that the roms are not using it, it's just that the feature is not completely stable on the rom.
A lot of devices have half asses hardware acceleration with 16 bit looking colors and messed up screens where a webkit scrolling mechanism is used. others have false acceleration (unable to dequeue native buffer errors everywhere) which is like a usable hw acceleration. Others might just have random glitches.
Good replies--thanks guys.
As this phone has a working ICS port you should know that Qualcomm recently released Adreno 2xx drivers for Ice Cream Sandwich. But unfortunately the drivers released were compiled only for armv7 not armv6.
So all armv6 devices with ICS ported are having an unofficial ICS port with a hack to provide hardware acceleration.
This means our phones will never have 100% hardware acceleration in ICS and also not get OFFICIAL CM9 support as they dont allow use of any hacks or patches in their ROMS.
The ICS port on OptimusP500(which i use) is almost bugfree and we were left from getting the official support from cm9 due to this very reason.
sweetnsour has made this groubal, a petition for the Qualcomm guys to look into and thus compile the drivers from ARMv6
THIS WILL BE THE LAST CHANCE TO BREATH NEW LIFE INTO OUR ONCE AWESOME DEVICES.
I hope you guys will sign this groubal showing your support. Your one signature will definitely help us to show Qualcomm that there are many many users still using Armv6 devices..
Link : SIGN AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT HERE
Official Discussion Thread on XDA
+1
some info about maclaw and his team progress : http://galaxyics.com/news/view/29
"4. We have H/W video acceleration - smooth YouTube ;-)"
again with this? Please search before posting. This topeic was already posted three times (with yours as the third)
Its not like qualcomm care will this benefit them? No.
Sent from my GT-S5830 using xda premium
https://developer.qualcomm.com/foru...-optimization-adreno/8081?page=4#comment-6869
Check this out, today March 29th Qualcomm has released adreno graphics optimization for Armv6 devices, which takes us closer on achieving a better ICS experienced. This makes may htc legend very happy
i thought there are some libs work on x8 and optimus one.. new adreno libs? so those arent working then? just placebo?
hi,
I found out that this rom CM9 ALPHA4 based port for Legend [APR11] is NOT using hardware acceleration after browsing to the folder in which the EGL drivers are, these date from 2008...
I than went to the qualcomm site logged in and saw that the newer drivers for ICS they released are dated 2012! and are very much different from the ones that are installed currently.
Someone should contact zeubea about this!
And make this rom rock!
walter2305 said:
hi,
I found out that this rom CM9 ALPHA4 based port for Legend [APR11] is NOT using hardware acceleration after browsing to the folder in which the EGL drivers are, these date from 2008...
I than went to the qualcomm site logged in and saw that the newer drivers for ICS they released are dated 2012! and are very much different from the ones that are installed currently.
Someone should contact zeubea about this!
And make this rom rock!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure that it is not using HWA ?
Since its 3.0 version, zeubea claims HWA is working for nearly every apps (and users agreed).
In one of the many pages, I saw that he is aware of the new drivers, and actually, how could HWA works if it wasn't with those ?
There was no HWA before ICS, was it ?
Maybe the differences between the drivers you see and the ones available at Qualcomm are because of the architecture, Legend is an ARMv6 device.
maybe
bibzor said:
Are you sure that it is not using HWA ?
Since its 3.0 version, zeubea claims HWA is working for nearly every apps (and users agreed).
In one of the many pages, I saw that he is aware of the new drivers, and actually, how could HWA works if it wasn't with those ?
There was no HWA before ICS, was it ?
