path: root/NEWS

Snapshot 2.11.901 (2010-06-14)
==============================
This is the first release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.12.0 release. We will appreciate any feedback we can get from
testing of this snapshot to improve the 2.12.0 release.

New requirements compared to 2.10
---------------------------------
 * Libdrm >= 2.4.19

Major performance improvements
------------------------------
There have been many performance improvements targeting the
915G/945G/Pineview graphics chipsets (thank to Chris Wilson!). Areas
improved include:

 * Major improvements to glyph rendering

 * Avoid software fallback when using extended desktops, (for example,
   video playback)

 * Better performance when using large windows, (for example with
   firefox scrolling)

 * Avoiding migration ping-pong with gigantic drawing

The following speedups (measured with cairo-perf-trace/cairo-traces)
capture some of the improvements. These were measured on a Pineview
system with a very recent X server, (from git just before 1.8.1). This
compares how this 2.12 release candidate improves performance compared
to 2.11.0:

	Trace			Speedup
	-----			-------
	ocitysmap		5.41x speedup
	firefox-talos-gfx       2.41x speedup
	gnome-terminal-vim      2.15x speedup
	poppler                 1.86x speedup
	firefox-planet-gnome	1.43x speedup
	midori-zoomed		1.39x speedup
	swfdec-giant-steps      1.36x speedup
	xfce4-terminal-a1	1.17x speedup
	evolution		1.09x speedup
	swfdec-youtube		1.06x speedup

Other improvements
------------------
Daniel Vetter improved Xvmc and overlay, adding GEM support.

Bug fixes
---------
There have been many conformance improvements targeting the
915G/945G/Pineview graphics chipsets. The rendercheck test suite
passes once again and there has been a significant reduction in the
number of errors detected by the cairo test suite (notably center
sampling and EXTEND_NONE behaviors are fixed).

Other notable bug fixes include:

 * Fix for bug 28446 Garbled fonts with Mathematica
   https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28446

 * Fixes for page-flipping and other DRI2-handling bugs, (Thanks Jesse
   Barnes, and Kristian Høgsberg)

 * Avoid corruption when using extended desktops, (for example, video
   playback)

Release 2.11.0 (2010-03-29)
===========================
New in 2.11: DRI2 and page flipping
-----------------------------------
The most significant new feature of this release is support for new
DRI2 APIs, allowing page flipping to occur for swaps that are
full-screen and not rotated.

Performance improvements in 2.11 compared to 2.10
-------------------------------------------------
Dramatically improved performance of large pixmaps on
memory-constrained hardware, (such as 945), by using tiling.
Note that this fix is new since the most recent release
candidate for this release (2.10.903).

    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25375

Elimination of software fallback with alpha-only pixmap (a fix which
eliminated a full second from the Moblin boot time):

    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26189

Notable bug fixes in 2.11 compared to 2.10
------------------------------------------
Fix for undesired black borders on some images, (caued several
problems with firefox):

    http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17933

And other fixes to provide more conformance with existing
software-rendering, (as measures by the cairo test suite), such as the
sampling location for nearest-neighbor sampling.

Other changes
-------------
Eric Anholt and Daniel Vetter both removed large piles of old and
useless code now that the driver requires kernel modesetting
(KMS). This continues to reduce the mainteance burden of the driver,
making it easier to isolate and fix bugs.

Snapshot 2.10.903 (2010-03-22)
==============================
Some notable bug fixes
----------------------
* Fix unpredictable results in page-flipping code due to access of an
  uninitialized variable.

* Two fixes that address a number of long-outstanding failures in the
  cairo test suite:

    Remove coord-adjust for nearest centre-sampling.

    Fill alpha on xrgb images. Closes:

	Bug 17933 - x8r8g8b8 doesn't sample alpha=0 outside surface bounds
	http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17933

* Fix a regression introduced in 2.10.902:

    Fatal server error:
    i915_emit_composite_setup: ADVANCE_BATCH:
    under-used allocation 100/104

	Bug 21723 [i915 bisected] rendering makes X crash
	http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27123

Other minor fixes (avoid trying to print an error message with a freed
string, set a variable to NULL after freeing), and documentation
updates are also included.

