Paul de Weerd [we...@weirdnet.nl] wrote: > > Probably the updates to your (now graphical) terminal. Time is spent > updating the frame buffer. Consider it a feature: you can now > (better) read along with what's happening ;) > > A workaround is to start processes that produce lots of output in a > shell that isn't constantly outputting to the actual display (e.g. in > a VT but switch away after starting, or in tmux but switch to another > window after starting...) >
On most hardware, the text console under KMS really shouldn't be bad at all. Hardware that is very old but still supported by inteldrm will be much slower. It might be worth discussing text/VT console slowdowns with KMS on misc if you're using something newer than an intel 828xx video setup. Text mode performance is within the domain of the kernel's video code. Mark Kettenis tried some tricks that made text quite fast, but hung some chips, so the OpenBSD code was reverted to match Linux. Under X, KMS performance should be faster on a lot of hardware. The whole point of KMS is to bring modern, better supported drivers to OpenBSD (and get rid of the crappy X security model). If something performs worse under X+KMS, that may be worth discussing too. X performance depends on both the kernel and the X video driver. There are constant iterations happening here. It's nice to see regular updates of vendor-supported graphics code going into the tree. This stuff will keep evolving before the 5.5 release. KMS also gives people a chance to play with stuff like Wayland. Wayland which attempts to get rid of the inefficiencies of the X protocols.
