[winswitch] Using Xpra on multi-GPU laptops

[Antoine Martin]

On 04/10/11 11:11, Eric Appleman wrote:
> Hi, I've been fiddling around with Xpra as a replacement to the
> Bumblebee Project's[1] VirtualGL backend. Bumblebee permits access to
> the Nvidia GPU on Optimus laptops. By using the X server it creates,
> we can start applications on the invisible Nvidia screen.
>
> I want Xpra to replace VirtualGL as the transport method, but I need
> the screen to display at a normal framerate.
Just out of curiosity, what makes you prefer Xpra over VirtualGL. At
first I thought VirtualGL would be a more natural fit, but.. maybe it isn't?
>
> I've included a demonstration that compares rendering through Xpra and
> without it. Feel free to drop by #bumblebee-dev on Freenode if you
> have ideas or questions.
I've looked at the video and it certainly looks interesting and
challenging for Xpra...

You haven't specified which command line options you have used or which
version of Xpra you are using (trunk?).
I would suggest you try with trunk, turn compression off, try with all 3
screen encoding options (rgb24, jpeg and png), with jpeg you may want to
try different quality settings.

It is a little bit strange how the screen updates seem a little
disjointed, but I guess that is because it is falling too far behind the
real screen?
If we can come up with a test case to reproduce this (one that does not
involve me buying a new laptop preferably!), then I am sure there are
improvements that can be made. For example, there are also some real
issues with the python networking code which make it less than
optimal... Maybe tackling those would already make a noticeable
difference. Is the refresh rate and artifacts very different from using
Xpra with Xvfb/Xdummy?
I've tried running glxgears in xpra, and although it's not super smooth,
it looks ok-ish...

I have recently added to trunk some code to rate-limit screen updates at
20ups, maybe you hit this limit?
Are you CPU bound? I don't really understand the architecture of
bumblebee, do you get a secondary X11 display which is not actually
bound to any video ports?

Cheers
Antoine


>
> Thanks.
>
> - Eric
>
> [1] https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee
>
> Example:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN8heIMqTa8
>
> 1. Start Bumblebee X server on :8
> optirun glxinfo
>
> 2.Start Xpra server
> xpra start :8
>
> 3. Attach :8 to :0, the Intel screen
> xpra attach :8
>
> 4. Start applications on Nvidia screen
> DISPLAY=:8 glxgears
>
> 5. Repeat step 4 as necessary
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