A Wayland Developer Shares His Concerns About NVIDIA's EGLStreams Proposal

[SpyroRyder]

And backed by Samsung for its smartphones and in-vehicle infotainment, which is at seven times the market capitalization of nvidia (137 billion vs 19 billion) and almost 40 times the number of employees (319000 vs 8000)

you can't include their smartphone in that argument, they run on Android which has no interest in this debate whatsoever. Nor can you include most of samsungs workforce which is spread out among so many divisions, most of which have no relation to the current debate.

[DrYak]

No suprises. At all.

Nvidia has always been after doing things *their way* no matter what.
- Remember Xrandr (it took a while to bring them kicking an screaming to use the same technology for mode setting as everyone else - and that's Xrandr adapted a bit just make it easier for Nvidia to use it) ?
- Remember optimus (that, in beginning, they would start working on, because the Linux DMAbuf infrastucture used by everyone else doesn't look like what they're used to ?)
- Remember that even today, they don't use a classical DRI stack unlike every body else ?

It's just Nvidia doing business as usual.

And if GBM is the best method why then does Nvidia want EGLStreams?

I don't have insider knowledge but based on past experience, I would err on the side of:
"...because that's what they use on Windows 7/8/10 Aero. And Nvidia has always been about porting their stack to other OSes by jut straight recompiling it and not adapting it to local practice/technologies, even if it doesn't make any sense..."

Damn real world telling developers for something that runs on about 3% of the desktops in this world what to do.

...but runs on virtually 100% of the super computers (though it doesn't make sense specifically for *wayland*, graphical drivers and stack do makes sense even more then for performance, mainly due to render-farms and for GPGPU computing).
And has nearly a monopoly on embed device (where *wayland* DOES make sens, even more than X11 would. And is currently already used in production. Random example: my Jolla smartphone runs on it).

Meanwhile AMD is getting better. Can backfire horribly.

And AMD played a big role in Vulkan.
And AMD had a nice market presence in the current cycle of home consoles.
Meaning that for huge studios making AAA games, cross-ported under everything under the sun (hey, you have to monetise back the investment), that need it working on both console and desktops, AMD is a nice target to follow.
And on Linux, not only are their driver getting better, but they have opensource dev on their own payroll.
A lot of separate different element seem to be at play for AMD to slowly get more favours.

[DrYak]

you can't include their smartphone in that argument, they run on Android which has no interest in this debate whatsoever.

It has interest in this debate:

- Android isn't the only platform they are running. They are interesting in developing further Tizen, their own Meamo/Meego-derivated platform (similar to Sailfish OS), which does run on Wayland. They consider it as a valid platform for smartphones.

- Nvidia has some important position in the PC Desktop market and on scientific clusters. But they are dwarfed on gaming console (in the current generation, they got owned by AMD) and embed (they're just one among many other there).
And light compositors like Mir and Wayland *DO* matter in these markets (specially embed).

GBM is the best method in a Mesa world (Linux+BSD) only. But if you factor in other platforms that don't have GBM/Mesa then the least common denominator becomes EGL.

On the other hand, Mesa *IS* what everybody uses on these OSes.
(When in Rome do as the Romans etc)
Nobody is forcing Android to rewrite their interface as a glorified PDF-interpreter, just because NeXT and Apple are doing it.

[lakerssuperman]

This argument reminds me very much of when Canonical dropped Mir on everyone. Up until that point everyone expected they would be going the Wayland as they had been indicating they would be. Then they come out and say nope not doing that and go with Mir because Wayland no longer "fit their needs". A lot of people including me though that was a nonsense statement and that Canonical simply wanted to control their entire stack. Ok, fine. They can do that, but the rest of us were under no obligation to follow that and you saw that reflected in the statements from developers like Martin from KDE that said there was no shot they would be adding in Mir support as well because of the extra work and unclear benefits over targeting Wayland.