Maybe the differences between the drivers you see and the ones available at Qualcomm are because of the architecture, Legend is an ARMv6 device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i,ll first have to try something to make absolutly sure, i will post my findings
Your kidding me right? Have you used ANY of the builds starting from the first alphas released? Hw acceleration is most defiantly working, before hw acceleration GUI was laggy, many HQ games didn't work at all, angry birds and the like, bench mark apps 2d frame rate was only about 10-14 fps and no 3D support at all. After hw implemented all the HQ games I've tried work better than any rom I've used, 2D frame rate is hitting 50+ fps 3D is around 18 fps and IMHO this is the fastest smoothest rom available I have flashed all of them on xda. If hw acceleration wasn't implemented how can you explain how good it is?
sent from my legend, currently using zeubea ics alpha 4 :-D
walter2305 said:
hi,
I found out that this rom CM9 ALPHA4 based port for Legend [APR11] is NOT using hardware acceleration after browsing to the folder in which the EGL drivers are, these date from 2008...
I than went to the qualcomm site logged in and saw that the newer drivers for ICS they released are dated 2012! and are very much different from the ones that are installed currently.
Someone should contact zeubea about this!
And make this rom rock!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You sure you are looking at the correct folder? Ive checked /system/etc/firmware, /system/lib/egl and /system/lib/, all required driver last modified in 2012.
BTW, have you try this rom? Flash Alpha 1.0, play around couple hours, and then, try flashing Alpha4. You'll surely see lot of improvement in graphic.
A strange thing about hwa is that if you compare tests with Antutu or Quadrant on cm7.1 and CM9, you notice that the 2d score of cm7.1 is twice that of cm9 (at least on my Legend).
zeubea cm9 is smooth and in a post he said, if I remeber well, that on hwa debug info are traced, maybe this Rom experience could be also better when debug info will be no more needed
So, my question is, why do we want the 3.0 Kernel for Nook Tablet again? From what I recall, there were absolutely no changes from kernel 2.6 to 3.0, other than the naming. Only the "alpha-manliness", and the shuffle of old drivers or something along those lines.
Any Ducati stuff is provided in acclaim_update.zip isn't it?
Anyways, if someone could answer that, that'd be great.
Ok, I am not part of the dev team and I got my NT too late to have read the original reasoning behind development of a 3.0 kernel but after a bit of research I think I may have at least part of the picture.
The main reason for the development of a 3.0 kernel is to gain access to the Ducati hardware integrated into the OMAP 4430 that the NT uses. With the 2.6 kernel we can use only the dual core Cortex A9 part of the processor but if we can develop a Ducati driver it will allow use to use the Cortex M3 dual core (four cores total) for hardware video acceleration.
This is proving to be a challenge because TI will not release the source for the Ducati related kernel elements; they will only give us a binary version which is crippled for our device because it uses the wrong watchdog timer (GPtimer 11 vs GPtimer 10 which we need).
This all requires Kernel 3.0 because the binary for Ducati is built using this kernel. Aside from that, ICS is built for the 3.0 kernel branch and we should be keeping up (if not one step ahead) if possible.
That is what I've gotten so far but if any devs want to step in and correct, clarify, or add anything else, please feel free. Thanks guys for all your hard work!
Android ICS v4 was build upon kernel v3 and also the framework (api's)
It provides some elemental changes over Gingerbread like HWA of the gui so in plain words it takes the burden off the cpu and uses the gpu like Nvidia VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU
And Windows DXVA V2
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc307941(v=vs.85).aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX_Video_Acceleration
Hardware-accelerated 2D drawing
All Android-powered devices running Android 4.0 are required to support hardware-accelerated 2D drawing. Developers can take advantage of this to add great UI effects while maintaining optimal performance on high-resolution screens, even on phones. For example, developers can rely on accelerated scaling, rotation, and other 2D operations, as well as accelerated UI components such as TextureView and compositing modes such as filtering, blending, and opacity.
As everyone thinks that no changes where made on kernel transportation to v3 from 2.6, later on many arm optimizations where sync to git from different sources that help to make the v3 kernel more feature full over v2.6.
For starters,
Linaro is pushing more and more advancements to the git for v3.
Ubuntu decided to support arm hardware in Server and Userbase because of those changes.
