Re: fbcon slowness [was NTP on 2.4.2?]

From: Pavel Machek (pavel@suse.cz)
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 19:53:42 EST


Hi!

> > >Are you using fbcon? If so, and if it goes away after starting X, then it
> > >is the "fbcon kills interrupt latency" problem.
> >
> > Ug!!! This is getting bad. Give me some time. I plan on releasing a new
> > vesafb using MMX to help speed up the drawing routines. It will help alot
> > with the latency issues. I also know using ARM assembly we can greatly
> > reduce the latency issues.
>
> On console speedups: back in the old days, scrolling a subregion of the
> text console to be _really_ slow on some machines. I am talking about
> text mode now, not framebuffer mode. On some cards, text mode is
> actually very very slow and the framebuffer is faster. It took *2
> seconds* to scroll a 50 lines of text 50 times on my 200MHz PPro system
> 4 years ago. So less "back one screen" took 2 seconds. And Emacs uses
> "scroll region by N lines" a lot. In those days, "N lines" scrolls
> actually did N x 1 line scrolls, so text mode was really a burden on
> that machine. I took to using X, with a single screen size xterm to
> present the illusion of console mode.
>
> Well, nowadays on my laptop we have the joy of the framebuffer console.
> Nice penguin aside, it means I get a console on the full screen area.
>
> But it is nearly as slow at scrolling as my old 200MHz PPro.

You have same toshiba satellite as me, right?

> Probably the lack of hardware area copies has something to do with
> this. However, who isn't familiar with xterm "jump scroll" mode?
> That's nice and fast.
>
> Could such a thing be implemented in the console driver?

I believe so. It would be simple: if there's too much activit, defer
framebuffer updates and only update in-memory copy. Sync from time to
time. I'd certainly like to see that.
                                                                Pavel

-- 
The best software in life is free (not shareware)!		Pavel
GCM d? s-: !g p?:+ au- a--@ w+ v- C++@ UL+++ L++ N++ E++ W--- M- Y- R+
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 31 2001 - 21:00:24 EST