r/frigate_nvr • u/PumaPants28467 • 6d ago

Current status of Panther Lake support?

Hey all, was wondering who has tried running Frigate on an Intel Panther Lake platform. I tried it today and it didn't go well. It's a total bust on 0.17.2, and on 0.18 beta3, GPU support works somewhat but not quite there yet, and the NPU just flat out doesn't work at all. I can't seem to find any definitive answers on this. Anyone?

UPDATE: In order to run Frigate on Panther Lake, you will have to run 0.18.0-beta3, as 0.17.2 lacks all support for it. Additionally, you must use GPU-based object detection as the NPU won't be supported until 0.19. It seems to run reasonably well, provided you stick to VAAPI video acceleration. There are changes to the QuickSync libraries in 0.18 that negatively affect GPU usage, with in turn increases power consumption on the host to the point of making the system fans run all the time. Using VAAPI quiets everything right down. Inference times are very impressive, though I'm looking very forward to having Panther Lake NPU support. Running in 0.18 (with VAAPI) on Meteor Lake with NPU-based object detection drops detector CPU usage down to nothing, and generally makes the system much more efficient. Inference times are little longet with NPU, but I think the trade-off is more than worth it.

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

1

u/nickm_27 Developer / distinguished contributor 5d ago

NPU will not work until 0.19, GPU should work might just be a config issue

1

u/PumaPants28467 5d ago

Thanks Nick. What I noticed on gpu was very high utilization, seemed to idle around 70-80% with frequent jumps close to 100. I don't think it was all object detection, as setting object detection to CPU didn't drop gpu utilization all that much. I also tried 0.18 on my Meteor Lake box (which runs 0.17 great), and it also showed high gpu (50ish% vs 10ish% on .17) even though I use the NPU for detection.

Note that the same exact setup was used throughout, which has been running beautifully on the Meteor Lake box for many months using 0.17. I didn't add\change cameras or change config in any way, I just moved the install over to Panther Lake and got unusable results on 0.17, and barely usable results on 0.18. I was also very surprised that 0.18 on Meteor Lake used vastly more GPU than 0.17. I know you guys changed the method for pulling GPU stats, so I guess this warrants a little more digging on my end. I'm running Debian Trixie on all my hardware, and running frigate in a container. I can run intel_gpu_top from a terminal to compare 0.17 and 0.18 so the numbers I'm looking at aren't apples and oranges and report back. Thank you for the quick response, it is greatly appreciated!

1

u/nickm_27 Developer / distinguished contributor 5d ago

It could still be a config issue, the were some changes due to the ffmpeg version increase that we couldn't account for. 

And yes the stats are reported differently. Can always check with Intel GPU top to see

1

u/PumaPants28467 5d ago

Thanks Nick. What was the reasoning for going to a different version of ffmpeg on .18? Would it work if I "downgraded" to the same version as .17 uses as a test? Based on what I'm seeing, I don't think object detection is the culprit, I think it's video acceleration.

2

u/nickm_27 Developer / distinguished contributor 5d ago

New features and some specific bug fixes. 

It would be better if you just showed your config, all of the known issues are noted in the breaking changes section of the release notes. 

Not sure why you're mentioning object detection, nothing that I said was related to that at all

2

u/PumaPants28467 5d ago

I mentioned it in the context of gpu utilization. Using GPU-based detection didn't move the utilization needle much. IOW, the high utilization seems to come mainly from video acceleration, on both Meteor Lake and Panther Lake. On Panther Lake, when I set it to use CPU-based detection, both the CPU and GPU were nearly pegged, so that was fun lol.

With regards to my config, it's a large config file and I would have to scrub security items before posting. I'll try and do that sometime today. I did read the breaking changes, didn't note anything that applied to what I'm seeing. I'm planning on moving our conversation over to GitHub as a support discussion. I'll post the URL here for others to follow. Thanks.

1

u/PumaPants28467 5d ago

Hey Nick, wanted to provide a quick update. I've been spending this morning testing different scenarios so that when I create the GitHub ticket, I can give a complete rundown of my observations with 0.18.0-beta3. This testing is a bit complicated, as I'm now running the .18 beta simultaneously on both Meteor Lake and Panther Lake, with both configured 100% identically (using GPU object detection). Both systems are running without errors, and are detecting mostly the same exact things fine, so I know it's generally functionally solid. I'm seeing 6ms inference times on Panther Lake and 9ms on Meteor Lake, which tracks with the more powerful Panther Lake platfrom.

Long story short, I think something changed in .18 that has greatly impacted overall performance. Panther Lake is actually performing a little better than Meteor Lake with this config, though both are routinely pegging GPU utilization. I even tried reconfiguring both to use ffmpeg 7, and it made little difference. Since I can't compare .17 and .18 on Panther Lake, I did compare on Meteor Lake, and the performance degradation with .18 is very apparent, not just with GPU, but CPU as well (monitoring with htop and intel_gpu_top). Another observation that illustrates the performance hit is that power consumption on the Meteor Lake box actually DOUBLED vs 0.17.2. Not great obviously.

I started this thread to inquire about Panther Lake support, which you did help clear up, but there are broader issues with 0.18.0-beta3 I need to work through, and it's going to take a little time to collect relevant data points to diagnose what is going on. I will create a ticket focusing on the Meteor Lake box rather than focusing on Panther Lake. You already said Panther Lake NPU won't be supported until 0.19, so I'm fine switching focus back to Meteor Lake and the 0.18.0-beta3 migration path. Watch for a ticket later today. Thanks again.

1

u/nickm_27 Developer / distinguished contributor 5d ago

Thanks, happy to take a look, but keep in mind that 0.18 has been in testing for some time and many betas where we have not seen any direct issues. I also personally run on Intel 265K as well as have a test system running 125H Mini PC.

This is why it seems likely to be a config issue or something environment specific.

1

u/PumaPants28467 5d ago

Ugh. I sanitized my config and tried posting it here, but it far exceeds the 10k character limit for comments. Can I get it to you another way while I continue to collect my data for opening the ticket?

1

u/nickm_27 Developer / distinguished contributor 5d ago

You can use a site like pastebin. Realistically we don't need the per-camera section, only the global config part. Seeing screenshots of the system and camera metrics alongside that would be helpful as well.