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"Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

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Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#91

Post by elliottkember »

jorvi wrote: post #86
arghwhat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the cursor just uses an overlay plane, and mobile architectures usually have far more planes (sometimes even an arbitrarily configurable amount), and more flexible hardware compositioning overall than desktop GPUs for efficiency reasons. EDIT: Also note that there is nothing new with the Neo here, as all Macs since the M1 have used the same chip architecture as the iPhone. Desktop GPU designs did not focus on tin…

> Desktop GPU designs did not focus on tiny efficiency gains I'm not sure they're all that tiny if you can squeeze out 70% of top end performance for 25% of the power draw :)

I think the implication is they focussed on the huge efficiency gains, and didn't focus on the small ones?

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#92

Post by dcrazy »

Sidnicious wrote: post #81
exogen wrote: post #70

Before reading the background info, I was going to recommend a much simpler fix, but they actually already mention it in there: "Also the mouse cursor size can be changed." This was going to be my suggestion because it also fixed a similar CPU/GPU related issue many years ago: Apple's own TV.app would have minuscule color handling differences whenever subtitles would show during a movie. This was driving me nuts whil…

This issue was related to an old macOS optimization called "detached mode" or FSLP (fullscreen low power). There were related bugs in Chrome and Firefox: - https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41359717 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1747999 macOS skipped compositing when only a single fullscreen surface with a black background was being rendered, but there were many ways for that render path to misbehav…

Detached mode still exists on Apple Silicon. If you enabled the Metal HUD in a game it will tell you whether the game is rendering in Detached or Composited mode.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#93

Post by jetbalsa »

koiueo wrote: post #34
nok22kon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

linux was plagued for a long time by lagging mouse cursor

I've been using Linux every day for the last 17 years, and that's the first time I'm hearing this. I'm genuinely surprised. The way you word it, it looks like a famous ubiquitous problem. Mind sharing any details?

My latest and greatest ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 likes to do it sometimes on cachyos, I can't nail it down from a KDE or hardware issue as it never does it while docked or a external mouse

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#94

Post by qingcharles »

pbmonster wrote: post #59
TheTon wrote: post #8

I’m not sure what the bug is, but this is a terrible fix. What this is doing is forcing the WindowServer to composite the cursor rather than treat it as a hardware overlay. I suppose the issue must be pretty bad for OP if this helps, but … ugh.

Reminds me of a fix I wrote a decade ago. My Laptop would sometimes start emitting a high frequency whine when on battery. I figured out it only happened when the CPU went into performance states lower than P2 for power saving. So I wrote a bash script that auto-started on battery mode and then calculated a hash every few seconds. Boom, whine solved. Terrible fix, but I never measured how much battery it cost me, so…

Reminds me of some my USB HDDs that spin down and the only sane fix is to just "touch" a file every couple of minutes to keep them running.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#95

Post by fragmede »

thewebguyd wrote: post #84
PaulHoule wrote: post #82

One of the most damning indictments of current software architecture is the laggy mouse which we've all gotten used to on mainstream OS. The other day my son and I were sitting in front of the XBOX ONE we (try to) use as a Plex client and laughing about how showing a new logo while the machine is doing something meaningless to us is an act of brand destruction and that they should be showing us a Playstation logo ins…

Its also one of the most immediately visible degradations of user experience. The cursor is your agent to interact with the computer, an extension of your arm basically. It should be one of the most smooth and responsive pieces of an OS. I remember a long time ago, early days of Gnome 3 when doing large file operations would hang the cursor. It made the whole system feel like complete garbage, totally unacceptable. A…

It's debatable if the cursor working but not being able to interact with any of the screen elements is more or less janky than if the mouse is stuttering but you can interact with the elements on the screen.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#96

Post by refulgentis »

eptcyka wrote: post #45
arghwhat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The display controller and render device are completely distinct logical devices, even though they are often grouped in a "GPU". On mobile architectures they are quite far separated, leading to annoying problems surrounding what we on Linux call "split drm devices". Updating plane properties such as to move the cursor plane around or disable it would by itself not block on render activities, as they are completely di…

Since this is but an iPhone crammed into a laptop, could this behaviour stem from the fact that iPhones generally need not render a cursor?

Something is being misunderstood, here, it’s not an iPhone crammed into a laptop in a way that requires add’l software work. A simple analogy that fits is its a MacBook with cheaper parts and a M0 series chip.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#97

Post by BearOso »

TheTon wrote: post #8

I’m not sure what the bug is, but this is a terrible fix. What this is doing is forcing the WindowServer to composite the cursor rather than treat it as a hardware overlay. I suppose the issue must be pretty bad for OP if this helps, but … ugh.

Yeah. It simply shouldn't be falling back to a software cursor in the first place. That's the bug.

Re: "Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

#100

Post by rob74 »

elliottkember wrote: post #91
jorvi wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop GPU designs did not focus on tiny efficiency gains I'm not sure they're all that tiny if you can squeeze out 70% of top end performance for 25% of the power draw :)

I think the implication is they focussed on the huge efficiency gains, and didn't focus on the small ones?

At least for Nvidia and AMD desktop GPUs/cards, the priorities are:

#1 (by far) "can it play [hot game of the moment] in 4K?"

#2 (maybe) "is the fan noisy in desktop mode?"

#3 (for nerds) "can I run LLMs on it?"

I don't think top efficiency in desktop mode is on anyone's list, and even if it were, it would be hard to come up with a design that uses hundreds of watts when running top-tier games or LLMs, but also uses as little as possible when idle?

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