VPU Recover White Paper
Introduction
Hardware crashes can be frustrating, as they seem to come out of nowhere and
interrupt work or gameplay. This is especially true when there seems to be no choice
but to restart the computer and risk the loss of valuable work.
As part of its mission to deliver the ultimate in visual experiences, ATI has developed
a solution that prevents certain types of hardware crashes. This new solution is called
VPU Recover.
Why is VPU Recover needed?
Hardware crashes may occur when a hardware device and the corresponding
software device driver are no longer able to communicate with each other. With
Visual Processing Units (VPUs), these crashes may occur when the graphics engine
stops responding to display driver commands. In the past, users would normally be
forced to reboot their computer, often resulting in lost work and productivity. VPU
Recover prevents many of these situations from happening and turn system reboots
into a last measure solution.
How does VPU Recover work?
VPU Recover enables the ATI display driver to detect when the graphics processor is
no longer able to respond to display driver commands. When this hang occurs, the
display driver will attempt to reset the graphics hardware, enabling users to continue
using the computer without interruption or lost work.
Depending on the current state of the system when VPU Recover is activated, open
applications may be able to fully recover from the graphics processor reset. In other
cases, running applications may be closed and the user will be returned to the
Windows desktop.
Should the computer be unable to fully recover from a crash, VPU Recover will switch
the system to software rendering mode, enabling users to save their work before
restarting the system. Under rare circumstances, the hardware hang may be severe
enough that the graphics processor will be unable to recover. In these cases, a system
reboot will still be required.
TM
When VPU Recover is activated, a dialog box will prompt users if they would like to
submit an automatically generated error report to ATI. This report helps ATI to
determine the cause of the hang and will lead to faster resolution of the issue,
resulting in a more stable driver. If users prefer not to be prompted to submit an
error report to ATI whenever the program is activated, this prompt may be disabled
on the VPU Recover control panel.
VPU Recover Control Panel
The VPU Recover control panel as seen in Figure 1 contains two options:
Figure 1. VPU recover Control Panel
‘Enable VPU Recover’: Checking this option enables VPU Recover. When the
option is not checked, other controls in the VPU Recover control panel are
grayed out.
‘Prepare an error report if VPU Recover is activated, for submission to ATI
Technologies’: Selecting this option enables VPU Recover to prepare an
automatically generated error report to ATI via email. After VPU Recover has been
activated, the following dialog box will appear (Figure 2):
TM
Figure 2. Error Report Dialog Box
If ‘Send Error Report’ is selected, an email application (such as Microsoft®
Outlook®) will be launched, and en email including the following information will be
sent o ATI:
• Driver version
• Error Report Format version
• AGP speed
• AGP version supported
• Graphics processor device ID
• Graphics processor vendor ID
• Graphics processor Subsystem ID
• Chipset device ID
• Chipset vendor ID
• Error flags
• System memory size
• Graphics frame buffer size
• Engine clock
• Memory clock
• Internal ASIC status, including register values and command buffer data
If users click on ‘Don’t Send’ the dialog box will close, and the error report will not
be sent.
Conclusion
VPU Recover substantially improves the end-user experience by handling graphics
hardware crashes in a much more graceful manner.
ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC.
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Telephone: 886-2-2396-7711
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Copyright 2003, ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. ATI, SMARTGART, RADEON, are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and/or product names are
trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Features, performance and specifications may vary by operating environment and are subject to change without notice.
Products may not be exactly as shown. Printed in Canada. 09/03