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What truth is there in HWA?


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iv always seen benefits enabling this...

before it was even in the developer settings, back on gingerbread

video.accelerate.hw=1

debug.performance.tuning=1

You not serioulsy believing adding a simple line to build.prop gives you ICS like 2D Acceleration in Gingerbread, don't you? There are tons of such tweaks, but they all can't conjure up missing APIs and other framework implementations. In Gingerbread UI rendering is done by software Skia graphic engine, only composing can be accelerated by the GPU. Take at look at this great article: http://developer.mip...hics-subsystem/

And watch this very interesting presentation of the Android graphic architecture developers:

[media=]

and its not just me, nearly every other custom rom had it enabled.
That does not make it better. You are right at the point, that apps that don't have been optimized to newer android API and missing the android:hardwareAccelerated="true", can benifit from forcing 2D acceleration. But, here is a statement from Dianne Hackborn about forcing HWA:

And the reason this isn’t just turned on for all existing applications is that some types of drawing operations can’t be supported well in hardware and it also impacts the behavior when an application asks to have a part of its UI updated. Forcing hardware accelerated drawing upon existing apps will break a significant number of them, from subtly to significantly.
And here a quotation from Googles official development site:

However, because hardware acceleration is not supported for all of the 2D drawing operations, turning it on might affect some of your applications that use custom views or drawing calls. Problems usually manifest themselves as invisible elements, exceptions, or wrongly rendered pixels.

if you check a stock ICS rom form a google device like the nexus s (witch i did) you will see the above is turned on by default in most places...
You don't even need to set hardwareAccelereated="true" when the app is written for API level 14 and higher, because then it gets used by default. And yes, HWA is there in much places, but how often should I repead myself. Google also turend off 2D acceleration off in some parts on the Nexus S where you wouldn't see any difference.

but when you look at the same apps in huawei's rom they have it turned off by default android:hardwareAccelerated="false"
Look above. This isn't because of problems, but to save ram and increase opening speed.

PLEASE READ/WATCH THE LINKS I POSTED. They are really interesting and give you an idea how 2D acceleration works in general.

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Guest tillaz

It's not a "problem" with the app. It simply cannot be 2D hardware accelerated. Many apps are the same, and that's why the hardwareAccelerated parameter exists.

Okay, you've seen benefits, you keep telling us about how it totally transformed your device, but that does not mean it's not a developer setting for a reason.

if other i aps can be built to use it, why not this one ?

why are you going on like i said its "not" a developer option ? i never said anything like that...

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Guest tillaz

You don't even need to set hardwareAccelereated="true" when the app is written for API level 14 and higher, because then it gets used by default. And yes, HWA is there in much places, but how often should I repead myself. Google also turend off 2D acceleration in some parts on the Nexus S where you wouldn't see any difference.

my point was you can see witch app is using it or has it turned off by looking for this

Look above. This isn't because of problems, but to save ram and increase opening speed.

the nexus s has the same specs as the g300... so i cant see why they would turn it off every where Google intend it to be turned on...

and after they have, its still runs much worse that the nexus s stock rom...

so what your saying is that there is no problem with this in huawei's rom and its working fine ?

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Guest Dazzozo

if other i aps can be built to use it, why not this one ?

why are you going on like i said its "not" a developer option ? i never said anything like that...

Let me show that in a different way. Why would Google feel the need to even include the hardwareAccelerated parameter if everything can be simply built to use it?

Some apps have their own custom view controls that gain nothing out of hardware acceleration if it was to be turned on, and actually end up breaking them if it is turned on. Others use functionality that isn't available through hardware acceleration and it has to be disabled for those certain activities or whole apps.

Know how I know? I watched the video G00fY2 linked. Quite informative, but you just insist on blindly reiterating the same statements. I am by no means an app dev, but it's fairly obvious these things are designed as platforms, and there are plenty of use cases for different options. That's why languages like C#, C++, Java and whatever are used all over the place - they can be used for anything because they don't just impose restrictions because "no one would have a use for it anyway".

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Guest tillaz

Know how I know? I watched the video G00fY2 linked. Quite informative, but you just insist on blindly reiterating the same statements.

no i don't..

my point is, why would huawei disable it every where Google have it enabled... and still end up with much worse results on a phone with the same specs

hardware acceleration obviously has benefits for the apk they turn it on for, otherwise why would they do it... why not turn it all off, if it saves ram...

do you think there is no problem with the hardware acceleration in the stock roms ?

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Guest Dazzozo

no i don't..

my point is, why would huawei disable it every where Google have it enabled... and still end up with much worse results on a phone with the same specs

hardware acceleration obviously has benefits for the apk they turn it on for, otherwise why would they do it... why not turn it all off, if it saves ram...

Here we are again, cherry picking a small portion of what I said and ignoring some major points. Again, did you watch the video? I'm basically just quoting it.

Yes. It has benefits for the apps it is enabled for. However, it also has drawbacks for the apps it also isn't enabled for. Are you with me this time?

We really don't need hardware acceleration, as stated in the video. We're getting to a point where the CPU can quite easily speed it up for us, as stated in the video. It came about for tablets, as we don't quite have the power to handle that many pixels in skia, as stated in the video.

