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1<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
2<html lang="en">
3<head>
4  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
5  <title>llvmpipe</title>
6  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mesa.css">
7</head>
8<body>
9
10<div class="header">
11  <h1>The Mesa 3D Graphics Library</h1>
12</div>
13
14<iframe src="contents.html"></iframe>
15<div class="content">
16
17<h1>Introduction</h1>
18
19<p>
20The Gallium llvmpipe driver is a software rasterizer that uses LLVM to
21do runtime code generation.
22Shaders, point/line/triangle rasterization and vertex processing are
23implemented with LLVM IR which is translated to x86, x86-64, or ppc64le machine
24code.
25Also, the driver is multithreaded to take advantage of multiple CPU cores
26(up to 8 at this time).
27It's the fastest software rasterizer for Mesa.
28</p>
29
30
31<h1>Requirements</h1>
32
33<ul>
34<li>
35   <p>
36   For x86 or amd64 processors, 64-bit mode is recommended.
37   Support for SSE2 is strongly encouraged.  Support for SSE3 and SSE4.1 will
38   yield the most efficient code.  The fewer features the CPU has the more
39   likely it is that you will run into underperforming, buggy, or incomplete code.
40   </p>
41   <p>
42   For ppc64le processors, use of the Altivec feature (the Vector
43   Facility) is recommended if supported; use of the VSX feature (the
44   Vector-Scalar Facility) is recommended if supported AND Mesa is
45   built with LLVM version 4.0 or later.
46   </p>
47   <p>
48   See /proc/cpuinfo to know what your CPU supports.
49   </p>
50</li>
51<li>
52   <p>Unless otherwise stated, LLVM version 3.4 is recommended; 3.3 or later is required.</p>
53   <p>
54   For Linux, on a recent Debian based distribution do:
55   </p>
56<pre>
57     aptitude install llvm-dev
58</pre>
59   <p>
60   If you want development snapshot builds of LLVM for Debian and derived
61   distributions like Ubuntu, you can use the APT repository at <a
62   href="https://apt.llvm.org/" title="Debian Development packages for LLVM"
63   >apt.llvm.org</a>, which are maintained by Debian's LLVM maintainer.
64   </p>
65   <p>
66   For a RPM-based distribution do:
67   </p>
68<pre>
69     yum install llvm-devel
70</pre>
71
72   <p>
73   For Windows you will need to build LLVM from source with MSVC or MINGW
74   (either natively or through cross compilers) and CMake, and set the LLVM
75   environment variable to the directory you installed it to.
76
77   LLVM will be statically linked, so when building on MSVC it needs to be
78   built with a matching CRT as Mesa, and you'll need to pass
79   <code>-DLLVM_USE_CRT_xxx=yyy</code> as described below.
80   </p>
81
82   <table border="1">
83     <tr>
84       <th rowspan="2">LLVM build-type</th>
85       <th colspan="2" align="center">Mesa build-type</th>
86     </tr>
87     <tr>
88       <th>debug,checked</th>
89       <th>release,profile</th>
90     </tr>
91     <tr>
92       <th>Debug</th>
93       <td><code>-DLLVM_USE_CRT_DEBUG=MTd</code></td>
94       <td><code>-DLLVM_USE_CRT_DEBUG=MT</code></td>
95     </tr>
96     <tr>
97       <th>Release</th>
98       <td><code>-DLLVM_USE_CRT_RELEASE=MTd</code></td>
99       <td><code>-DLLVM_USE_CRT_RELEASE=MT</code></td>
100     </tr>
101   </table>
102
103   <p>
104   You can build only the x86 target by passing -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD=X86
105   to cmake.
106   </p>
107</li>
108
109<li>
110   <p>scons (optional)</p>
111</li>
112</ul>
113
114
115<h1>Building</h1>
116
117To build everything on Linux invoke scons as:
118
119<pre>
120  scons build=debug libgl-xlib
121</pre>
122
123Alternatively, you can build it with autoconf/make with:
124<pre>
125  ./configure --enable-glx=gallium-xlib --with-gallium-drivers=swrast --disable-dri --disable-gbm --disable-egl
126  make
127</pre>
128
129but the rest of these instructions assume that scons is used.
