[FAQ] GPU acceleration

Note

Not to be confused with GPU-accelerated video decoding

1. Overview

All WayDroid-ATV builds work with GPU acceleration by default, or software rendering (SwiftShader + ANGLE) in the following situations:

• When your GPU is unsupported
• An incompatible GPU kernel driver is in use (for example, nvidia_drm)
• Explicitly specified with ro.waydroid.software_rendering in waydroid_base.prop/waydroid.cfg

For Android gralloc implementation, it depends on the GPU vendor and generation:

• minigbm_intel for Intel GPUs with i915/xe kernel driver
• minigbm_amdgpu for GFX8+ AMD GPUs (Radeon 300 series or newer)
• minigbm_nouveau for NVIDIA GPUs
• minigbm_vmwgfx for VMware SVGA adapter
• minigbm_gbm_mesa for other GPUs

2. Supported GPUs

The following GPUs are supported:

• Intel iGPUs with i915 or xe kernel driver
• AMD GPUs starting from GCN 1.0 with amdgpu kernel driver
• [Experimental] NVIDIA GPUs starting from Kepler with nouveau kernel driver (Turing or newer is recommended)

3. Force software rendering

Try this if you are experiencing graphical issues or using an unsupported GPU.

Append the following line to /var/lib/waydroid/waydroid_base.prop:

ro.waydroid.software_rendering=1

4. Troubleshooting

4.1. Waydroid window keeps crashing

Try switching gralloc implementation to minigbm_gbm_mesa first:

sudo mkdir -p ~/.local/share/waydroid/data/misc
echo 'ro.hardware.gralloc=minigbm_gbm_mesa' | sudo tee ~/.local/share/waydroid/data/misc/waydroid_settings

If that doesn't work, try forcing software rendering

4.2. The "Unsupported NVIDIA kernel driver" warning

Only the nouveau kernel driver is supported currently. Switch to nouveau and try again.