GSoC 2016

[Lukas Wunner]

Hi Mehul,

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 05:58:10PM +0530, Mehul Sawarkar wrote:
> I am Mehul Sawarkar from India .I want to be part of X.Org during GSoC
> 2016.I know C/C++.Please help me getting started with some easy task you
> might have in mind.What are some of prospective project ideas for GSoC 2016.
> I'll be happy to have your help and suggestions.

A few years ago there was a GSoC proposal to make hot GPU switching
a reality on Linux:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTIyMQ
https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2011-March/052522.html

Unfortunately nothing came of it. One still has to exit X, switch,
then restart X. It would be great to see progress in this area,
perhaps divide the work into some smaller manageable chunks
that can be worked on by multiple students.

Note that today pretty much the only dual GPU laptops that still
have an actual hardware mux are MacBook Pros. All others moved to
an architecture where the discrete GPU is merely used to offload
rendering and the results are copied over PCIe into the framebuffer
of the integrated GPU. That architecture is cheaper but less
capable. It doesn't yield the same power saving gains that are
possible with a hardware mux (which allows the integrated GPU
to be suspended when not used).

GPU switching support for pre-retina MacBook Pros (<= MBP 9,1)
is now queued for 4.6, you should be able to get one on ebay
without investing too much.

If you haven't seen it, there's also been a solicitation for
GSoC projects on xorg-devel:
https://lists.xorg-foundation.org/archives/xorg-devel/2016-February/048829.html

Best regards,

Lukas