MCUboot with LVGL MIMXRT1160_EVK causes incredible lag

[RafalHalik]

Describe the bug
I've been working with the LVGL sample in zephyr for the 1160, touch screen did need to be looked at but that's solved now. However when I decided to flash MCUboot onto the device and then load into my very basic LVGL app it seems to slow down considerably. On the screen I have a button, arc slider, btn matrix and an animation example from LVGL docs webpage. The animation is just to visually perceive the lag as the fps counter from LVGL is stuck at 33fps even though you can clearly see its much lower.

So far from my testing I've concluded that the LVGL app just as a bin flashed on works with no problems its responsive and the UART console is also responsive. Where as when a vanilla MCUboot built for mimxrt1160 is flashed onto the device then the signed image flashed, it seems to slow down to a crawl and this is not just the graphics but the UART console too. So its not just a lvgl_flush_thread issue of it being cpu starved but the whole app.

Currently I've only really noticed one difference between the regular app and the MCUboot loaded app. This being another 2 devices on the board SPI bus and a child node on the spi bus. Not sure if this is the cause of the lag but thought I'd mention it

Touch screen help
link to helpful issue page for anyone also struggling with touch screen: (#75178 (comment))

Please also mention any information which could help others to understand
the problem you're facing:

• Devices: MIMXRT1160_evk with rk055hdmipi4ma0 display
• Currently no work around for this issue
• With touch disabled the issue is this prevalent

Side note: I was also looking into enabling VG_Lite to see if this helped but was not able to get the includes resolved seems to be missing the files completely in zephyr?

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. build mcuboot and flash

   • west build -b mimxrt1160_evk/mimxrt1166/cm7
   • west flash

2. build lvgl sample and flash

   • west build -b mimxrt1160_evk/mimxrt1166/cm7 --pristine -- -DSHIELD=rk055hdmipi4ma0
   • west sign -t imgtool -d build --no-hex -- --version 1.0.0 --pad --key /workdir/bootloader/mcuboot/root-rsa-2048.pem
   • west flash -f build/zephyr/zephyr.signed.bin

3. Open putty terminal or minicom to observe UART lag also display for lag.

Expected behaviour
App will load and start however this will take a while and the app with also be very slow.

Impact
Because of this developing using MCUboot and LVGL for the graphics library is no feasible as even with a basic app its far to slow to be useful. So a showstopper.

Extra code for animation

  static void anim_x_cb(void * var, int32_t v)
  {
      lv_obj_set_x(var, v);
  }

  static void anim_size_cb(void * var, int32_t v)
  {
      lv_obj_set_size(var, v, v);
  }

  void lv_example_anim_2(void)
  {
    lv_obj_t * obj = lv_obj_create(lv_scr_act());
    lv_obj_set_style_bg_color(obj, lv_palette_main(LV_PALETTE_RED), 0);
    lv_obj_set_style_radius(obj, LV_RADIUS_CIRCLE, 0);

    lv_obj_align(obj, LV_ALIGN_LEFT_MID, 10, 100);

   lv_anim_t a;
   lv_anim_init(&a);
   lv_anim_set_var(&a, obj);
   lv_anim_set_values(&a, 10, 50);
   lv_anim_set_time(&a, 1000);
   lv_anim_set_playback_delay(&a, 100);
   lv_anim_set_playback_time(&a, 300);
   lv_anim_set_repeat_delay(&a, 500);
   lv_anim_set_repeat_count(&a, LV_ANIM_REPEAT_INFINITE);
   lv_anim_set_path_cb(&a, lv_anim_path_ease_in_out);

   lv_anim_set_exec_cb(&a, anim_size_cb);
   lv_anim_start(&a);
   lv_anim_set_exec_cb(&a, anim_x_cb);
   lv_anim_set_values(&a, 10, 240);
   lv_anim_start(&a);
   }       

prj.conf file for my lvgl project

 CONFIG_MAIN_STACK_SIZE=2048
 CONFIG_DISPLAY=y
 CONFIG_DISPLAY_LOG_LEVEL_ERR=y     
 CONFIG_UART_CONSOLE=y
 CONFIG_UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN=y
 CONFIG_GPIO=y
 CONFIG_INPUT_GT911=y
 CONFIG_INPUT_GT911_INTERRUPT=n
 CONFIG_INPUT=y
 CONFIG_SERIAL=y
 CONFIG_LOG=y
 CONFIG_SHELL=y
 CONFIG_DMA=y
 CONFIG_MCUX_ELCDIF_PXP=y
 CONFIG_I2C=y
 CONFIG_I2C_SHELL=y
 CONFIG_LVGL=y
 CONFIG_LV_Z_MEM_POOL_SIZE=56384
 CONFIG_LV_Z_SHELL=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_PERF_MONITOR=y
 CONFIG_LV_MEM_CUSTOM=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_LOG=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_LABEL=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_BTN=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_ARC=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_IMG=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_GPU_NXP_PXP=n
 CONFIG_LV_FONT_MONTSERRAT_14=y
 CONFIG_LV_USE_GPU_NXP_VG_LITE=n
 CONFIG_LV_Z_POINTER_INPUT=y
 CONFIG_BOOTLOADER_MCUBOOT=y

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS: Linux
• Toolchain: Zephyr SDK

[dleach02]

@RafalHalik for clarity, what did you build in step 1 west build command:

1. build mcuboot and flash

• west build -b mimxrt1160_evk/mimxrt1166/cm7
• west flash

[RafalHalik]

Hey, @dleach02 I built mcuboot. this can be found in bootloader/mcuboot/boot/zephyr
Hope this helps.

[danieldegrasse]

@RafalHalik can you try to reproduce this with the changes in #80017? You will probably also want the patches from:

• boards: shields: rk055hdmipi4ma0: increase DSI clock for RT1160 #80586: fixes an issue with the DSI clock, otherwise the display won't start
• drivers: display: mcux_elcdif: rework frame completion logic #80591: fixes an issue with frame flickering due to incorrect logic around when a frame was done streaming within the eLCDIF

I believe the root issue was some incorrect logic with our SOC clock code that dropped the FlexSPI serial clock to 24MHz, severely limiting the performance of the flash. This would only run when the flash driver was enabled (which it will be with MCUBoot)

[RafalHalik]

@danieldegrasse just implemented your changes and it has drastically improved performance thankyou for your help.

[danieldegrasse]

@danieldegrasse just implemented your changes and it has drastically improved performance thankyou for your help.

Of course. I'll close this issue out once the linked PRs merge, unless you are still seeing any performance issues you believe are related to this.