To me, it sounded very much like a bit of a smear campaign at first against Wayland which I thought was unfair. I feel kind of the same way now. Instead of Canonical engaging in the process and raising their concerns that could have been potentially addressed as Wayland was being developed, they simply chose to drop their own thing on the community and fracture things. Obviously, Canonical doesn't have the same clout to push their way that NVIDIA does, but the circumstances feel very similar.

Just as with Canonical, I wish instead of doing their own thing, which seems to equate their interests (less work and more reusing across multiple platforms) as thinly veiled as "benefits" over the agreed up implementation.

It'd be one thing if NVIDIA was engaged in the process the whole time and said this from the word go and tried to work with develops. But to show up now and say the implementation is shit and here's what we want just doesn't seem to wash, just as it didn't seem to wash when Mir came out.

NVIDIA makes good hardware and I tolerate using their driver because by and large it does the job, but I'm not a huge fan of the idea of drastically changing so many things that have taken so long to develop because a company that doesn't embrace the OSS way (even if they do support it) says so.

I hope they get this thing handled ASAP or the new AMD drivers become what many of us hope they'll be and we will have a viable alternative for high performance 3D.

[pal666]

Damn real world telling developers for something that runs on about 3% of the desktops in this world what to do.

imbecile, nvidia eglstreams runs on 0% of the desktops in this world

So far, we have Nvidia wanting to use EGL Streams because it apparently works better than GBM.

eglstreams do not exist. gbm exists. there are some things which could be improved in gbm. only braindead imbeciles and "fuck you" nvidia would suggest duplicate api instead of improving current one

And we have Wayland sticking to GBM because?

because it already works

What would be the downside of Wayland using EGL streams, too? I haven't seen that discussed at all.

you are blind imbecile. it was discussed to death. downside would be nobody is going to implement and maintain two codepaths

[pal666]

GBM is the best method in a Mesa world (Linux+BSD) only. But if you factor in other platforms that don't have GBM/Mesa then the least common denominator becomes EGL.

your brain is apparently too small to understand that eglstreams is not egl. there are no platforms with eglstreams at all.

[pal666]

you can't include their smartphone in that argument, they run on Android which has no interest in this debate whatsoever.

you can and they have. mesa runs on android and longterm plan is to shrink gap between android and other distros. and in context of samsung you should think of tizen, not android

[johnc]

And backed by Samsung for its smartphones and in-vehicle infotainment, which is at seven times the market capitalization of nvidia (137 billion vs 19 billion) and almost 40 times the number of employees (319000 vs 8000)

Yeah Samsung also makes refrigerators and dish washers. Great comparison.

[SpyroRyder]

It has interest in this debate:

- Android isn't the only platform they are running. They are interesting in developing further Tizen, their own Meamo/Meego-derivated platform (similar to Sailfish OS), which does run on Wayland. They consider it as a valid platform for smartphones.

- Nvidia has some important position in the PC Desktop market and on scientific clusters. But they are dwarfed on gaming console (in the current generation, they got owned by AMD) and embed (they're just one among many other there).
And light compositors like Mir and Wayland *DO* matter in these markets (specially embed).



On the other hand, Mesa *IS* what everybody uses on these OSes.
(When in Rome do as the Romans etc)
Nobody is forcing Android to rewrite their interface as a glorified PDF-interpreter, just because NeXT and Apple are doing it.

- Their non-android phone/tablet systems make up a miniscule amount, so little that the numbers quote doom_Oo7 has no bearing. This also isn't likely to change much in the near-midterm future, Tizen just doesn't have the access to apps that people expect when buying a samsung phone (read Google Play).

- The current gaming consoles may not be nvidia hardware BUT they also aren't based of linux so the point is rendered moot. They won't ever care about which API get's developed for a market that they aren't a part of.

You do have a point with the embeded scene though. Still doesn't nullify my point that you can't use samsung as an ideal company that trumps nvidia and whatever points they have, stupid or not.

[johnc]

"...creating more work for everyone with no real benefits."

Isn't that sort of the whole point of Wayland?