Fixing KWin's performance on old hardware
KWin in KDE improves performance on older Intel integrated graphics in Wayland by optimizing rendering deadlines, introducing triple buffering, and benefiting systems with AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Plasma 6.1 integrates these enhancements for smoother performance.
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KWin, a window manager in KDE, has addressed long-standing performance issues on older Intel integrated graphics in its Wayland session. The issue stemmed from missed rendering deadlines causing stuttering. To tackle this, KWin implemented a scheduling mechanism to optimize rendering closer to deadlines by measuring GPU render times. Additionally, a form of triple buffering was introduced to improve rendering efficiency without increasing latency excessively. These changes have shown significant improvements, especially on older Intel laptops with high-resolution screens, where triple buffering is always active, resulting in smoother performance. The enhancements have also benefited systems with dedicated GPUs, like AMD and Nvidia, by optimizing rendering processes. The latest Plasma 6.1 release incorporates these improvements, ensuring triple buffering is only active when rendering exceeds a refresh cycle, maintaining low latency, and working across different GPU types. Overall, these updates have enhanced performance on various systems, providing smoother frame rates and reducing stuttering during display rendering.
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1 comments> Instead of assuming we always need the whole frame for rendering, KWin measures how long rendering takes and could start compositing closer to the deadline, which reduced latency.
Is called "frame pacing" in video games. I believe browsers do it too for requestAnimationFrame
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