Kernel support for graphics cards

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Sun, 8 Jan 2006 23:04:44 +1100 Dave Airlie <airlied at gmail.com> babbled:

> On 1/8/06, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler <raster at rasterman.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:23:23 +1100 Bojan Smojver <bojan at rexursive.com>
> > babbled:
> >
> > > I read Keith's excellent paper "The (Re)Architecture of the X Window
> > > System" (http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xarch_ols2004/xarch-ols2004-html/)
> > > and was encouraged by the direction that X is finally taking - the one of
> > > rapid and modern development.
> > >
> > > I do have a few questions in relation to kernel support for graphics
> > > cards though. Is hardware support for graphics cards in X going to be
> > > marked deprecated in the near future (i.e. in favour of complete
> > > Linux/*BSD/Solaris/<insert_flavour_here> kernel support)? If yes, will
> > > it be accompanied by the dual release of X (i.e. one source tree with
> > > deprecated hardware drivers, one with "hands-off" hardware), like we've
> > > seen in the case of modularisation? And finally, is there a page on
> > > freedesktop.org wiki that deals with the transition (specs for kernel
> > > folks, status of kernel drivers, roadmap etc.)?
> > >
> > > PS. What prompted me to ask this is the following sentence from the
> > > paper: "All of these systems directly manipulate hardware registers
> > > without any coordination among them." That really scares me - it almost
> > > sounds like the mess that DOS used to be...
> >
> > quick answer: no.  kernels are not going to have graphics drivers any time
> > soon
> > - if ever. :)
> 
> Well your not going to see hardware acceleration and things in the
> kernel, but they're are a number of us that believe we need to
> rearchitect things a lot in order to support EGL etc.. the moving of
> the modesetting and monitor handing to a separate process with a
> defined API which runs apart from whatever rendering engine is in use,
> also a centralised video memory manager based in the kernel (with
> userspace library doing a lot of the work). This would leave EGL to
> run and the current X server could be converted to use the framework
> and the drivers in the X server would just contain XAA or EXA
> acceleration (converted to run on the modesetting and memory manager).

well i admit i took liberties with "graphics driver" terkminology - but i am
assuming it to mean what most people understand it to mean - ie a driver that
gives access to all the functions of your graphciws device. eg - draw lines,
blit, full, set up modes, draw other primitives, do all the 3d drawing, etc.
etc. etc. etc. THAT is not going to be in the kernel. :)

> The work needed is fairly major, but just needs some focused effort
> most likely from a paid developer to actually get it done.. (it's not
> the most glamourous work and it's most definitely not suitable for a
> newbie programmer...)
> 
> I'll be updating the presentation I gave last year at DDC/KS on the
> future of Linux graphics for LCA in a couple of weeks, and I'll put it
> up afer that..
> 
> Dave.
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> 


-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com
裸好多
Tokyo, Japan (東京 日本)