5.1. Chromium Browser - User Guide
5.1.1. Overview
On TI devices with IMG Rogue class GPU’s,The Chromium browser (available from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/) is accelerated using OpenGLES.
The version of Chromium that is build can be obtained with this command:
$ chromium --version
Chromium 126.0.6478.126 built on Debian trixie/sid, running on Debian trixie/sid
The version of Chromium shown here is the one that GPU acceleration is verified to work with.
5.1.2. Launching Chromium Browser
Danger
For security reasons it is suggested never to run Chromium as the root user. So it’s safe to create and switch to another user and then run chromium.
Note
--no-sandbox option is required only when running as root user.
To launch the Chromium browser:
Assuming you are logged in as the root user.
$ /usr/bin/chromium [url] --use-gl=angle --ozone-platform=wayland --no-sandbox [options]
e.g.
$ chromium https://www.ti.com --use-gl=angle --ozone-platform=wayland --no-sandbox
Will open www.ti.com in a windowed browser on the Weston desktop.
$ chromium https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html --use-gl=angle --ozone-platform=wayland --no-sandbox --start-fullscreen
Will open the aquarium 3d benchmark in a fullscreen window on the Weston desktop.
The --start-fullscreen switch will make the chromium browser consume the entire screen including overwriting the Weston menu bar.
This will start chromium and provided you have network connectivity to the internet from the TI platform it will connect to an example application that uses WebGL/Javascript and renders fish swimming in a fish bowl using the 3D GPU.
5.1.3. Graphics Feature Status
To see the GPU features that are in use, enter chrome://gpu into the Chromium URL/Navigation bar. A web page will be
rendered with this information. The below example shows what is enabled/disabled when GPU acceleration is working correctly
* Canvas: Hardware accelerated
* Canvas out-of-process rasterization: Enabled
* Direct Rendering Display Compositor: Disabled
* Compositing: Hardware accelerated
* Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
* OpenGL: Enabled
* Rasterization: Hardware accelerated on all pages
* Raw Draw: Disabled
* Skia Graphite: Disabled
* Video Decode: Hardware accelerated
* Video Encode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
* Vulkan: Disabled
* WebGL: Hardware accelerated
* WebGL2: Hardware accelerated
* WebGPU: Disabled
* WebNN: Disabled
If for some reason you suspect the GPU is rending something incorrectly, you can run chromium with GPU disabled
using the --disable-gpu flag:
$ chromium https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html --start-fullscreen --disable-gpu
To get raw performance numbers from the GPU, you may want to disable frame sync locking in Chromium. This will tell Chromium never to wait for VSYNC and render as fast as the GPU can achieve.
$ chromium https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html --start-fullscreen --disable-gpu-vsync --disable-frame-rate-limit
5.1.4. Limitations
Audio/video within the browser is not supported.
Hardware acceleration of video either decode or encode is not supported.
Minimize and Maximize buttons for the Chromium window are not supported.
5.1.5. Performance
5.1.5.1. Performance of WebGL Aquarium
Standard WebGL benchmarks available at these URLS: https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html
Run as the root user
Platform |
Performance FPS |
GPU Utilisation |
AM62x |
11 @ 1080p60 |
100% |
Note
GPU Utilisation is captured using,
root@<machine>:~# cat /sys/kernel/debug/pvr/status
5.1.5.2. Performance of MotionMark
Standard Javascript benchmarks available at these URLS: https://browserbench.org/MotionMark/
Run as the root user
Platform |
MotionMark v1.3 |
AM62x |
1.29 @ 1080p60 |