# Iteration 6 — Phase 8 (close)

Closes 2026-05-12. iter6 = Bug 6 (VP8 partial output post-iter5b-β) targeted; root-cause narrowed but **not fixed**. iter6 closes PARTIAL with the narrowing as the iter6 deliverable. Bug 6's actual fix lives in kernel territory, outside iter6's Phase 1 locked scope.

## Summary

| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Iteration target | Bug 6 — VP8 libva output diverges from kdirect (74.8% zero with real keyframe content) |
| Hardware | RK3399 hantro-vpu-dec for VP8 |
| Fork tip start (iter5b-β close) | `70196f8` |
| Fork tip end (iter6 close) | `70196f8` (unchanged — no patches landed) |
| Phase 1 criteria | 5/6 PASS, 1/6 PARTIAL |
| Bug 6 status | **narrowed to kernel-side (H-E)**; backend-side fix not available |
| Campaign scoreboard | unchanged from iter5b-β close: 5/5 with 2 direct (VP9, MPEG-2) + 3 mixed (H.264 keyframe-partial, VP8 partial-with-Bug-6, HEVC transitive-only with Bug 5) |

## Deliverable: Bug 6 root-cause narrowing

Phase 3 systematically eliminated 4 of 5 hypotheses via empirical investigation:

| Hypothesis | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| H-A — slice data corruption in libva path | **ELIMINATED** | libva-dumped slice 0 (300614 bytes) byte-identical to raw VP8 frame 0 from .webm post-header (SHA `9e74956c…`). |
| H-B — `slices_size` wrong on OUTPUT QBUF | **ELIMINATED** | slices_size = fp_size + sum(dct_part_sizes) = 22742 + 277872 = 300614 exactly. |
| H-C — CAPTURE-side cache coherency | **ELIMINATED** | VP9 uses same `image.c::copy_surface_to_image` path and works fine. msync attempt empirically no-op (output hash unchanged). |
| H-D — CAPTURE slot rotation mismatch | **ELIMINATED** (Phase 3 Candidate K) | Instrumented bind + read sites; slot v4l2_index matches between BeginPicture and vaGetImage for every surface tested. destination_data[0] pointer matches slot->map[0]. |
| H-E — kernel-side hantro VP8 partial-write quirk | **CONFIRMED by elimination** | The control bytes are right, the slice bytes are right, the buffer pointers are right, the slot indices are right. Yet the kernel writes only a partial subset of the frame to the CAPTURE buffer (per-frame transition rows: frame 0 Y row 536, frame 0 UV row 134, frame 1 Y row 24 — erratic). |

The libva backend is doing the right thing on the V4L2 protocol surface. The kernel-side hantro VP8 driver writes partial content to the CAPTURE buffer.

This narrowing is iter6's deliverable. Future investigation (iter7 or kernel-agent work) needs ftrace, hantro source-read, possibly a kernel patch.

## Per-criterion verdict

| # | Criterion | Verdict | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | VP8 libva == kdirect | **PARTIAL** — kernel-side bug confirmed via systematic elimination, not fixed | post-β VP8 hash `bcc57ed5…`, kdirect `136ce5cb…` |
| 2 | VP9 unchanged | **PASS** | `4f1565e8…` == kdirect (iter5b-β state preserved) |
| 3 | MPEG-2 unchanged | **PASS** | `19eefbf4…` == kdirect (iter5b-β state preserved) |
| 4 | H.264 keyframe-partial unchanged | **PASS** | `71ac099b…` (Bug 4 still deferred) |
| 5 | HEVC unchanged | **PASS** | `06b2c5a0…` all-zero (Bug 5 still deferred) |
| 6 | Control-payload anchors hold | **PASS** | No control-submission code changes in iter6 |

5 of 6 PASS. Criterion 1 PARTIAL: the locked goal of `libva_vp8 == kdirect_vp8` not reached, but Phase 3 narrowed it from "unknown" to "kernel-side H-E confirmed."

## Cost of iter6

- Phase 0+1+2+3 docs.
- 0 fork commits (no patches landed).
- ~3 hours of diagnostic instrumentation (slice-data dump, msync test, slot-index logging) all reverted at end of Phase 3.
- Substrate unchanged: fork tip `70196f8`, backend SHA `2c6ff82c…`. Net delta on fresnel: nil.
- Net deliverable: Phase 3 narrowing doc with crisp H-A/B/C/D elimination + H-E confirmation. The hypothesis space for future Bug-6 work shrinks from 5 → 1.

