[winswitch] NVENC and xpra

[...]

Hello,

I answered my own question faster than expected.  I have an optimus enabled
laptop and run bumblebee to access my nvidia GPU.  I successfully ran two
accelerated instances of glxspheres through xpra on my local machine.  I'll
try this over a network with a thin client tomorrow.

As far as patching up the data bouncing back and forth between GPU and CPU
for render and NVENC, I think I know someone who would be able to provide
sufficient demand for this.  Would a donation to the project cause this
issue to get fixed?  Do you have a rough idea of what it would take?

Thanks for the great work,
Elliot

===================

Exactly what I did is this:

on server:
>xpra start :100
>xpra start :110
>DISPLAY=:100 optirun glxspheres
>DISPLAY=:110 optirun glxgears

On client (another terminal on same laptop):
>xpra attach :100

on another terminal:
>xpra attach :110

glxspheres ran at 80-90 fps instead of 120 with two instances going, but
one running through xpra was just as fast as no xpra.





On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 3:29 PM, ... <offonoffoffonoff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Antoine,
>
> Great information.  Thank you!
>
> So, VirtualGL would theoretically work for multiple users per card
> (multiple applications on multiple displays)?
>
> My intention is to be serving modern video games, like Minecraft, League
> of Legends, etc.  I guess I would have to look into if openGL acceleration
> is all that is needed.
>
> I look forward to trying out the virtualGL with my simple setup, and
> working towards getting having a need for NVENC.
>
> -Elliot
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Antoine Martin <antoine at nagafix.co.uk>wrote:
>
>> On 11/12/13 06:18, ... wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I had some questions about NVENC.  Sorry if this information is
>> somewhere
>> > already and I didn't find it.
>> I assume you've already read:
>> http://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Encodings/nvenc
>> > Can xpra use a kepler enabled nvidia card to both render graphics
>> (hardware
>> > accelerated) and h264 encode them before shipping them off to another
>> > display across the network?
>> According to Nvidia:
>>
>> https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/cuda/files/CUDADownloads/NVENC_AppNote.pdf
>> "NVIDIA's latest generation of GPUs based on the Kepler architecture,
>> contain a
>> hardware-based H.264 video encoder (henceforth referred to as NVENC). "
>> So, assuming that this is a pro card or that you found a license key
>> (...), yes you can use NVENC with such cards.
>> This answers the second half your question.
>>
>>
>> As for the "render graphics hardware accelerated", it is a little bit
>> more complicated. Based on your description, I assume that the card is
>> not connected to a monitor or that this monitor will not be used for
>> viewing. If that's not the case, the answers below are going to be
>> inadequate.
>>
>> First, you need to define "accelerated":
>> * if you mean OpenGL acceleration - which is often enough, then this
>> will do what you want and is supported:
>> http://www.virtualgl.org/
>> * if you want to use the regular "nvidia" X11 driver for acceleration
>> directly, there are ways to use a regular X11 server (usually running as
>> root) to replace xpra's Xvfb, you may need to use the "
>> ConnectedMonitor" option if no monitor is attached to the card. This
>> will only work for a single user per card and your mileage may vary: it
>> "should" work.
>> Using "xpra shadow" to copy an existing display is not a good solution
>> at present as it uses polling and will use far too much CPU time -
>> though that could be fixed.
>>
>> The main downside of the current xpra 0.11 code is that it is not really
>> tailored for this Nvidia specific use-case: during screen updates the
>> pixel data will be downloaded from the GPU to the CPU and then uploaded
>> again to the GPU for compression... which is a complete waste of
>> valuable memory bandwidth. It shouldn't be too hard to bypass this
>> unnecessary copying, and if there is enough demand for it then we can
>> certainly look at it.
>> > If not, is this something that some other VNC like program can do?
>> Not as far as I know: xpra is the first, and at present the only
>> open-source software to have NVENC support.
>> >   If so,
>> > are there any other hardware requirements or issues that I should know
>> > about?  Would any kepler/NVENC enabled nvidia card be able to do this?
>> As per above, with consumer cards (GeForce) you will need to find a
>> license key...
>>
>> I do wonder if some consumer protection law could force Nvidia to
>> provide the keys required to take advantage of the features they
>> advertised when the cards were sold (and earlier SDKs did not require
>> license keys either).
>> As can be seen here in the GTX680 whitepaper:
>>
>> http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/en_US/pdf/GeForce-GTX-680-Whitepaper-FINAL.pdf
>> "All Kepler GPUs also incorporate a new hardware-based H.264 video
>> encoder, NVENC.  "
>> > Does anyone have any experience with this?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Antoine
>> _______________________________________________
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>> shifter-users at lists.devloop.org.uk
>> http://lists.devloop.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/shifter-users
>>
>
>