"Shatter" Might Finally Materialize For The X.Org Server

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 12 June 2014 at 09:25 PM EDT. 7 Comments
X.ORG
The long-standing X.Org Server "Shatter" project might finally be revived by a student developer as an ultimate replacement to Xinerama.

Proposed as an "Endless Vacation of Code" (EVoC) project through the X.Org Foundation is Shatter. EVoC is similar to Google's Summer of Code but is a program run year-round and financed by the X.Org Foundation.

Shatter has long been talked about as a new feature for the X.Org Server to replace Xinerama. Shatter comes down to allowing the X.Org Server to split the rendering between multiple GPUs with each GPU covering different areas of a larger desktop.

A new African student developer from Cameroon, Nyah Check, has proposed working on Shatter with financing provided by the Endless Vacation of Code. Here's the synopsis for what he hopes to accomplish, "This project seeks to support shatter rendering in a multi-head Xephyr by dividing rendering between multiple Xephyr GPUs screens by using the impedance layer to the X server. This will comprise of polishing the current implementation of the impedance layer and testing for shatter rendering on two Xephyr GPU screens. This would be the scope of this summer's project which will eventually continue to completely add shatter and replace Xinerama by splitting the protocol objects from the driver objects modularizing the acceleration architectures and framebuffer layers under the driver rending layer and the damage, protocol decode layers under the protocol layer interface, communicating through the impedance layer interface. This removes duplicate protocol processing and storage of information lowering Xinerama multiplexing to the impedance layer boundary. This would enable multiplexing below the protocol screen."

His revised EVoC request now has to undergo review by the X.Org Foundation. His project details can be found via his personal web-page.
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