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XSCHEM GRAPHICS PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATIONS

For 2D graphic workloads software rendering on framebuffer device is the fastest option on almost all laptops i have tested xschem on. The only exception is the little Samsung N220 due to the slow and tiny Atom N450 CPU.
Framebuffer graphics is also the most precise and reliable since the X11 specification has exact rules for pixelization/rasterization of primitives.
All drawings are thus exactly identical down to the pixels on any machine using fbdev.
Following table summarizes the test times for a xschem BIST routine, doing lot of graphic (among other) operations.

HOST                CPU                    GPU                    X11 Driver    Test time [s]
=============================================================================================
Asus F556U          Intel core i7-7500U    Intel HD 620            fbdev         19.8 -best-
Asus F556U          Intel core i7-7500U    Intel HD 620            modesetting   28.7
Asus F556U          Intel core i7-7500U    Intel HD 620            intel         20.6

Samsung N220        Intel Atom N450        Integrated N450         fbdev         96.5
Samsung N220        Intel Atom N450        Integrated N450         modesetting   N/A
Samsung N220        Intel Atom N450        Integrated N450         intel         95.0 -best-

Samsung R540        Intel Core i3 M 380    AMD/ATI Radeon HD 54xx  fbdev         31.9 -best-
Samsung R540        Intel Core i3 M 380    AMD/ATI Radeon HD 54xx  modesetting   64.3
Samsung R540        Intel Core i3 M 380    AMD/ATI Radeon HD 54xx  radeon        32.3

HP Pavilion DV6000  Intel Core Duo T5450   NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS fbdev         41.5 -best-
HP Pavilion DV6000  Intel Core Duo T5450   NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS modesetting  216.1
HP Pavilion DV6000  Intel Core Duo T5450   NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS nouveau       41.6
 

Following video shows the testing in action (OS: Devuan/testing, Arch: amd64):