hybrid-graphics-linux team mailing list archive

[Andreas Heider <andreas@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Peter,

I took another look at bumblebee today and got it running with nouveau! 
Bumblebee automatically powers the nvidia card down when it's not in
use and starting programs with optirun works well.

This required a dirty hack to bumblebee which you can find here:
https://github.com/ah-/Bumblebee/commit/c5ab6f0e7f841045cee6905bb367c79091b0eb6b

The problem is that bumblebee wants to save/restore the pci configuration
space, which is already done by nouveau. (See https://gist.github.com/1935992)

It also shouldn't try to unload the driver.

Do you think this could somehow be integrated into bumblebee?

Cheers,
Andreas

On Tue, 2012-02-28 at 16:14 +0100, Lekensteyn wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
> vga_switcheroo is a supported method since Bumblebee 3.0, but I
> assumed that
> it would not be used for the nvidia driver. If you wish to use the
> nvidia blob with
> switcheroo, you have to recompile Bumblebee and apply commit
> 85636d1f21b0644e7dd47e3931479860c55b7a05 (or use the develop branch).
> The
> next version will have this change too.
> 
> One shortcoming of vga_switcheroo now is that the state is messed up
> after
> suspend: switcheroo remembered that the card was off, but in reality
> the card
> is on. The module bbswitch worked around this by enabling the card
> before
> suspend and disabling the card on resume.
> 
> In some cases, while the card was turned off with switcheroo caused
> the machine
> to lock when the card is tried to be accessed. If switcheroo is not an
> option for 
> Bumblebee, you can write your own switching code. See the src/switch/
> directory
> for examples.
> 
> Regards,
> Peter
> (Bumblebee and bbswitch developer)
> 
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 3:16 PM, Andreas Heider <andreas@xxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>         Hello everybody,
>         
>         I'm developing a vga_switcheroo driver for the Apple Macbook
>         Pro models
>         with switchable graphics and have a few questions about how to
>         integrate
>         it with the current linux hybrid graphics infrastructure.
>         
>         
>         Apple implemented the switching using a "chip" dubbed the
>         "gmux" (probably short for graphics multiplexer or something
>         similar).
>         The gmux can power down the external graphics card, switch the
>         DDC,
>         internal and external display connections (individually)
>         between both
>         cards and set the backlight brightness. Unlike most newer
>         laptops with
>         hybrid graphics, Apple's Macbook Pros use a physical mux.
>         
>         Luckily the gmux has remained mostly the same between all
>         models with
>         switchable graphics, so it should be possible to develop one
>         driver that
>         supports all of them.
>         
>         
>         This driver has actually been lying around in unfinished state
>         for some
>         time now, until Seth Forshee from Canonical recently rewrote
>         it into a
>         clean, backlight-only driver that will hopefully find it's way
>         into
>         mainline soon.
>         
>         My goal is to use Seth's work as a base and add the other
>         features back
>         again and make it work well. A first version is already
>         working and up
>         at https://github.com/ah-/gmux
>         
>         This driver supports all vga_switcheroo operations (discrete
>         power
>         on/off, display switching) and they all work on my MBP 6,2
>         using the
>         intel and nouveau drivers.
>         
>         But unfortunately, it doesn't work with bumbleebee and/or the
>         proprietary
>         nvidia driver yet.
>         
>         
>         Because I'm using CUDA in other projects, getting the
>         proprietary NVIDIA
>         driver running well is very interesting to me. The setup
>         bumblebee plus
>         intel + nvidia_current without power management works well on
>         my laptop
>         if I switch to the intel card in grub. (It's just three
>         outbs). But that
>         breaks suspend and uses 10W more power than necessary.
>         
>         Does/should bumblebee work with a vga_switcheroo driver just
>         for ON/OFF?
>         
>         One thing I stumbled upon is a patch for the proprietary
>         NVIDIA
>         driver originally written by "Kayo <kayo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>" which
>         adds
>         some kind of vga_switcheroo support to it. I modified it to
>         just register
>         with switcheroo (patch is attached), and that part works well.
>         Turning
>         off the card works, but turning it on afterwards doesn't. Any
>         Ideas?
>         
>         
>         Ultimately I'd like to get two scenarios/workflows to work
>         well:
>         
>         1. Real switching, by disabling one card completely and only
>         using
>         the other one, requiring a logout/login.
>         Preferably using the NVIDIA driver.
>         
>         2. Bumblebee switching with working power management when the
>         NVIDIA
>         GPU is not in usw.
>         
>         
>         I'd appreciate any comments and thoughts on how to implement
>         this and
>         how to integrate it with the current hybrid graphics
>         environment.
>         
>         Cheers,
>         Andreas
>         
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