Snapshot 2.10.902 (2010-03-15)
==============================
Some significant bug fixes
--------------------------
Fix video color problems due to YUV plane ordering issue. This fixed a
regression that showed up recently (only in these release candidates).

Fix recent regression leading to corruption under compiz:

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26814

Further DRI2 improvements/fixes from Mario Kleiner and Jesse Barnes,
(including support for SwapBuffers request with divisor != 0).

Fix build against X server 1.6 branch.

Avoid flooding logs after an error occurs.

And dramatic code cleanups
--------------------------
Eric Anholt removed several cases of old, useless code, (conditions
that could not occur now that we require KMS, etc.).

Daniel Vetter eliminated piles of code by modernizing the XvMC
memory-management and completely removing the old i830_memory
allocator (i830_allocate_memory, i830_free_memory), etc.

Snapshot 2.10.901 (2010-02-26)
==============================
The most significant new feature of this release is support for new
DRI2 APIs, allowing page flipping to occur for swaps that are
full-screen and not rotated.

Some significant bug fixes
--------------------------
* Avoid fallback due to failing to extract pixel value from an
  alpha-only solid, (this fix eliminated 1 second from Mobilin boot
  time).

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26189

* Handle full-height blits without tearing in CopyRegion

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22475

Several other fixes and cleanups are included as well, (including the
removal of stale utility code that is now maintained in the separate
intel-gpu-tools module).

Release 2.10.0 (2010-01-04)
===========================
New requirements of 2.10 compared to 2.9
----------------------------------------
 * Linux kernel with kernel-modesetting (KMS)

   All user-modesetting code has now been removed from the driver.
   We highly recommend kernel version 2.6.32 or later.

 * Libdrm >= 2.4.16

New features in 2.10 compared to 2.9
------------------------------------
 * New driver debugging options available in xorg.conf
   (DebugFlushBatches, DebugFlushCaches, DebugWait). See "man intel"
   for more details.

 * Video overlay support with KMS. This currently requires Linux
   2.6.33, but a backport to 2.6.32 is available here:

   http://gitorious.org/daniel-s-linux-stuff/linux-kernel/commits/intel-kms-overlay-for-2.6.32

Notable fixes in 2.10 compared to 2.9
-----------------------------------
 * Fix crash when XRenderComposite is called with a -1 value for
   width/height, (crash at login when using compiz).

   http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24724

 * Fix to support larger extended desktops, (such as a 2560x1600 plus a
   1920x1200 monitor).


 * Fix glyph corruption due to insufficient cache flushing:

   https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24315

Several other correctness and performance fixes are also included.

Note: The driver code of the 2.10.0 release is identical to that of
the 2.9.99.901 release candidate. The only changes in 2.10.0 compared
to 2.9.99.902 are a minor change to the configure script, and some
small updates to the documentation.

Snapshot 2.9.99.902 (2009-12-10)
================================
This is the second release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.10.0 release. We will appreciate any feedback we can get from
testing of this snapshot to improve the 2.10.0 release.

Compared to the previous snapshot, this snapshot now correctly
verifies that libdrm 2.4.16 (or newer) is available. The previous
snapshot also required libdrm 2.4.16 for correct functionality, but
neglected to notify the user of this at configure, compile, or install
time and would instead simply fail to run.

Snapshot 2.9.99.901 (2009-11-30)
================================
This is the first release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.10.0 release. We will appreciate any feedback we can get from
testing of this snapshot to improve the 2.10.0 release.

With this snapshot, the xf86-video-intel driver requires kernel
modesetting (KMS) as all of the user modesetting (UMS) support has
been removed from the driver.

Release 2.9.0 (2009-09-28)
==========================
We are pleased to announce the 2.9.0 release of the xf86-video-intel
driver. (If you have been following along at home, this release is
identical to the 2.8.99.902 release candidate other than the version
number).

New features in 2.9 compared to 2.8
-----------------------------------
* Support for the B43 chipset.

Major fixes in 2.9.0 compared to 2.8.0
--------------------------------------
* Multiple fixes to make the driver stable for 8xx chipsets, (855GM,
  865G, etc.). The 2.8 driver series was extremely unstable with many
  of these chipsets.

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22904 (and many duplicates)
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22947

* Add support for BACKLIGHT property when using kernel modesetting
  (KMS). This allows backlight adjustment with programs such as
  "xbacklight -set <percentage>" or "xrandr --set BACKLIGHT <value>".

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20963

* Fix so that "xrandr --scale" works when using KMS.

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22893

* Fix segfaults of X server when logging out.

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20516

* Avoid falling back to software for 1-bit alpha-only masks.

  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23184

* Fix pixel sampling position for 8xx chipsets, (fixes some cairo-test
  suite failures).

Snapshot 2.8.99.901 (2009-09-09)
================================
This is the first release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.9.0 release. We will appreciate any feedback we can get from testing
of this snapshot to improve the 2.9.0 release.

See the commit log for changes in this release, and developers, please
provide me summaries for any major features in this release that you
think should appear in NEWS and in the 2.9.0 release notes.

Note: We are still investigating failures with 865G chipsets, (these
failures existed in the 2.8 series as well). We are hoping to fix
these failures before the 2.9.0 release.

Release 2.8.0 (2009-07-20)
==========================
We are pleased to present this major release of the xf86-video-intel
driver. This release is very similar to the 2.7.99.902 release
candidate but includes a couple of additional bug fixes, (for bugs
#22760 and @22483).

Compared to the 2.7 releases this driver contains several new features
and many bug fixes. The driver now depends on X server 1.6 or later,
and eliminates several obsolete code paths, (XAA and EXA removed in
favor of UXA, DRI1 support eliminated). The driver certainly will work
best with an i915 module from a recent kernel (2.6.31) and with
kernel-modesetting (KMS, specified by loading i915 with the option
"modeset=1").

New features in 2.8.0 compared to 2.7
-------------------------------------
* Remove XAA/EXA/DRI1 and NoAccel, and only support UXA/DRI2 now
  (requiring xserver 1.6).

* VLD support added into XvMC for Mpeg2, which decreases CPU usage
  when playing video.

Major fixes in 2.8.0 compared to 2.7
------------------------------------
* Fix broken front-buffer rendering
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19174

* Fix disabling of XvMC disabled
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20790

* Fix broken VT switch on some machines
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19578

* Improve performance of trapezoid rendering for UXA
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21376

* Vblank sync'd GL buffer swap (fixing video tearing under composite)
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20664

* Fix G41 DRM support
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21095

* Fix crash on some 8xx
  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18974

Various fixes for GPU hangs, and more...

Snapshot 2.7.99.902 (2009-07-13)
--------------------------------
This is the first release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.8.0 release. Most major and critical bugs should be fixed, but some
minor bugs may still be present. We will appreciate any feedback we
can get from testing of this snapshot to improve the 2.8.0 release.

Snapshot 2.7.99.901 (2009-06-10)
--------------------------------
This is the first release candidate in preparation for the upcoming
2.8.0 release. Most critical bugs should be fixed, but some major
bugs may still be present. We will appreciate any feedback we can
get from testing of this snapshot to improve the 2.8.0 release.

Some of the major fixes in this snapshot include:

	* Several fixes for intermittent GPU hangs/crashes, (some of
	  which already appeared in the 2.7.1 release)

	* Fix to avoid X crash when viewing large images in browser

	* Fix X server failure when running old (non-GEM) kernel

	* Fixes for SDVO LVDS mode detection

	* Fix major performance regression of trapezoid rendering
          compared to XAA/EXA

	* New support for tear-free video when using KMS

	* New support for tear-free DRI2 CopyRegion

Snapshot 2.7.99.1 (2009-04-28)
------------------------------
This is a development snapshot very early in the process toward
developing 2.8. There have been some big changes to the code, and
we're anxious to get feedback on these changes as early as possible.

Here is a summary of the biggest changes:

  * Driver now depends on X server 1.6 or later

  * Eliminate XAA and EXA support (in favor of UXA)

  * Eliminate DRI1 support

  * Fixes for running without DRI at all

These code removals represent a deletion of a substantial amount of
code, (and hopefully piles of bugs), as well as reduce the maintenance
effort going forward as the number of combinatorial configurations for
the driver are greatly reduced. This means that users are much more
likely to be running code that has actually been tested, and it will
be much easy for developers to replicate bugs that users experience.

One of the things that would be most useful in testing this release is
to revisit any outstanding bugs that you have previously reported. If
the buggy behavior is gone, (or the bug is no longer relevant---such
as a bug that's specific to XAA only), please feel free to indicate so
in bugzilla or even just close the bug.

If you confirm that the bug is still present, please indicate so in
the bug report. (I was going to ask that you select a 1.7.99 version,
but it looks like bugzilla only has versions for products not
compoenents, while we use a "xorg" product and a "driver/intel"
component.) We definitely want to make any such confirmed bugs a
priority, so it would be nice to have a consistent mechanism to search
for these bugs. Suggestions are welcome on the best approach.

Thanks in advance for any testing or feedback on this snapshot.

Release 2.7.0 (2009-04-15)
--------------------------
Compared to the 2.6 series, 2.7.0 has a large number of bug fixes, but
also a few significant features, such as:

        SDVO-TV support, available on ADD2 card (bug#9992) and
        D945GCLF2 board (bug#17776).

        Basic SDVO-LVDS support

        XV video display without tearing
	[Though this isn't working for all users yet, see
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21076 ]

	Various fixes for UXA, DRI2, and Kernel modesetting.

We encourage users to use kernel modesetting and UXA acceleration with
this release, which should give the best performance and
robustness. When KMS is available, UXA is the default acceleration
used by the driver, (EXA is the default otherwise).

Known issue:

	Some Linux kernel versions (such as 2.6.29) are known to have
	broken PAT code that causes recent versions of this driver to
	fail, (which can manifest as the X server simply not
	starting). This can be verified by adding the "nopat" option
	to the kernel command-line and seeing the failure go away. We
	hope that newer kernels in the 2.6.29.x as well as 2.6.30 and
	above will have working PAT code.

Some of the most notable bugs fixed in 2.7.0 include:

	[GM45 965GM] bad htotal causes panel startup failure
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17292

	[xrandr TV] need TV output property control
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12763

	[TV] "xrandr --set TV_FORMAT" gets BadMatch error
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16566

	[945 tiling] Low performance due to no A17 workaround
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16835

	[TV]Flicker when launching applications in the 2.4-branch
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17405

	[945GM FBC] FBC causes underruns & flicker
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18651

	[xv] Textured video suffers from tearing
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19635

	[G45] Random hangs with UXA
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19734

	[945GM] Any 3D app is slow in resolution higher than 800x600
	with UXA+DRI2, due to tiling
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19738

	[i915 UXA,EXA] rotation messes display with tiling on
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20265

	[G45] DRI2/UXA gives solid white instead of transparency
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20321

	LVDS output not detected
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20517

	xf86-video-intel-2.6.3: Xv crashes X server
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20525

	[G965 non-GEM] systray in KDE 4 completely broken
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20527

	[SDVO-TV]the desktop is teared in four sections on the screen
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20550

	Intel video driver 2.6.3 crashes with XVideo
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20563

	[855GM] Xv crash with non-KMS
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20585

	2.6.99.902 breaks native 1680x1050 mode on TMDS -- EDID miss
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20594

	[945GM TV] 2.6.99.902 sets a too high CONTRAST-value
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20670

	[915GM] fail to detect LVDS with new VBT code
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20752

	[regression i965]tiled output when start X
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20803

	2.6.99.902: LVDS wrongly detected as disconnected
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20826

	vt switching fails and crashes X
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20863

	[HDMI] The screen will flicker when some application runs on
	G45-64
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20875

	TexturedVideo is offsetted wrongly on dualhead
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20980

	[EXA] xvideo hang X
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21027

	[EXA] x11perf performance regression
	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21029

	And many others...