Update on tha XAA/EXA saga

If you're using newer Xorg/mesa/intel driver, you will find that XAA doesn't work anymore. My machine tends to have a hard lockup. XAA probably broke because of the changes in the DRI/DRM 3D part of the driver.

Switching back to EXA makes it work, but with the same old performance problems. Still it's possible to make it go faster with a

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

in the "Device" section of your xorg.conf

The mandatory sysprof of Firefox 3 doing business.hr test:



The exa manual page says this about the option:

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "anystr"

Chooses an alternate pixmap migration heuristic, for debugging purposes. The default is intended to be the best performing one for general use, though others may help with specific use cases. Available options include "always", "greedy", and "smart". Default: always.

UPDATE: Firefox/Mozilla performance under linux/Xorg

The addition of the Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true" also helps with the Intel hardware I have. Be sure not to use EXA on the Intel because it also makes things really slow for now. Maybe EXA will be fixed some day on the "intel" driver, but currently it's better not to use it.

Here is the profile from the EXA intel current git (Firefox 2), it's slow:



Additional links:

business-exa-intel.sysprof.bz2