130
131For Windows the procedure is similar except the target:
132
133<pre>
134  scons platform=windows build=debug libgl-gdi
135</pre>
136
137
138<h1>Using</h1>
139
140<h2>Linux</h2>
141
142<p>On Linux, building will create a drop-in alternative for libGL.so into</p>
143
144<pre>
145  build/foo/gallium/targets/libgl-xlib/libGL.so
146</pre>
147or
148<pre>
149  lib/gallium/libGL.so
150</pre>
151
152<p>To use it set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable accordingly.</p>
153
154<p>For performance evaluation pass build=release to scons, and use the corresponding
155lib directory without the "-debug" suffix.</p>
156
157
158<h2>Windows</h2>
159
160<p>
161On Windows, building will create
162<code>build/windows-x86-debug/gallium/targets/libgl-gdi/opengl32.dll</code>
163which is a drop-in alternative for system's <code>opengl32.dll</code>.  To use
164it put it in the same directory as your application.  It can also be used by
165replacing the native ICD driver, but it's quite an advanced usage, so if you
166need to ask, don't even try it.
167</p>
168
169<p>
170There is however an easy way to replace the OpenGL software renderer that comes
171with Microsoft Windows 7 (or later) with llvmpipe (that is, on systems without
172any OpenGL drivers):
173</p>
174
175<ul>
176  <li><p>copy build/windows-x86-debug/gallium/targets/libgl-gdi/opengl32.dll to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mesadrv.dll</p></li>
177  <li><p>load this registry settings:</p>
178  <pre>REGEDIT4
179
180; https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749368.aspx
181; https://www.msfn.org/board/topic/143241-portable-windows-7-build-from-winpe-30/page-5#entry942596
182[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\MSOGL]
183"DLL"="mesadrv.dll"
184"DriverVersion"=dword:00000001
185"Flags"=dword:00000001
186"Version"=dword:00000002
187</pre>
188  </li>
189  <li>Ditto for 64 bits drivers if you need them.</li>
190</ul>
191
192
193<h1>Profiling</h1>
194
195<p>
196To profile llvmpipe you should build as
197</p>
198<pre>
199  scons build=profile &lt;same-as-before&gt;
200</pre>
201
202<p>
203This will ensure that frame pointers are used both in C and JIT functions, and
204that no tail call optimizations are done by gcc.
205</p>
206
207<h2>Linux perf integration</h2>
208
209<p>
210On Linux, it is possible to have symbol resolution of JIT code with <a href="https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/">Linux perf</a>:
211</p>
212
213<pre>
214	perf record -g /my/application
215	perf report
216</pre>
217
218<p>
219When run inside Linux perf, llvmpipe will create a /tmp/perf-XXXXX.map file with
220symbol address table.  It also dumps assembly code to /tmp/perf-XXXXX.map.asm,
221which can be used by the bin/perf-annotate-jit.py script to produce disassembly of
222the generated code annotated with the samples.
223</p>
224
225<p>You can obtain a call graph via
226<a href="https://github.com/jrfonseca/gprof2dot#linux-perf">Gprof2Dot</a>.</p>
227
228
229<h1>Unit testing</h1>
230
231<p>
232Building will also create several unit tests in
233build/linux-???-debug/gallium/drivers/llvmpipe:
234</p>
235
236<ul>
237<li> lp_test_blend: blending
238<li> lp_test_conv: SIMD vector conversion
239<li> lp_test_format: pixel unpacking/packing
240</ul>
241
242<p>
243Some of these tests can output results and benchmarks to a tab-separated file
244for later analysis, e.g.:
245</p>
246<pre>
247  build/linux-x86_64-debug/gallium/drivers/llvmpipe/lp_test_blend -o blend.tsv
248</pre>
249
250
251<h1>Development Notes</h1>
252
253<ul>
254<li>
255  When looking at this code for the first time, start in lp_state_fs.c, and
256  then skim through the lp_bld_* functions called there, and the comments
257  at the top of the lp_bld_*.c functions.
