Bug 192452

Summary:	vt_vga very slow since r269471
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn>
Component:	kern	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	Closed FIXED
Severity:	Affects Many People	CC:	emaste
Priority:	---
Version:	CURRENT
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description Nathan Whitehorn freebsd_committer

2014-08-06 20:38:33 UTC

The VGA driver has become unusably slow since r269471. I suspect that the support for non-8x8 fonts has dramatically increased the incidence of reads from VGA memory. It might be best if the driver could be refactored to avoid reads entirely, for example by passing some concept of write granularity up from the driver into the vt core so that vd_bitbltchr() is called only for operations of that width (redrawing partial characters).

Comment 1 Ed Maste freebsd_committer

2014-09-02 17:47:01 UTC

Fixed by r270322
http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=270322

vt(4): Add new vd_bitblt_text_t callback, and implement it for vt_vga

Compared to the deprecated vd_bitbltchr_t callback, vd_bitblt_text_t
receives:
    o  the whole text buffer
    o  the dirty area
    o  the mouse cursor (map, position, colors)

This allows the backend to perform optimization on how to draw things.
The goal is to remove vd_bitbltchr_t and vd_putchar_t, once all driver
are converted (only vt_vga is included in this commit).

In vt_vga, this allows to draw the text and the cursor in one pass,
without ever reading from video memory (because it has all the context).
The main benefit is the speed improvement: no more slideshow during
boot!