Messages

91

Legacy POWER Hardware / Re: Dolphin Emulator banned from Steam

« on: May 31, 2023, 03:07:10 pm »

Dolphin running with close instruction parity on Power9 would be an unusually nice showcase for OpenPower at large. That project would be welcome - if you have the background to do it, we'd all love to see it.

92

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Ultimate Doom with all enhancements on crispy-doom client

« on: May 28, 2023, 01:19:48 pm »

Update: I am not really a programmer but did manage to crack the nut of inserting optimizations into GZDoom's byzantine build system. Follow the directions at this page, finish the initial build, and then navigate to ~/gzdoom_build/gzdoom/build/CMakeCache.txt (or wherever you're keeping the source code). Open that file, navigate to the line (possibly line 68):

Code: [Select]

//Flags used by the CXX compiler during RELEASE builds. The following line is, by default:

Code: [Select]

CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE:STRING=-O3 -DNDEBUG Change it to:

Code: [Select]

CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE:STRING=-O3 -DNDEBUG -mcpu=power9 -DNO_WARN_X86_INTRINSICS
Repeat this for the line (possibly line 94):

Code: [Select]

//Flags used by the C compiler during RELEASE builds.changing the subsequent line to:

Code: [Select]

CMAKE_C_FLAGS_RELEASE:STRING=-O3 -DNDEBUG -mcpu=power9 -DNO_WARN_X86_INTRINSICS
Re-run the build instructions, which will overwrite the old executable with the improved one. This doesn't do anything about periodic performance issues for demanding wads using hardware rendering, but software rendering is much nicer!

Edit: In thinking about this since I have a sinking feeling that CMake is performing an early test to determine SIMD compatibility that Power9 isn’t passing, as there are versions of a number of software routines that are in individual files with and without SSE2 optimizations. It is also smart enough to determine ppc64 as a build environment, though this is tied to prior PPC Mac support… more investigation is under way, though -mcpu=power9 is already a big improvement. More info to follow.

93

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Intel Arc A770 - failed experiment

« on: May 10, 2023, 09:10:55 pm »

There's a bit of hubbub over on Phoronix at the moment regarding Intel's driver maintenance decisions that's making people a little nuts. To wit:

- The current i915 driver, which is the official DG2 support release, has full support for the HuC microcontroller that is chiefly responsible for the low-power video encoding built into the chip. This driver presently only works with x86/x86_64, and is also not getting support for VM_BIND / sparse residency features in Vulkan. In other words, its full 3D performance capabilities will never be realized. Why, you ask? Well...

- The planned move to the Xe driver, which supports non-x86 parts, will have modern Vulkan support, but it sounds like Alchemist will not receive a port of the HuC support, as its handling has been described as "relatively annoying" and would require special effort. Meteor Lake IGPs and future discrete graphics cards have a different solution in place that has been implemented, and which will be consistently utilized going forward.

So, without access to the integrated video encoding, and with no FP64 support in hardware, Arc becomes a whole lot less interesting on Power. Looks like I'll be selling my A750 soon, along with the i3 it's been in to date, but that's the current status. Intel's let me down on this one. Ah well - at least Fedora's moving to support Rusticl for my RX 6600 soon...

94

User Zone / Re: WD Black SN850X not showing up in lspci

« on: May 10, 2023, 09:05:15 pm »

I did not run into that problem, but did have issues with a Western Digital SN700 and a no-name NVMe adapter a while back. That ended with me basically writing off NVMe storage on my Power9 build - currently everything is running off a 256GB SATA Samsung 870 and a 4TB Samsung HDD for storage/backups. But with the right adapter and a compatible drive, I'd love to try again.

Wishing you luck. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

95

Blackbird / Re: OpenBMC reporting critical error Proc.FSI.Error.MasterDetectionFailure

« on: May 01, 2023, 09:22:29 am »

You may be interested to know that Raptor weighed in on their Twitter after it was pointed out to them, with a first suggestion to try reseating the CPU.

The link:
https://nitter.poast.org/RaptorCompSys/status/1652858741635665920#m

96

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Ultimate Doom with all enhancements on crispy-doom client

« on: April 28, 2023, 09:13:40 am »

I like GZDoom for the 3D stereo support (I have a 3D-capable IPS secondary display), but I usually play Chocolate Doom, myself.

GZDoom performance on ppc64le is still lacking relative to comparable x86land, at least in Fedora 37. In software mode I'd chalk most of that up to a lack of SIMD optimization, and I’ve taken on a new job that's taken away a chunk of the tinker time I'd use to navigate its build system and figure out where to insert -mcpu=power9 -DNO_WARN_X86_INTRINSICS for the compiler. Hardware rendering absolutely chugs in big maps, though, and between what appears to be poor thread load in the Vulkan renderer and recent ZDoom forum drama, it's put me off of troubleshooting much when DSDA-Doom does everything I need right now.

97

Applications and Porting / Re: Chromium and Ungoogled Chromium DNF Repository

« on: April 27, 2023, 09:56:58 am »

I am building the RPM version for RHEL/Fedora.

Hey, any updates on this? Are these available anywhere? The parent post provides a repo, but try as I might I can't actually download or install anything from it.

98

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Ultimate Doom with all enhancements on crispy-doom client

« on: April 16, 2023, 12:31:19 pm »

these are some other ports I’ve had luck with:

- Woof is an effort to modernize and bring the venerable old MBF (Marine’s Best Friend, by Lee Killough) forward to the present day. It supports a number of compatibility levels, from vanilla Doom through various post-Boom incarnations, and it’s software-only so it will play nice with the AST onboard video. Mouse support isn’t the most responsive but it’s a good port.