258</li>
259<li>
260  The driver-independent parts of the LLVM / Gallium code are found in
261  src/gallium/auxiliary/gallivm/.  The filenames and function prefixes
262  need to be renamed from "lp_bld_" to something else though.
263</li>
264<li>
265  We use LLVM-C bindings for now. They are not documented, but follow the C++
266  interfaces very closely, and appear to be complete enough for code
267  generation. See
268  <a href="https://npcontemplation.blogspot.com/2008/06/secret-of-llvm-c-bindings.html">
269  this stand-alone example</a>.  See the llvm-c/Core.h file for reference.
270</li>
271</ul>
272
273<h1 id="recommended_reading">Recommended Reading</h1>
274
275<ul>
276  <li>
277    <p>Rasterization</p>
278    <ul>
279      <li><a href="https://www.cs.unc.edu/~olano/papers/2dh-tri/">Triangle Scan Conversion using 2D Homogeneous Coordinates</a></li>
280      <li><a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/rasterization-on-larrabee/217200602">Rasterization on Larrabee</a> (<a href="http://devmaster.net/posts/2887/rasterization-on-larrabee">DevMaster copy</a>)</li>
281      <li><a href="http://devmaster.net/posts/6133/rasterization-using-half-space-functions">Rasterization using half-space functions</a></li>
282      <li><a href="http://devmaster.net/posts/6145/advanced-rasterization">Advanced Rasterization</a></li>
283      <li><a href="https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/optimizing-sw-occlusion-culling-index/">Optimizing Software Occlusion Culling</a></li>
284    </ul>
285  </li>
286  <li>
287    <p>Texture sampling</p>
288    <ul>
289      <li><a href="http://chrishecker.com/Miscellaneous_Technical_Articles#Perspective_Texture_Mapping">Perspective Texture Mapping</a></li>
290      <li><a href="https://www.flipcode.com/archives/Texturing_As_In_Unreal.shtml">Texturing As In Unreal</a></li>
291      <li><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3301/runtime_mipmap_filtering.php">Run-Time MIP-Map Filtering</a></li>
292      <li><a href="http://alt.3dcenter.org/artikel/2003/10-26_a_english.php">Will "brilinear" filtering persist?</a></li>
293      <li><a href="http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-rx800-3.html">Trilinear filtering</a></li>
294      <li><a href="http://devmaster.net/posts/12785/texture-swizzling">Texture Swizzling</a></li>
295    </ul>
296  </li>
297  <li>
298    <p>SIMD</p>
299    <ul>
300      <li><a href="http://www.cdl.uni-saarland.de/projects/wfv/#header4">Whole-Function Vectorization</a></li>
301    </ul>
302  </li>
303  <li>
304    <p>Optimization</p>
305    <ul>
306      <li><a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/optimizing-pixomatic-for-modern-x86-proc/184405807">Optimizing Pixomatic For Modern x86 Processors</a></li>
307      <li><a href="http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/64-ia-32-architectures-optimization-manual.html">Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual</a></li>
308      <li><a href="http://www.agner.org/optimize/">Software optimization resources</a></li>
309      <li><a href="https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-intrinsics-guide">Intel Intrinsics Guide</a><li>
310    </ul>
311  </li>
312  <li>
313    <p>LLVM</p>
314    <ul>
315      <li><a href="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">LLVM Language Reference Manual</a></li>
316      <li><a href="https://npcontemplation.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/secret-of-llvm-c-bindings.html">The secret of LLVM C bindings</a></li>
317    </ul>
318  </li>
319  <li>
320    <p>General</p>
321    <ul>
322      <li><a href="https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-graphics-pipeline-2011-index/">A trip through the Graphics Pipeline</a></li>
323      <li><a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg615082.aspx#architecture">WARP Architecture and Performance</a></li>
324    </ul>
325  </li>
326</ul>
327
328</div>
329</body>
330</html>
331