Using USB3 to HDMI adapter based on SMSC chipset under Linux

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27 May 2013 Comments

There is a lot of USB universal docking stations or display output (HDMI, DVI, D-SUB) adapters. Most of them is based on DisplayLink (not Display Port) or SMSC chipsets. Those adapters or docking stations are handy for Ultrabooks or other laptops as they provide a lot of connectors - USB, Ethernet or multi-display capabilities.

When using Linux you are limited to older DisplayLink adapters (USB2 based). The USB3 chipsets are not supported (from what I know). SMSC USB3 chipsets have a Kernel as well as X.org drivers, but it's not that straightforward to use them under Linux. In this short article I'll look at SMSC based adapter and software provided by the manufacturer

Gembird A-USB3-HDMI adapter

I got a Gembird A-USB3-HDMI adapter and tried to use id. Similar looking adapters are available under different brands too. The adapter can be connected to USB2 or USB3. From the screen side it can be connected to HDMI or DVI (adapter included) displays. It doesn't seems to put much load on the CPU. It uses SMSC UFX7000 chipset.

On Windows after installing the drivers it works nicely. Under Linux we have Kernel driver from some time. It gives a new framebuffer device (dev/fb2) when the adapter is connected. Thats isn't enough to use the adapter easily and efficiently. We need an X.org driver. It is available on SMSC website but to download it you have to register (as a company) and wait for account activation. That's quite annoying and time consuming. I've made a "mirror" on github, but still you have to accept the license to use the drivers and ViewSpan application.

Drivers and ViewSpan application

The drivers are old. Release notes say that they are compatible and tested with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and RHEL-6/CentOS 6. It did work on on 10.04 LTS LiveCD. I've installed the drivers and ViewSpan application. Then configured the driver in that application, re-logged-in and the display connected via the adapter come to life. It did not work on Ubuntu 13.04.

The ViewSpan application uses Xinerama to configure the adapter and is not compatible with XRandr present in newer distributions like the 13.04 Ubuntu. It makes a xorg.conf file and I wasn't able to modify it in such way that it would work with new Ubuntu. There may be some driver issues too (no error, but maybe there are some ABI changes making the driver unusable).

If you get an SMSC based adapter working with XRandr please share the X.org config - either via Github or other channel.

RkBlog

Linux and programming, 27 May 2013

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Improving Celeron J1900 gaming performance by connecting external graphics card to PCIe x1 2.0 slot

Low power Bay Trail, Celeron or AMD APU Athlons, Semprons are storming the market allowing users to create quiet or even fanless PCs for multimedia or daily home use. Most of motherboards offer PCIe connect, but as a limited to x4 (AMD) or x1 (Intel) version. We can connect a USB3 or Firewire 800 PCIe controller to it, but can we use an external graphics card to improve the gaming performance of such low power quiet PCs? Can PCIe x1 2.0 can provide enough bandwidth for the GPU to perform at a good or acceptable level? Or maybe can it give some extra features like CUDA cores or multiple display support that can be used to some specific tasks?

In this article I'll test and compare three basic and cheap graphics cards I got from local bidding site quite cheap. Will Celeron J1900 be able to run games faster and what will be the difference between x1 and x16 on a classical motherboard?

Monitoring AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics card usage under Linux

Graphics card resource usage monitoring is quite rare. Most desktop widgets and applications will just show CPU and RAM usage. There are however tools that can be used to monitor AMD, NVIDIA and Intel graphics cards under Linux. It can be used for fancy graphics or to locate the weakest chain in the GPU rendering process when trying to determine why some tasks are so slow.

Benchmarking Celeron J1900 on Xubuntu Linux

After building a PC with Celeron J1900 it's time to run some benchmarks. Aside of other Intel CPUs there are AMD competitors like new Sempron and Athlon 25W CPUs with good graphics or the old E-350 still available on the market. Most of them are similarly priced.

To run benchmarks I've used phoronix benchmark tool, as well some bootchart for system boot up time charts and power usage monitor to check how much power the PC is taking.