3D support for Displaylink devices

[Prasanna Kumar T S M]

Garry,

My first name is "PrasannaKumar". I will use my full name to prevent 
confusion :).

I want 3D acceleration for running Compiz or GNOME3 or KWin with 
composition. Currently windows Displaylink driver compresses and 
transfers pixel data where there is a change (only damaged area is 
transferred) to reduce the amount of data transfer. It is able to play 
HD video without dropping frames. So I think that 3D acceleration and 
video playback acceleration is possible. High end games cannot be played 
but the normal 3D and video operations should work without any issues. 
When displaylink introduces USB 3.0 devices the bandwidth issue will go 
away (I remember reading in Wikipedia that displaylink is working on a 
USB 3.0 product).

The displaylink framebuffer driver that comes with linux (udlfb) also 
compresses and transfers only the damaged region to conserve the USB 
bandwidth. Also CPU usage for doing the compression is very less making 
it ideal for mobile devices (may be an android mobile). 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-bLOc1qnMM&feature=player_embedded shows 
android mobile with displaylink device. When a mobile phone is able to 
power a high resolution graphics normal desktops and notebooks can do 
provide good quality output.

PrasannaKumar Muralidharan

On 31-05-2011 15:36, Garry Hurley Jr. wrote:
> Kumar
>
> I am going to make the assumption that your culture puts the family 
> name first, so please excuse me for calling you Kumar if that is not 
> your given name.
>
> As to your question, I think I understand what you are asking for and 
> I was thinking similar things about displaying over ethernet about 
> five years ago. The problem is complex due to video refresh rates and 
> the latency of the connection. You would not get the same performance 
> on a video game, for example, unless you dropped a few dozen frames 
> per second, since the USB bus is slower than the PCI bus or even the 
> ISA bus. If you are talking about 3D acceleration, I presume you want 
> to game with it. The solution may lie in buffering, but again, your 
> performance would suffer unless you took the quality down a notch. 
> From the gamers I know, dropping quality for performance is a very 
> tricky balance. Each one is different about the quality he or she will 
> allow to be dropped in a game but when that balance is tipped, they 
> will complain or switch to a different technology.
>
> I am not saying it is not possible, but I am asking if, knowing this, 
> you truly feel it is worth the effort to try to implement it.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 30, 2011, at 1:30 PM, PRASANNA KUMAR 
> <prasanna_tsm_kumar at yahoo.co.in 
> <mailto:prasanna_tsm_kumar at yahoo.co.in>> wrote:
>
>> USB graphics devices from displaylink does not have 3D hardware. To 
>> get 3D effects (compiz, GNOME 3, KWin, OpenGL apps etc) with these 
>> device in Linux the native (primary) GPU can be used to provide 
>> hardware acceleration. All the graphics operation is done using the 
>> native (primary) GPU and the end result is taken and send to the 
>> displaylink device. Can this be achieved? If so is it possible to 
>> implement a generic framework so that any device (USB, thunderbolt or 
>> any new technology) can use this just by implementing device specific 
>> (compression and) data transport? I am not sure this is the correct 
>> mailing list.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Prasanna Kumar
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