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SubjectRe: OpenGL-based framebuffer concepts
Dave Airlie wrote:
> So far we have no memory management, and most of the plans I've seen
> involved using a userspace system to do it, really we just want the
> fbdev driver to be able to ask the DRM, so where the hell is the
> frontbuffer, if the DRM is loaded and if it isn't just say I'm using
> here.

The kernel will need to do some amount of arbitration, some amount of
scheduling between competing processes. Doing a lot of that in
userspace seems a bit questionable.


> And won't as long as you fight against it, we don't have to force X to
> use it, we have to make it an option in X that distros turn on... we
> have to let the X people keep doing their drivers the way they do
> drivers... I'm still not convinced putting modesetting in kernel is at
> all necessary, I think a simple MMIO parser to stop bad commands from
> getting to the hardware is all we should need, modesetting normally
> consists of a small number of operations.
>
> Write register,
> Read register,
> Wait for something to happen (vblank, bit set in a register X times..)

Kernel needs to do suspend/resume, interrupt handling, DMA mapping, ...

Further, whatever the Linux kernel chooses to do, the X server will follow.

History has proven that it is COMPLETELY BROKEN to allow X to dictate
these basic architectural decisions. X11's ancient and broken PCI bus
handling is a testament to this. Tons of polling everywhere, rather
than cleanly handling events in interrupts, is a further testament.

If we do it right, X will follow. As will FreeBSD and other OS's.

Jeff


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