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From:   Eric Anholt <eric@anholt.net>
To:     Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@bootlin.com>
Cc:     Paul Kocialkowski <paul.kocialkowski@bootlin.com>,
        dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        David Airlie <airlied@linux.ie>,
        Maxime Ripard <maxime.ripard@bootlin.com>,
        Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] drm/vc4: Add a debugfs entry to disable/enable the load tracker
In-Reply-To: <20181202081440.0ec235c4@bbrezillon>
References: <20181130161104.16352-1-paul.kocialkowski@bootlin.com> <87r2f2patf.fsf@anholt.net> <20181202081440.0ec235c4@bbrezillon>
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Date:   Mon, 03 Dec 2018 07:54:39 -0800
Message-ID: <87h8fufvwg.fsf@anholt.net>
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Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@bootlin.com> writes:

> On Fri, 30 Nov 2018 12:30:52 -0800
> Eric Anholt <eric@anholt.net> wrote:
>
>> Paul Kocialkowski <paul.kocialkowski@bootlin.com> writes:
>>=20
>> > In order to test whether the load tracker is working as expected, we
>> > need the ability to compare the commit result with the underrun
>> > indication. With the load tracker always enabled, commits that are
>> > expected to trigger an underrun are always rejected, so userspace
>> > cannot get the actual underrun indication from the hardware.
>> >
>> > Add a debugfs entry to disable/enable the load tracker, so that a DRM
>> > commit expected to trigger an underrun can go through with the load
>> > tracker disabled. The underrun indication is then available to
>> > userspace and can be checked against the commit result with the load
>> > tracker enabled.
>> >
>> > Signed-off-by: Paul Kocialkowski <paul.kocialkowski@bootlin.com>=20=20
>>=20
>> Given that the load tracker is going to be conservative and say things
>> will underrun even when they might not in practice, will this actually
>> be useful for automated testing? Or is the intent to make it easier to
>> tune the load tracker by disabling it so that you can experiment freely?
>
> Yes, that's one goal, though I'm not sure IGT is supposed to contain
> such debugging tools. But the main benefit is being able to track
> regressions in the load tracking algo that makes it more (too?)
> conservative. I think people won't like this sort of regressions. The
> idea would be to settle on an acceptable load tracking algo (maybe
> after refining the proposed one), record the results (both good and too
> conservative predictions) and use that as a reference for the IGT
> test.=20=20

Yeah, I think I'm sold on it at this point -- having a tool that isn't
an automated regression test, but an automated thing that can help a
developer see how accurate the estimate is, would be useful and is worth
a bit of kernel code to support.

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