[PATCH v4] drm: add overview diagram for drm stack

[Simona Vetter]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2025 at 08:28:30AM +0700, Bagas Sanjaya wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 06:18:47PM -0400, Abdulrasaq Lawani wrote:
> > Add an overview diagram of Linux DRM architecture for
> > graphics and compute to introduction.rst
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Abdulrasaq Lawani <abdulrasaqolawani at gmail.com>
> > ---
> > <snipped>...
> > diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/introduction.rst b/Documentation/gpu/introduction.rst
> > index 3cd0c8860b949408ed570d3f9384edd5f03df002..a8d3f953a470180b395ec52a45d0f3f4561424e0 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/gpu/introduction.rst
> > +++ b/Documentation/gpu/introduction.rst
> > @@ -14,7 +14,45 @@ including the TTM memory manager, output configuration and mode setting,
> >  and the new vblank internals, in addition to all the regular features
> >  found in current kernels.
> >  
> > -[Insert diagram of typical DRM stack here]
> > +Overview of the Linux DRM Architecture
> > +--------------------------------------
> > +::
> > +
> > +        +-----------------------------+
> > +        |     User-space Apps         |
> > +        | (Games, Browsers, ML, etc.) |
> > +        +-----------------------------+
> > +                      |
> > +                      v
> > +        +---------------------------------------+
> > +        |    Graphics APIs   |   Compute APIs   |
> > +        |  (OpenGL, Vulkan)  |  (OpenCL, CUDA)  |
> > +        +---------------------------------------+
> > +                |                   |
> > +                v                   v
> > +        +---------------------+  +-----------------------+
> > +        |  User-space Driver  |  |    Compute Runtime    |
> > +        |  (Mesa, AMD/NVIDIA) |  |  (OpenCL, CUDA, ROCm) |
> > +        +---------------------+  +-----------------------+
> > +                |                   |
> > +                +--------+----------+
> > +                         |
> > +                         v
> > +                +-----------------------+
> > +                |   libdrm (DRM API)    |
> > +                +-----------------------+
> > +                          |
> > +                          v
> > +        +-------------------------------------------+
> > +        |     Kernel DRM/KMS Driver (i915, amdgpu,  |
> > +        |     nouveau, etc.)                        |
> > +        +-------------------------------------------+
> > +                |                       |
> > +                v                       v
> > +        +----------------+     +-------------------+
> > +        | GPU Display HW |     | GPU Compute Units |
> > +        +----------------+     +-------------------+
> > +

I'm a bit late to the party, apologies. I'm not sure how much use there is
in an extremely simplified diagram like this, least because it's really
incomplete and leaves out the entire display and compositor side.

My idea was that we'd instead link to the large pile of introductory and
overview talks further down in this file, if people want to get an
overview over what drm does.

If you want I guess you could add some links to the relevant wikipedia
pages, I think they also do a fairly decent job of explaining the big
picture.

Thanks, Sima


> >  
> >  Style Guidelines
> >  ================
> > 
> 
> The patch LGTM, thanks!
> 
> Reviewed-by: Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme at gmail.com>
> 
> -- 
> An old man doll... just what I always wanted! - Clara



-- 
Simona Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch