DisplayLink Releases New Mac Driver Beta (1.6 Beta 3)

Posted on 29. Sep, 2010 by in UGA-2K-A

DisplayLink has released an updated beta of their version 1.6 Mac drivers, available for download from their Mac forums. This is the first update in quite a few months, so it’s a good sign for Mac users.

The main feature of the new beta are fixes for some problems experienced on resume from sleep.

In terms of our general recommendations for Macs and Plugable’s DisplayLink-based products, we still want to emphasize that all Mac drivers are of a beta/pre-release level of quality compared to the Windows products. They still 1) are incompatible with recent MacBook Pros with switching graphics 2) disable the USB ethernet interface on docking stations like our Plugable dock. 3) are too frequently broken or fixed by Apple’s OS X updates — Apple often seems to be changing driver interfaces in subtle ways that affect USB graphics.

We expect and hope that support from both DisplayLink and Apple will improve in time, and we’ll be able to recommend the combination without qualification. Until then, it’s good to see releases like this for incremental progress.

What’s the Best PC for Running Multiple DisplayLink USB Monitors?

Posted on 21. Aug, 2010 by in Windows

One of our customers is building a six monitor setup on their PC for stock trading and ESignal Qcharts.

They asked: “What is the best Windows laptop and/or desktop to run six Plugable USB graphics adapters to get six monitors simultaneously on a single PC?” It’s a great question, because there are definitely ways to head off potential problems when you pick a PC. It really comes down to two main things to think about.

Intel Graphics Controller

First, for maximum compatibility with USB graphics products, pick a system with Intel-only graphics if possible. Here’s why:

  1. ATI and nVidia, because they’re shooting for the higher end, do more out-of-the-box things to try to differentiate their technology and software drivers. Sometimes those things can conflict with other complex software, like DisplayLink’s USB graphics drivers.
  2. In particular, look out for “switching” or “hybrid” graphics on laptops. These add a discrete nVidia or ATI GPU on top of the Intel GPU already in the chipset, for the purpose of providing switchable “high power” and “low power” graphics by enabling or disabling one or the other GPU. They attempt to do this switching without Windows noticing (just Like DisplayLink tries to add USB display outputs to the primary graphics controller without Windows noticing), but in combination this can cause conflicts. DisplayLink has made some progress with compatibility with these types of systems, but it’s still the #1 hardware compatibility issue we see for USB graphics.
  3. Even though nVidia and ATI provide higher 3D performance, they don’t have higher performance everywhere: in particular with USB displays, the rendered pixels must be transferred from the GPU back to the CPU to be sent over USB. When the GPU has its own memory on the other side of the PCI bus (as is the usually case with ATI and nVidia), those transfers back can be slow. With Intel chipset graphics, the pixels remain in system memory the whole time – which ends up being faster overall.
  4. Intel is in closer collaboration with DisplayLink than nVidia or ATI has been.
  5. Intel’s is the lowest cost solution. For business applications (like stock trading) with many displays, it makes sense to favor simplicity and compatibility over 3D gaming performance.

nVidia and ATI/AMD are great companies that produce high-performance products, and DisplayLink’s software rarely have problems with them. But as it happens the simplest and lowest cost solution is also the best choice for this particular application.

Mid-range or better CPU and Memory

Second, for the system itself, more memory and a faster CPU make a difference. Take the money saved on a high-end 3D processor, and funnel it back into the main CPU and memory that’ll make everything on your PC faster. But no need to go overboard – there’s usually a sweet spot.

For memory with Windows 7 and something like 6 USB displays, 2GB is enough .. although going to 4 or more will produce noticeable overall system gains (mostly because of all the additional apps you’ll be running to display on all those monitors). Even though Windows 7 is much improved over Vista, multiple monitors and many open applications still consume a lot of memory.

But just as important as the amount of RAM is the amount of cache. In the USB graphics case, memory and the memory controller is getting a lot of use, as pixels change on the screen (at least 4 times – when an application renders new pixels, when those pixels are composited on the desktop, when they’re copied to a shadow framebuffer, and when those changed pixels are compressed into USB packets). Note that once the changed pixels are sent over USB, the CPU isn’t involved anymore to refresh the display .. that work is all done by the hardware framebuffer on the USB device, so in terms of CPU load, it’s just about the pixels that are changing at any given moment.

So what to look for in the CPU’s memory controller? Faster memory interface and larger caches. Products change quickly, but currently Intel’s “Nehalem” microarchitecture provides the best alternatives. The sweet spot currently is with DDR3-1066 memory interface or better and at least 3 MB L3 cache. In terms of particular CPUs, that maps out to Intel CPUs like the the Core i3 530 or higher for the desktop, and the Core i3 330M or higher for laptops.

Hope that helps. Feel free to comment if you have any questions.

Workaround for Mac OS X Conflicts between DisplayLink and USB ethernet

Posted on 16. Jun, 2010 by in Using

[ Update April 27th, 2011. DisplayLink has fixed this issue in the production version 1.6 release of their Mac drivers. Please download the latest Mac drivers from DisplayLink ]

Plugable uses DisplayLink chips for USB graphics, and ASIX chips for USB Ethernet functionality. And we have both chips in devices like our Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Docking Station.

Unfortunately, on Mac OS X, there is a conflict between recent DisplayLink drivers 1.5+ and the Apple drivers (AppleUSBEthernet) for ASIX chips. The DisplayLink drivers appear to open other USB devices as part of enumeration. As a side effect, this causes USB ethernet devices to show as “disconnected” upon return from system boot or hibernate.

That’s in addition to other graphics and ethernet driver compatibility breaks that Apple’s recent OS X 10.6 updates have introduced, including breaking AppleUSBEthernet for non-Apple USB ethernet hardware.

Until these issues settle down and are fixed in the drivers from DisplayLink, ASIX, and Apple, here is a workaround for the current issues with the ethernet function of the Plugable Universal Docking Station:

Step 1 is to download and install ASIX drivers that are compatible with recent Mac OS X 10.6: http://plugable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/AppleDefaultDriver_v2.1.5.zip

Step 2 is to copy the following script to a file (call it “install”), and run “sudo ./install”

#!/bin/bash
sudo echo "#!/bin/bash" > /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo echo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEthernet >> /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo echo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEthernet >> /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo chown root /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo chmod o+x /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset
sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /usr/bin/plugable-eth-reset

Now, logging out and logging back in will automatically reload the ethernet driver. Unfortunately, this does not cover the return from low-power cases. Unless we find an improvement to the workaround, you’ll have to log out/log in or just run “sudo /usr/bin/eth-reset” so trigger the script.

As there may be variations in systems out there, please comment if you get different results, and we’ll post an update here at Plugable if (as we hope) this is fixed more directly in the DisplayLink or ASIX drivers in the future.

And, generally if you’re a Mac OS X user, please be cautious about OS updates which might break 3rd party hardware drivers. If you have non-Apple USB hardware, consider deferring updates until there’s time for other people to report on forums about compatibility.

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