Re: Kernel Display and Video API Consolidation mini-summit at ELC 2012 - Notes
From: James Simmons <hidden>
Date: 2012-02-22 16:03:29
Also in:
dri-devel, linux-media
From: James Simmons <hidden>
Date: 2012-02-22 16:03:29
Also in:
dri-devel, linux-media
quoted
Imo we should ditch this - fb accel doesn't belong into the kernel. Even on hw that still has a blitter for easy 2d accel without a complete 3d state setup necessary, it's not worth it. Chris Wilson from our team once played around with implementing fb accel in the kernel (i915 hw still has a blitter engine in the latest generations). He quickly noticed that to have decent speed, competitive with s/w rendering by the cpu he needs the entire batch and buffer management stuff from userspace. And to really beat the cpu, you need even more magic. If you want fast 2d accel, use something like cairo.Our conclusion on this is that we should not expose an explicit 2D acceleration API at the kernel level. If really needed, hardware 2D acceleration could be implemented as a DRM device to handle memory management, commands ring setup, synchronization, ... but I'm not even sure if that's worth it. I might not have conveyed it well in my notes.
Fbcon scrolling at be painful at HD or better modes. Fbcon needs 3 possible accels; copyarea, imageblit, and fillrect. The first two could be hooked from the TTM layer. Its something I plan to experiment to see if its worth it.