Wayland generic dmabuf protocol

[Thomas Hellstrom]

On 06/09/2014 01:23 PM, Daniel Stone wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 9 June 2014 12:06, Pekka Paalanen <pekka.paalanen at collabora.co.uk
> <mailto:pekka.paalanen at collabora.co.uk>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, 9 Jun 2014 11:00:04 +0200
>     Benjamin Gaignard <benjamin.gaignard at linaro.org
>     <mailto:benjamin.gaignard at linaro.org>> wrote:
>     > One of the main comment on the latest patches was that wl_dmabuf use
>     > DRM for buffer allocation.
>     > This appear to be an issue since wayland doesn't want to rely on one
>     > specific framework (DRM, or V4L2) for buffer allocation, so we have
>     > start working on a "central dmabuf allocation" on kernel side. The
>     > goal is provide some as generic as possible to make it acceptable by
>     > wayland.
>
>     Why would Wayland need a central allocator for dmabuf?
>
>
> I think you've just answered your own question further below:
>  
>
>     > On my hardware the patches you have (+ this one on gstwaylandsink
>     > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=711155
>     <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id%3D711155&k=oIvRg1%2BdGAgOoM1BIlLLqw%3D%3D%0A&r=l5Ago9ekmVFZ3c4M6eauqrJWGwjf6fTb%2BP3CxbBFkVM%3D%0A&m=NHSSDNdXVt2oCxexwhcqQAQSZ3K6Xa8Zvuv0jMYfS2c%3D%0A&s=f6d8c24d7fa4ccdacae79aeaa8221773d892350a191f96cb3bab4f542fb3ad1c>)
>     allow me to do zero
>     > copy between the hardware video decoder and the display engine. I
>     > don't have implemented GPU yet because my hardware is able to do
>     > compose few video overlays planes and it was enough for my tests.
>
>     Right.
>
>     What I have been thinking is, that the compositor must be able to use
>     the new wl_buffer and we need to guarantee that before-hand. If the
>     compositor fails to use a wl_buffer when the client has already
>     attached it to a wl_surface and it is time to repaint, it is too late
>     and the user will see a glitch. Recovering from that requires asking
>     the client to provide a new wl_buffer of a different kind, which might
>     take time. Or a very rude compositor would just send a protocol error,
>     and then we'd get bug reports like "the video player just disappears
>     when I try to play (and ps. I have an old kernel that doesn't support
>     importing whatever)".
>
>     I believe we must allow the compositor to test the wl_buffer before it
>     is usable for the client. That is the reason for the roundtrippy
>     design
>     of the below proposal.
>
>
> A central allocator would solve these issues, by having everyone agree
> on the restrictions upfront, instead of working out which of the media
> decode engine, camera, GPU, or display controller is the lowest common
> denominator, and forcing all allocations through there.
>
> One such solution was discussed a while back WRT ION:
> https://lwn.net/Articles/565469/
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=https://lwn.net/Articles/565469/&k=oIvRg1%2BdGAgOoM1BIlLLqw%3D%3D%0A&r=l5Ago9ekmVFZ3c4M6eauqrJWGwjf6fTb%2BP3CxbBFkVM%3D%0A&m=NHSSDNdXVt2oCxexwhcqQAQSZ3K6Xa8Zvuv0jMYfS2c%3D%0A&s=36b71b58f7fc6f3d594529cc674364a23718e5cbb38a439e4a9c628848a13b3a>
>
> See the 'possible solutions' part for a way for people to agree on
> restrictions wrt tiling, stride, contiguousness, etc.

Hi!

I think before deciding on something like this, one needs also to
account for the virtual drivers like vmwgfx.

Here, a dma-buf internally holds an opaque handle to an object on the
host / hypervisor, and the actual memory buffer is only temporarily
allocated for dma-buf operations that strictly need it. Not to hold the
data while transferring it between devices or applications.

Let's say you'd want to use a USB display controller in a virtual
machine with the vmwgfx exported prime objects, for example. There's no
common denominator. The vmwgfx driver would need to read the dma-buf
data from the host object at sg-table export (dma-buf map) time.

Whereas if you just want to share data between a wayland server and
client, no pages are ever allocated and the only thing passed
around is in effect the opaque handle to the host / hypervisor object.

I'm currently having trouble seeing how a central allocator would be
able to deal with this?

/Thomas











>
> Cheers,
> Daniel
>
>
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