ARM Mali 400 performance analysis using the DS-5 Streamline

Hi Ravinder,

Based off the counter names and descriptions that DS-5 Streamline gives you:

a) Mali-4xx Software Counters: Geometry Statistics: Triangles

"The total number of triangles passed to GLES per-frame."

b) Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Fragment rasterized count

"Number of fragment rasterized. Fragments/(Quads*4) gives average actual fragments per quad."

c) For bandwidth you will need 4 counters:

Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Total bus reads

"Total number of 64-bit words read from the bus."

Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Total bus writes

"Total number of 64-bit words written to the bus."

Mali Vertex Processor: Mali-4xx VP: Words read, system bus

"Total number of 64 bit words read by the GP2 from the system bus per frame."

Mali Vertex Processor: Mali-4xx VP: Words written, system bus

"Total number of 64 bit words written by the GP2 to the system bus per frame."

Add those 4 together will give you the complete GPU Bandwidth used. Multiply this number by 8 to get the value as Bytes.

d) This is actually non-trivial due to Streamline being a time based profiling tool.

There is a counter that 'may' be enabled in your BSP:

Mali-4xx Filmstrip: 1:10

"captures every 10th frame"

If you can use this, you can visually see how many thumbnails are produced in your capture and multiply by 10. This is obviously only accurate to within 10 frames.

Another method, assuming you are not vertex limited, is to measure the time between Vertex Activity spikes. Each frame is 'likely' to only issue one vertex activity spike. Note in some composition environments like android's triple buffering composition, there will be a second smaller spike per frame.

Another is to use streamline annotations and mark eglSwapBuffers so you can see when they are called on the timeline.

If you have sourcecode access however, you may find it best to just measure within the app itself.

I hope that helps.

Kind Regards,

Michael McGeagh

Hi Ravinder,

Based off the counter names and descriptions that DS-5 Streamline gives you:

a) Mali-4xx Software Counters: Geometry Statistics: Triangles

"The total number of triangles passed to GLES per-frame."

b) Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Fragment rasterized count

"Number of fragment rasterized. Fragments/(Quads*4) gives average actual fragments per quad."

c) For bandwidth you will need 4 counters:

Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Total bus reads

"Total number of 64-bit words read from the bus."

Mali Fragment Processor: Mali-4xx FP: Total bus writes

"Total number of 64-bit words written to the bus."

Mali Vertex Processor: Mali-4xx VP: Words read, system bus

"Total number of 64 bit words read by the GP2 from the system bus per frame."

Mali Vertex Processor: Mali-4xx VP: Words written, system bus

"Total number of 64 bit words written by the GP2 to the system bus per frame."

Add those 4 together will give you the complete GPU Bandwidth used. Multiply this number by 8 to get the value as Bytes.

d) This is actually non-trivial due to Streamline being a time based profiling tool.

There is a counter that 'may' be enabled in your BSP:

Mali-4xx Filmstrip: 1:10

"captures every 10th frame"

If you can use this, you can visually see how many thumbnails are produced in your capture and multiply by 10. This is obviously only accurate to within 10 frames.

Another method, assuming you are not vertex limited, is to measure the time between Vertex Activity spikes. Each frame is 'likely' to only issue one vertex activity spike. Note in some composition environments like android's triple buffering composition, there will be a second smaller spike per frame.

Another is to use streamline annotations and mark eglSwapBuffers so you can see when they are called on the timeline.

If you have sourcecode access however, you may find it best to just measure within the app itself.

I hope that helps.

Kind Regards,

Michael McGeagh

Hi Michael and Peter,

Did you get chance to look in to the streamline log I shared. 

I am seeing  in a frame VP has some activity followed by some idle time and followed by PP has some activity.

Here my questions are,

1. why VP and PP activity is not parallel, why one after another?

    Am I doing something wrong where the parallelism is not possible?

2. Why there is a idle time in my application ? why cant PP start immediately?

    I am not using the Vsync, and  I have double buffering in my processing.

3. I am running QT based OpenGLES2.0 Application with a simple Vertex shader and a simple Fragment Shader.

I need your support in analyzing .

Thanks,

Ravinder Are

As I said before, Streamline isn't going to help answer questions about idle time. It's a performance profiler - you can't profile "nothing running" - all of the counters are zero.

The cause of (1) and (2) are probably the same thing. Serialization means idle time and things not overlapping.

Usual suspects:

• Window system fences for framebuffers not being released by the previous user of the buffer (normally the display controller or compositor).
• Vsync and less than 3 framebuffers buffers
• Application CPU load is too high (e.g. CPU limited) - doesn't look like it in your case
• Application calling sleep()
• Application using glFinish, glReadpixels, or waiting on an OpenGL ES level synchronization primitive and draining the rendering pipeline.

Less likely suspects:

• Kernel not processing interrupts quickly enough (e.g. another driver is disabling IRQs, and not re-enabling them for a long time).

HTH,
Pete

Thanks Peter Its useful information