A New Proposal For Supporting DRM Linux Drivers In User-Space

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A New Proposal For Supporting DRM Linux Drivers In User-Space

The discussion has come up before about supporting Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) drivers in user-space rather than having to be tied within the Linux kernel while that outlook was reignited today with a new patch series wiring in said support...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DRM-User-Space-2017

[garegin]

Vista had this since 2006.

[davidbepo]

Vista had this since 2006.

nice trolling

[starshipeleven]

Vista had this since 2006.

Uhm, not the same thing.

[rastersoft]

I suspect that Linus will put a lot of problems. It is important to take into account that this will be a new interface between kernel and userspace, so it must be stable. And if all you remember, one thing that Linus et al. said about DAL is that, if the AMD model doesn't map precisely to KMS, instead of creating a layer, just propose to modify KMS to be more generic.

If the interface gets written in stone, things like these would become harder (because some interesting changes to KMS could make impossible to keep the old interface).

[starshipeleven]

I suspect that Linus will put a lot of problems.

It seems this project is aiming at crappy systems or somesuch (the example of USB GPUs for additional screens, that usually are 2D-only), so the interface won't be fully-fledged like the one needed by true GPUs.

[garegin]

"Uhm, not the same thing."

how so?

[Geopirate]

It seems this project is aiming at crappy systems or somesuch (the example of USB GPUs for additional screens, that usually are 2D-only), so the interface won't be fully-fledged like the one needed by true GPUs.

Products that allow you to connect a full GPU to a laptop will be available for purchase before this is merged into the kernel. I think at least 2 have already been announced at CES this week.

[thechef]

How is performance known to be not an issue? Let assume that there is a statistically signifant drop from 19 to 18 frames. Then you know there is an issue. With the given info one just doesn't know if that drop really exists.

[Staffan]

All drivers should be in userspace. Microkernel for the win!