Huawei's judgement would've come down to "does it negatively effect the user experience". That is, not the nerd experience. You said it yourself, it runs like crap when you force it. Whether that's because it's broken or not is irrelevant. Does it run worse, yes, disable it for the majority of the UI. Huawei aren't going to compare with different devices -- users aren't concerned with that, they own a G300, not a Nexus S. They are concerned with the user experience of their ICS build, which is reasonable and acceptable.

It's not turned off globally because, as stated in the video (there's a pattern here isn't there?) we don't have the CPU power to cope with that many pixels in skia (when we take in to account the fact it's a 7x27A which isn't the greatest platform on the planet, and that's not me saying it's a bad platform either). It's a balance. Lets use some RAM and some CPU because it's a budget device.

Again, whether Huawei's actual OpenGL renderer is broken is another question and irrelevant here, and whether I agree with the judgement of manufacturers is also a different question. I'm out. This is just getting silly.

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the nexus s has the same specs as the g300... so i cant see why they would turn it off every where Google intend it to be turned on...
Sorry but this is nonsense. Maybe the Nexus S has the same amount of ram, but the G300 uses a Cortex A5 CPU, the Nexus S a Cortex A8 with higher data bus and stuff like L2 cache! Also the Nexus S has a SGX540 GPU with at least twice display sub-system pipelines than our crappy Adreno 200. You should better inform yourself than just saying both device have same power because you read about "1GHz Single-Core". So you can't say, that Huawei's Rom is the reason why ICS is not running as smooth as on the Nexus S!

so wait your saying is that there is no problem with this in huawei's rom and its working fine ?

Never said this. But I think Huawei consciously disabled 2D acceleartion on some parts. So it's no bug or mistake from their point of view.

I think you have a very naive idea of GPU acceleration! Cause if the GPU is to slow to render a frame within the 16ms pulse for 60FPS, or the CPU is to busy to handle the rendering process for the GPU (yes, the CPU is still needed for this), the UI smoothness can still drop. So giving the GPU to much work can be counterproductive. Only in JB and project Butter Google optimized this. There the GPU rendering mechanisms are linked to the Vsync pulse. Also they implemented a triple buffer for some situations. But this just makes sense with more hardware power.

my point is, why would huawei disable it every where Google have it enabled... and still end up with much worse results on a phone with the same specs
If you would read my posts you would now better. Already posted the statement from Dianne Hackborn about Google handling HWA on "not High-End" devices:

Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc.

Also I can just totally agree what Dazzozo said. :)

Edit: My text got somehow messed up after first posting. I have corrected it now.

Edited by Guest
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Guest tillaz

Here we are again, cherry picking a small portion of what I said and ignoring some major points. Again, did you watch the video? I'm basically just quoting it.

Yes. It has benefits for the apps it is enabled for. However, it also has drawbacks for the apps it also isn't enabled for. Are you with me this time?

We really don't need hardware acceleration, as stated in the video. We're getting to a point where the CPU can quite easily speed it up for us, as stated in the video. It came about for tablets, as we don't quite have the power to handle that many pixels in skia, as stated in the video.

Huawei's judgement would've come down to "does it negatively effect the user experience". That is, not the nerd experience. You said it yourself, it runs like crap when you force it. Whether that's because it's broken or not is irrelevant. Does it run worse, yes, disable it for the majority of the UI. Huawei aren't going to compare with different devices -- users aren't concerned with that, they own a G300, not a Nexus S. They are concerned with the user experience of their ICS build, which is reasonable and acceptable.

It's not turned off globally because, as stated in the video (there's a pattern here isn't there?) we don't have the CPU power to cope with that many pixels in skia (when we take in to account the fact it's a 7x27A which isn't the greatest platform on the planet, and that's not me saying it's a bad platform either). It's a balance. Lets use some RAM and some CPU because it's a budget device.

Again, whether Huawei's actual OpenGL renderer is broken is another question and irrelevant here, and whether I agree with the judgement of manufacturers is also a different question. I'm out. This is just getting silly.

you making it get silly i just asked a couple off questions...

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you making it get silly i just asked a couple off questions...

No YOU make it silly. Before asking anything, just watch and read the stuff we posted. Otherwise this makes no sense and I will ignore any further posts from you about this topic!

Posting any build.prop tweaks and saying this would force 2D acceleration on Gingerbread. Joke of the year...

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I dont get why you two cant just get along, not everyone in the world is going to have the same opinion or see things the way you do...That doesnt make them an idiot or ignorant, it just means they agree with something you dont.

Too many times people have argued about something so trivial and it has ended really badly,The whole point of the forum is to share opinions and learn...and no matter how hard people push you ,you shouldn't let it break....Just move on and have a beer :D

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Guest bladebuddy
I dont get why you two cant just get along, not everyone in the world is going to have the same opinion or see things the way you do...That doesnt make them an idiot or ignorant, it just means they agree with something you dont.

Too many times people have argued about something so trivial and it has ended really badly,The whole point of the forum is to share opinions and learn...and no matter how hard people push you ,you shouldn't let it break....Just move on and have a beer :D

Couldn't agree more. Will even buy the beer.

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Guest awarner

Right a ton of pointless and insulting posts removed.

Guys please play nice, this is supposed to be a community.

Please respect other members and post in a polite manner and in some instances agree to disagree.

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