Intel's FastUIDraw Is Very Promising For Fast, GPU-Accelerated Drawing

[cj.wijtmans]

Nothing about this is Intel specific unless other GPUs can't use industry standard shaders all of the sudden.
It's good to see yet another piece of cross-platform technology come out of Intel, just like Intel developers spearheaded the development of other cross-platform technologies likde Wayland, DRI, VA-API, etc. etc. etc.

If it uses shaders then what makes it faster than opengl or other APIs that use shaders.

[chuckula]

If it uses shaders then what makes it faster than opengl or other APIs that use shaders.

OpenGL is a 3D graphics API, this is a 2D acceleration API that is focusing on using the graphics hardware to do 2D graphics quickly.
OpenGL is directed to producing polygons and applying other graphical effects, while this API is focused on actually rendering text and other complex 2D graphics in an efficient manner. Saying that they are the same thing simply because they both use shaders is like saying that Java is literally identical to C because they both use a CPU to process function calls.

[JonathanM]

If it uses shaders then what makes it faster than opengl or other APIs that use shaders.

It isn't faster than OpenGL: it is built on top of APIs like OpenGL.

FastUIDraw is designed to be a 2D renderer only running on GPUs (i.e. no CPU fallback) and its design makes it portable across 3D APIs.

You could use APIs like OpenGL directly, but this way it is easier to support more platforms and newer technologies.

[cl333r]

Seems to be a direct competitor for Mozilla's WebRender as used in Servo.

Speaking of Servo, today is the first time Servo can start on Ubuntu 16.10.
It failed before.

[wallacoloo]

Youtube link for the lazy: https://youtu.be/2ryvYS47V0E?t=6h8m20s
That is, the FastUIDraw talk starts 6h8m into the Day 2 stream.

[balouba]

Man the phoronix self-linking is a bit annoying. Takes ages to find the actual link to the intel stuff...

[Michael]

Man the phoronix self-linking is a bit annoying. Takes ages to find the actual link to the intel stuff...

Because there wasn't a good link at the time [while right now sort of up in the air still]... The slides have yet to be uploaded and with YouTube's Livestream when they are live streaming you can only see up to the past 2 hours of video content... thus really can't link to that when it's a changing target.

Now that the live streams are over for the day, you can go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ryvYS47V0E and then click like 1~2 hours before the end to find the presentation. (Later, Martin should be adding the bookmarks to that video so you can easily jump to the relevant presentations.)

[cj.wijtmans]

It isn't faster than OpenGL: it is built on top of APIs like OpenGL.



You could use APIs like OpenGL directly, but this way it is easier to support more platforms and newer technologies.

"Early numbers on FastUIDraw put it much faster than Cairo CPU/OpenGL/Xlib renderers, Qt with its different back-ends, and even the Skia OpenGL layer."

[quikee]

"Early numbers on FastUIDraw put it much faster than Cairo CPU/OpenGL/Xlib renderers, Qt with its different back-ends, and even the Skia OpenGL layer."

...faster than Cairo CPU, Cairo OpenGL, Cairo XLib renderers, Qt with its different back-ends, and even the Skia OpenGL layer.

Cairo OpenGL is a 2D renderer backend that uses OpenGL

[cj.wijtmans]

...faster than Cairo CPU, Cairo OpenGL, Cairo XLib renderers, Qt with its different back-ends, and even the Skia OpenGL layer.

FastUIDraw is a 2D renderer backend that uses OpenGL

Whats your point?