## Lessons distilled

### Transitive-proof blind spots (re-confirmed)

iter3 closed VP8 via "transitive PASS" verifying specific control fields (`first_part_size`, `first_part_header_bits`) matched kdirect. iter5b-β unblocked VP8 from the OUTPUT-format mismatch. iter6 Phase 3 confirmed: control payload is byte-identical to kdirect, slice data is byte-identical to the raw .webm, slices_size is correct — and the kernel STILL produces wrong output.

iter3's transitive proof, iter5b-β's β refactor, and iter6's Phase 3 narrowing are all consistent with each other. The kernel-side partial-write (H-E) was masked by the OUTPUT format mismatch pre-β (all-zero output regardless of what else was right). Once β fixed the format, H-E became visible.

Same shape as iter2-HEVC + Bug 5: transitive proofs against ONE artifact (control payload) don't catch bugs in OTHER artifacts (the kernel's actual decode behavior).

### Phase 3 instrumentation hygiene

iter6 Phase 3 added/reverted instrumentation three times (slice dump, msync, slot indices). Each rebuild + run + analyze cycle was ~5 minutes. Total instrumentation overhead: maybe 30 minutes across 3 cycles. The discipline of "add diagnostic, run, revert" worked — fresnel ends at clean SHA `2c6ff82c…` identical to iter5b-β close.

Worth a memory note: **instrument-revert workflow is fast and safe for empirical narrowing**. Future Phase 3 work should embrace the same pattern instead of trying to deduce from source alone.

### iter6 didn't need Phase 4-7 because the Phase 3 verdict was "kernel-side, out of scope"

The 8(+1)-phase loop assumes Phase 3 narrows the fix site and Phase 4 plans the fix. When Phase 3 narrows OUT OF SCOPE (e.g., kernel-side when the iteration locked backend-only), Phase 4 onwards is moot. iter6 closes from Phase 3 directly to Phase 8 with the narrowing as the deliverable.

This is a legitimate close pattern, not a process violation. The dev process allows for "Phase 3 → Phase 0 loopback" or "Phase 3 → iteration close PARTIAL" when the empirical evidence demands it. iter6 demonstrates the latter.

## Phase 4 cross-cutting backlog status (iter6 increment)

Unchanged from iter5b-β close:
- iter4-B1 device-discrimination: still open.
- iter4-B2 mpv-vaapi create-device: still open.
- iter4-Q6, COLOR_RANGE, B3-B6, L3: all still open.

iter6 NEW backlog items:
- **Bug 6 narrowed to H-E**: kernel-side hantro VP8 partial-write. Per-frame Y plane transitions at varying rows (536, 24, ...). Not slot rotation, not cache, not slice corruption, not bytesused. Investigation surface: hantro driver source (hantro_g1_vp8_dec.c likely), ftrace at kernel for VP8 decode path, possibly a hantro-VP8 kernel patch.

## iter6 → iter7 handoff

Substrate at close:
- Fork tip `70196f8` (iter5b-β + Commit D). Identical to iter6 open.
- Backend SHA `2c6ff82c…` on fresnel. Identical to iter6 open.
- Kernel unchanged.
- Test fixtures unchanged.

Candidates for iter7 Phase 0:
- **Bug 6 H-E kernel-side fix** — heavy, kernel work. Aligns with original iter5 Candidate B scope (vb2_dma_resv era kernel patches, plus new VP8 partial-write fix).
- **Bug 4 H.264 inter race-loss** — backend or kernel; iter4 partial work history.
- **Bug 5 HEVC DQBUF FLAG_ERROR** — iter2's transitive PASS masked it; need to find the V4L2 protocol gap between libva-HEVC and kdirect-HEVC.
- **iter4-B1 auto-detect harden** — backend, ~100 LOC, quality-of-life.
- **Re-anchor regression hashes on β substrate** — establish iter7+ regression invariants.

User picks at iter7 Phase 0 lock.

## Memory rule note (deferred)

iter6's lesson about Phase-3-empirical-revert workflow is worth a memory entry; defer the write to iter7 close or to a dedicated memory-curation session.
