Tag #kernel
Bringing Runtime Power Management to the Raspberry Pi GPU
As part of Igalia’s collaboration with Raspberry Pi, I have previously blogged about several improvements we landed for the Broadcom VideoCore GPU (known as V3D), with the goal of extracting the best possible performance from the hardware. However, performance is not the whole story. On embedded devices, power consumption is just as important: reducing unnecessary activity helps lower heat generation, improve energy efficiency, and preserve performance over time by avoiding thermal throttling.
Unleashing Power: Enabling Super Pages on the RPi
Unleashing the power of 3D graphics in the Raspberry Pi is a key commitment for Igalia through its collaboration with Raspberry Pi. The introduction of Super Pages for the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 marks another step in this journey, offering some performance enhancements and more efficient memory usage. In this post, we’ll dive deep into the technical details of Super Pages, discuss the challenges we faced during implementation, and illustrate the benefits this feature brings to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.
Linux 6.8: AMD HDR and Raspberry Pi 5
The Linux kernel 6.8 came out on March 10th, 2024, bringing brand-new features and plenty of performance improvements on different subsystems. As part of Igalia, I’m happy to be an active part of many features that are released in this version, and today I’m going to review some of them.
Rotating Planes on VKMS
In my last blog post, I described a bit of my previous work on the rustgem project, and after that, as I had finished the VGEM features, I sent a RFC to the mailing list. Although I still need to work on some rustgem feedback, I started to explore more of the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) and its properties.
November Update: Exploring V3D
It has been a busy couple of months. As I pointed on my last blog post, I finished GSoC and joined the Igalia Coding Experience mentorship project. In October, I also traveled to Minneapolis for XDC 2022 where I presented to the Linux Graphics community our AMD/KUnit work with my colleagues. So, let’s make a summary of the last couple of months.
GSoC Final Report
My journey on the Google Summer of Code project passed by so fast… This is my last week on the GSoC and those 14 weeks flew by! A lot of stuff happened during those three months, and as I’m writing this blog post, I feel quite nostalgic about this three months.
Does the Linux Kernel need software engineering?
For those looking for a short answer: yes, it does.
From Selftests to KUnit
Last week, the series with DRM Kernel Selftests conversion to KUnit tests was merged into drm-misc-next and will probably be on the mainline on 5.20.
About Kernel Symbol Table, Compilation, and more
This week I was planning on talking about Device Mocking with KUnit, as I’m currently working on my first unit test for a physical device, the AMDGPU Radeon RX5700. I would introduce you to the Kernel Unit Testing Framework (KUnit), how it works, how to mock devices with it, and why it is so great to write tests.
Linux Kernel Developing with Fedora
I’m a Fedora fan. I mean: I have two laptops for development, and all of them run Fedora. I also have a deployment machine. Guess what? It runs Fedora. Stickers? The Fedora Logo sticked forever on my laptop.
I'm in GSoC '22
This year I had a goal: to improve my abilities as a kernel developer. After some research, I figured out about the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) initiative.
Getting Started at the Linux Kernel
I started my journey with the Linux Kernel in October 2021. At that time, I thought it was impossible for a 19-year-old Brazilian girl to have an approved commit at the kernel. Then, I find out about an extracurricular group at Campinas, LKCAMP. And I found out that undergraduate students were able to contribute to the kernel. Although I couldn´t go to the LKCAMP meetings, this really push me forward, cause I saw that I was able to be a part of the kernel community.