They are putting out a Plasma tablet with Arm Cortex A9 cpu 512mb Ram with kde Plasma interface as well as pushing theirs code onto the git also.
So in the v3 kernel we see things done right.
Another proof that kernel v3 done miracles to arm is the XBMC project.
Now we have an xbmc version for arm also.
This is no coincidence at all.
An important factor to all this is that Android does not run on a stock Linux kernel. The source code for each Android release also includes a large number of Android-specific changes to the Linux kernel, including custom features and even entire subsystems. Each release of the Android OS is developed hand-in-hand with a specific kernel version and its changes, and ICS was developed around a modified 3.0.1 kernel. Using an older kernel version could potentially require work in patching newer changes into an old kernel or hacking in workarounds instead of just focusing on drivers. This is why most ROMs aren't just jumping straight to the newest Linux 3.3 either. I don't know any specifics about what changes are important though
Many drivers available from all these outside sources have been built around this same Android 3.0.1 kernel version too, so the chances of issues are much smaller if you stick to the same version
Also, to clarify about the Linux numbering: you're correct that the 3.0 version itself didn't include any big changes over 2.6.39 so as to keep the focus on simply replacing "2.6" with "3" while sticking with the same development process. However since they started the 2.6 branch many years ago they have constantly added new features, new frameworks, and all kinds of significant changes in the 2.6.X/3.X sub-versions as the code became ready. There wasn't simply a 2.6 kernel there were many 2.6 kernels, and it changed a lot over time from the initial 2.6.0 version just as it continues to evolve with each 3.X version
demetris_I said:
Android ICS v4 was build upon kernel v3 and also the framework (api's)
It provides some elemental changes over Gingerbread like HWA of the gui so in plain words it takes the burden off the cpu and uses the gpu like Nvidia VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU
And Windows DXVA V2
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc307941(v=vs.85).aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX_Video_Acceleration
Hardware-accelerated 2D drawing
All Android-powered devices running Android 4.0 are required to support hardware-accelerated 2D drawing. Developers can take advantage of this to add great UI effects while maintaining optimal performance on high-resolution screens, even on phones. For example, developers can rely on accelerated scaling, rotation, and other 2D operations, as well as accelerated UI components such as TextureView and compositing modes such as filtering, blending, and opacity.
As everyone thinks that no changes where made on kernel transportation to v3 from 2.6, later on many arm optimizations where sync to git from different sources that help to make the v3 kernel more feature full over v2.6.
For starters,
Linaro is pushing more and more advancements to the git for v3.
Ubuntu decided to support arm hardware in Server and Userbase because of those changes.
They are putting out a Plasma tablet with Arm Cortex A9 cpu 512mb Ram with kde Plasma interface as well as pushing theirs code onto the git also.
So in the v3 kernel we see things done right.
Another proof that kernel v3 done miracles to arm is the XBMC project.
Now we have an xbmc version for arm also.
This is no coincidence at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sounds good. But the nook Tablet is running Gingerbread, and it gets Ducati features. Doesn't that mean a 2.6 Kernel suffices the Ducati Susbsystem? Does moving to Kernel 3.0.x make it easier to crack Ducati? Hmm.
soshite said:
Sounds good. But the nook Tablet is running Gingerbread, and it gets Ducati features. Doesn't that mean a 2.6 Kernel suffices the Ducati Susbsystem? Does moving to Kernel 3.0.x make it easier to crack Ducati? Hmm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ducati wasn't the point because as you pointed out it already works with the original kernel, and it not working yet with this 3.0 kernel is an unfortunate side effect of the real goal.
