Bug 38044

Support for TV Out display on a Pineview platform seems to be unstable. 

1) Description of problem:

On the Composite and S-video displays, there is a flickering/tearing of dynamic video output. The Linux.wmv file attached to this issue illustrates the problem. Static images are rendered fine as long as nothing is updated on the primary LVDS screen. The flickering/tearing DOES NOT happen on VGA, DVI and Component outputs.

2) Hardware configuration:

- Atom 1.6GHz N270 processor, with the 945GSE graphics controller(PCI ID: 27AE), ICH7M chipset, no external display cards. Output of the Linux lspci command pasted 

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0116 (rev 07)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point HECI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b2)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point LPC Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cougar Point SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point Thermal Management Controller (rev 02)

- Dual display configuration from the motherboard - LVDS and one of DVI/VGA/TV(Component, Composite or S-video outputs).

- Always have LVDS as the primary display - at 800x600 resolution.

- Secondary display configuration - starting at 640x480, upto a maximum of 1280x720.

- Have DVI and S-video physical output ports - Picture of physical outputs attached to issue.

  - use a DVI-VGA adaptor to stream VGA.
  - use a S-video to 4 port RCA adaptor for Composite, Component and S-Video.

- Chrontel CH7307C-DEF SDVO-DVI adaptor used.

- Video RAM size : 256MB

- Use DDR2 SDRAM with 567MHz primary bus speed.

- Use configurations of 512MB, 1GB & 2GB SDRAM capacities.



3) Software configuration:

******************************************
TO SIMPLIFY REPLICATION - USE Ubuntu 11.04
******************************************

- Custom Linux distribution, primarily cross-compiled from source.

- Linux kernel, Xorg, IBM JRE, bash, SDL, other GTECH modules as primary components.

- 2.6.31.7 Linux kernel from kernel.org with patches for the unionfs file system, USB devices, Makefile changes for cross-compilation etc.uname output attached.

- The drivers/gpu/drm/ directory in kernel patched to 2.6.32.24 for enabling widescreen resolutions.

- Xorg version primarily 7.4, with custom updates to individual modules. Uses kernel mode setting (KMS) for the display modes, and DRI2 for the direct rendering portions. Xorg startup log attached.

- Xorg Intel video driver version 2.9.1.

- Xorg server version 1.7.0.

- XRandr version 1.2

- One extended virtual surface with both the physical displays combined, for Xorg. But data output to both display pipes independent of each other. LVDS output is at offset 0,0, while the secondary display is at offset 800,0.

- Xorg config file attached to issue.


4) Workarounds tried/Other observations:


- Updated the Linux kernel graphics stack - the drivers/gpu/drm directory, as mentioned above.

- Tried having both displays output the same data - clone mode.

- Tried having the TV output as the primary. 

- With Fedora 10 installed, there is no flickering of the display. The kernel version is listed as 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686, and the Xorg server version is listed as 1.5.3. This kernel version does not have KMS.

- With Fedora 14, Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 10.10 the problem is visible, even in console mode with no Xorg running.

- Problem not seen with Fedora 14 in another variant of the 945GSE platform, with the GMCH having the PCI ID 27A2.

- The same software stack does not have any issues on GTECH hardware that has the 965GME chipset.