Dolp: Thx, can you test if this is working fine? iirc there should be a very noticable speedup
Quote:Dolphin emulates a console that shares memory between the CPU and GPU, whereas our computers have discrete GPU memory and discrete RAM. So Dolphin has to do a lot of WAITING, waiting to upload to the buffer, render, wait until the render is done, waiting to upload to the buffer, repeat.
Wait, I just realized, isn't this the entire point of HSA and hUMA - having a single contiguous memory pool between the CPU and GPU?
This is. But it isn't as bad as all GPUs are able to access the main memory, so we're able to use it without an unneeded memcpy. We also don't have to wait for the GPU but for some random features like efb2ram and real xfb, in fact, this is the reason why efb2ram is so much slower.
That makes me wonder how efb2ram would perform on Kaveri, but I'm pretty sure hUMA (at least as it is in Kaveri) still needs software to expose such functionality, so it wouldn't "automatically" have improved performance...
Interestingly enough however, Kaveri's successor Carizo is rumored to have some built-in automatic HSA/hUMA functionality without needing to explicitly expose such functions in the software in question - maybe the idea is to do something at the driver level? Of course, they're just rumors, so who knows.
Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:but I'm pretty sure hUMA (at least as it is in Kaveri) still needs software to expose such functionality, so it wouldn't "automatically" have improved performance...
Yes.
Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:Interestingly enough however, Kaveri's successor Carizo is rumored to have some built-in automatic HSA/hUMA functionality without needing to explicitly expose such functions in the software in question - maybe the idea is to do something at the driver level? Of course, they're just rumors, so who knows.
Source?
Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:Wait, I just realized, isn't this the entire point of HSA and hUMA - having a single contiguous memory pool between the CPU and GPU?
Please keep in mind that those are two different things. Huma is one of many HSA features. Kaveri supports huma but full HSA support won't come until carizo.
What you're describing is huma, not hsa.
(03-26-2014, 10:43 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Source?
I would have included the link if I remembered what it was... I do however remember that is was an actual news/rumor article and not just a forum post or someone's personal blog.
Alternatively maybe I was incredibly tired and completely misinterpreted something.
(03-26-2014, 10:43 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Please keep in mind that those are two different things. Huma is one of many HSA features. Kaveri supports huma but full HSA support won't come until carizo.
What you're describing is huma, not hsa.
Since hUMA is an HSA function I felt it appropriate to mention HSA as well.
Nintendo Maniac 64 Wrote:I do however remember that is was an actual news/rumor article and not just a forum post or someone's personal blog.
That really doesn't make it any more credible. But I think you already know that.
They did mention implementing huma (not hsa) automatically in openCL via drivers. Perhaps that is what you're thinking of. They did not mention any graphics backends or full HSA support though. So whether this would actually be useful to dolphin remains to be seen but is unlikely at this point.