Moving to a newer Android kernel apparently makes it much easier to get proper graphics acceleration working for apps and general user interface components. This hardware acceleration of the UI is why ICS can feel so much smoother than Honeycomb or Gingerbread. Without the proper kernel I think they have to resort to dirtier hacks into the rest of ICS to make it run properly. I'm admittedly a little fuzzy on the details though
Lets just say that moving to Kernel v3 will make full use of our hardware, something GB doesn't do right now.
boomn said:
This hardware acceleration of the UI is why ICS can feel so much smoother than Honeycomb or Gingerbread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AFAIK Honeycomb has already the UI acceleration. But I haven't had any device with HC, is ICS really much smoother then HC? I didn't think so.
Aleq said:
AFAIK Honeycomb has already the UI acceleration. But I haven't had any device with HC, is ICS really much smoother then HC? I didn't think so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The thing is, Honeycomb is really heavy on the device. Honeycomb would be slower than ICS, as it would be ported and contains more contents than ICS. ICS was made to be the faster successor to HC.
Aleq said:
AFAIK Honeycomb has already the UI acceleration. But I haven't had any device with HC, is ICS really much smoother then HC? I didn't think so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was mistaken and you are correct. However, something under the hood was definitely changed or tweaked in regards to acceleration and how it is used because ICS does feel much smoother and more responsive throughout than Honeycomb did
I searched a bit and found this helpful article. Here are the most relevant quotes:
Android 3.0 Honeycomb gave developers the ability to turn on hardware acceleration, but it wasn’t toggled by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to Romain Guy and Chet Haase (Android engineers):
“With this new pipeline, all drawing operations performed by the UI toolkit are carried out using the GPU. You’ll be happy to hear that Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, brings an improved version of the hardware-accelerated 2D rendering pipeline to phones, starting with Galaxy Nexus. In Android 4.0 (API level 14), hardware acceleration, for the first time, is on by default for all applications.”
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I love trying out all the new ICS and JB ROMs on my x10 (which isn't my primary phone) but because of the low frame rate it seems very laggy (probably seems laggier than it actually is)
On the GB ROMs the frame limit was unlocked to 60fps and everything seemed so much more responsive and fluid, is there any way to do this on any of the CM9/CM10 ROMs?
Are we talking FPS in gaming or are we talking about FPS in videos..or are we talking about both?
Or are we talking screen display and scrolling reaction time?
Videos.
FPS2D returns 54FPS on stock GB 2.3.3
FPS2D returns 43FPS on JB 4.1.2 CM10
My understanding is that anything that is not using a standard GB 2.3.3 ROM will not be able to use GPU 2D Hardware Acceleration.
2D HW Acceleration for the XPERIA X10i is not included in any CyanogenMod Build and I don't know off any other ICS of JB build that has HW acceleration enabled for the XPERIA X10i.
This means outside of the stock GB 2.3.3 ROM playing a .mkv 720p (H264,AC3) video would be worse in JB and ICS than on stock GB 2.3.3
A JB and ICS build uses the CPU to provide the video encoding only and does not solicit the GPU to offload processing to speed up performance/viewing/smoothness/lag.
Gaming
Now this one is less clear(to me).
If I use the Game demo of Epic Citadel as a Benchmark we see the following:
Stock GB 2.3.3 - Epic Citadel: 11.2FPS on performance
CM10 JB 4.1.2 - Epic Citadel: 11FPS on performance
So there is nothing in it.
Some gaming engines can make use of Adreno 200 GPU hardware features like hardware floating point and etc, but it's not clear if they do or not.
I can play Modern Combat 4 on my GB 2.3.3 (DoomKernel v6) XPERIA X10i. For me there is noticeable lag at points, but still very playable if you're not planning to upgrade to a new phone (XPERIA V) any time soon.
I have not attempted to play MC4 on JB or ICS XPERIA X10i ROM.
Note - MC4 plays a little bit better on an XPERIA LT26i with Overclocked CPU and Overclocked GPU though.
Summary
My understanding is that there is no GPU HW features available on any XPERIA X10i ROM for the Adreno 200 GPU outside of the Stock GB 2.3.3 ROM.