GPU-Acceleration in Firefox?

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TK1
1

Hello everyone,

I noticed in Firefox (the “about:support” page) that the ‘WebGL Renderer’ and ‘GPU Accelerated Windows’ features are disabled because of an old graphics driver version. Firefox says:

GPU Accelerated Windows: 0/1 Basic Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version NVIDIA 257.21 or newer.

and

WebGL Renderer: Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version NVIDIA 257.21 or newer.

I’m using L4T 21.2 (Grinch). Is there any way to enable this GPU support?

2

I don’t think anyone has managed to get Firefox accelerated, and I don’t think anyone has gotten GL accelerated. The closest I’ve seen is accelerated video playback in Chromium: [url]http://elinux.org/Tegra/Downstream_SW/Linux4Tegra/WebBrowsers/Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding[/url]

3

I think the WebGL should work accelerated on Chromium:

[url]http://elinux.org/Tegra/Downstream_SW/Linux4Tegra/WebBrowsers[/url]

4

In Chromium, I always just end up here:

// software_rendering_list_json.cc
...

{
      "id": 47,
      "description": "NVIDIA linux drivers older than 295.* are assumed to be buggy",
      "cr_bugs": [78497],
      "os": {
        "type": "linux"
      },
      "vendor_id": "0x10de",
      "driver_vendor": "NVIDIA",
      "driver_version": {
        "op": "<",
        "value": "295"
      },
      "features": [
        "all"
      ]
    },

NVIDIA X Server Settings says I have NVIDIA Driver Version 21.3, which, compared to 295, is indeed a very small number.

5

The larger number (295) is a driver release number, the 21.3 is not a driver release, it is the version of the L4T operating system the driver runs on. The question is whether the WebGL queries in such a way that it erroneously gets 21.3 and not the real driver release number…this would be a smoking gun as to the cause of the failure.

6

How would I query to get a driver release number above 295 (or null, …) in L4T?

7

This would depend on the application doing the query. In this case, the video decoding in firefox…probably a plugin like WebGL, but I’m not familiar with it. Where did the original driver release output come from that said 21.3?

8 
jma@flatline:~$ nvidia-settings -q NvidiaDriverVersion

  Attribute 'NvidiaDriverVersion' (flatline:0.0): 21.3
  Attribute 'NvidiaDriverVersion' (flatline:0[gpu:0]): 21.3

jma@flatline:~$ nvidia-settings -g

  ...
  OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
  OpenGL renderer string: GK20A/NullRM/AXI
  OpenGL version string: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 21.3
  OpenGL extensions:
  ...
9
10

(duplicate)

11

Most of what you are looking at is either a system release or an OpenGL version. I’m curious where you found the nvidia-settings program to run on Jetson? I only have it on my workstation, I wouldn’t mind having it on Jetson.

I’m looking at a comparison of firefox “about:support” when run directly on Jetson (shows all Jetson info) versus remote display run from Jetson but displayed on my host (OpenGL/driver info is from host, all else from Jetson). WebGL renderer is the blocked component. Remote to my host it says “driver version” is “2.1.2 nvidia 331.67”, and WebGL is enabled. Run and displayed local to Jetson, it reports “driver version” as “4.4.0 nvidia 21.3”, which isn’t the real driver version. So either WebGL is using a bad query and getting the wrong version, or the system is offering a driver release number showing the wrong information. I would bet on the latter.

To know for sure though someone would have to trace down how the “about:support” page of firefox gathers its “Driver Version” information/field. Without knowing that it would be difficult to tell where to turn in the bug report.

12

nvidia-settings is in the ubuntu repo, apt-get install will find it