- DSDA-Doom is a fork of PRBOOM+ meant for speedrunners, but it’s enjoyably flexible. OPL2 emulation isn’t great but Fluidsynth sounds nice, it supports software and OpenGL rendering at arbitrary resolutions, and screams along at 4K on an RX 6600. This is my go-to right now.

- GZDoom is the gold standard at large, but I’ve run into numerous scenarios where performance is underwhelming. Some big adventurous WADs like the tail end of Eviternity absolutely tank in the hardware renderer; whether OpenGL or Vulkan is used, performance dips down below 20 fps and shows low core usage. Software rendering fares a bit better but the lack of SIMD optimizations hurts. A while back I thought about using ClassicHasClass’s advice to insert intrinsic translation through gcc’s headers, but the port has a complicated CMake config (probably because it pulls in a half-dozen other libraries to enable all its functionality), and I never figured out where to insert a directive to the compiler to try it out.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten with kicking Doom source port tires on Power9 so far. Suggestions are welcome.

99

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: AMD OpenCL / ROCm

« on: March 26, 2023, 09:39:38 am »

Still no progress on my own attempt, unfortunately. AMD are releasing new versions faster than I can merge the little work I have already done.

I found this other page detailing another person's attempts to build ROCm on POWER9, which might be worth looking at.

 https://systems.nic.uoregon.edu/internal-wiki/index.php?title=Rocm_on_power9

ROCm is an organizational clusterfuck. Around two years ago I determined the best way to handle it on Ubuntu x86_64 was to sync to their repo, then when a new version was pushed, ppa-purge the repo, remove all folders and files ROCm left behind, then add the repo again and install from scratch. To my knowledge it hasn’t gotten better since, and that’s not even touching on other platforms. I respect the work you have put in, but I am not sure things will improve for AMD beyond this “beat to fit, paint to match” approach to software design.

God, I hope Intel sticks with Arc and gets OneAPI and their compute stack running everywhere. That’d save a lot of headaches.

100

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: [NEWS] Fedora 37 has arrived!

« on: March 10, 2023, 07:28:56 pm »

My Fedora install has developed a wrinkle in the past couple of days. On running sudo dnf update, I receive the following message:

Code: [Select]

Last metadata expiration check: 1:23:53 ago on Fri 10 Mar 2023 06:02:42 PM CST.
Dependencies resolved.

 Problem: The operation would result in removing the following protected packages: systemd, systemd-udev
====================================================================================================
 Package                         Architecture      Version                  Repository         Size
====================================================================================================
Skipping packages with conflicts:
(add '--best --allowerasing' to command line to force their upgrade):
 systemd                         ppc64le           251.7-611.fc37           fedora            4.3 M
 systemd                         ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           4.3 M
 systemd-libs                    ppc64le           251.7-611.fc37           fedora            652 k
 systemd-libs                    ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           652 k
 systemd-pam                     ppc64le           251.7-611.fc37           fedora            355 k
 systemd-pam                     ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           354 k
 systemd-rpm-macros              noarch            251.7-611.fc37           fedora             30 k
 systemd-rpm-macros              noarch            251.13-5.fc37            updates            29 k
Skipping packages with broken dependencies:
 systemd-container               ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           556 k
 systemd-devel                   ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           578 k
 systemd-networkd                ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           614 k
 systemd-oomd-defaults           noarch            251.13-5.fc37            updates            25 k
 systemd-resolved                ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           284 k
 systemd-udev                    ppc64le           251.13-5.fc37            updates           1.9 M
 systemd-udev                    ppc64le           251.7-611.fc37           fedora            1.9 M

Transaction Summary
====================================================================================================
Skip  15 Packages

Packages unrelated to these install fine, but these are invariant and inflexible in failing to install. It appears that somehow I've entered dependency hell, as attempting to run sudo dnf update -- results in this:

Code: [Select]

Error:
 Problem: The operation would result in removing the following protected packages: gnome-shell, grub2-ppc64le, systemd-udev

It suggests using --skip-broken to skip uninstallable packages, but that makes no difference. I don't think I did anything novel, so maybe something scabby got pushed in a package that's throwing things off. Any suggestions? I can probably limp this along as-is until the April-ish release of Fedora 38...

Edit: manually installing systemd-251.7 went without a hitch. The changelog for 251.13-5 indicates some dependencies were changed to prevent an edge case, but I’m guessing it’s causing other issues as well. So it’s likely that I can just wait a few days and this problem will go away by itself.

101

Blackbird / Re: SATA ports on the fritz?

« on: February 19, 2023, 09:10:38 pm »

Only two weeks? Wow!
And everything working now?

Yes, I'm honestly a little shocked. They were great about communicating with me, and I've been pleased as punch that a replacement came in, I moved everything to a newer case with better cable management, and it all just... came right back up.

102

Blackbird / Re: SATA ports on the fritz?

« on: February 19, 2023, 02:01:04 am »

And we're back. Hello!

103

GPU Compute / Accelerators / Re: Intel Arc A770 - failed experiment

« on: February 09, 2023, 03:33:22 pm »

Out of morbid curiosity, has there been any movement for Intel GPUs on ppc64le since the last update?

edit: Checking the PCIe compatibility list on the Wiki, it looks like it fails to compile. Guess we'll wait for the Xe driver before we try again...

104

Blackbird / Re: SATA ports on the fritz?

« on: February 07, 2023, 06:01:39 pm »

Thanks again. I sent my motherboard off today - now I wait for the RMA.

105

Blackbird / Re: SATA ports on the fritz?

« on: February 05, 2023, 10:36:21 am »

You also could give me your ticket number. I could post it on Twitter.

Thank you - I deleted my account there recently. My ticket number is #493290.