GPU Offloading PRIME May Get Improvements

A week ago we reported on open-source GPU offloading, which allowed multiple GPUs from different vendors that were backed by open-source graphics drivers to offload the 3D rendering work to a secondary GPU and then to pass the rendered result back to the primary GPU driving the display. This open-source work referred to as PRIME was based on NVIDIA's Optimus Technology. This work was done by David Airlie just as a proof of concept and he doesn't intend to get the work completed and shipped in the upstream packages, but is hoping to hand off this task to someone else.

Fortunately, it looks like someone else may be able to pickup these Linux kernel, Graphics Execution Manager (GEM), DRI2 protocol, X Server, and DRI2 patches and run with them. Well, it's been proposed that this be part of the X.Org Google Summer of Code work, whereby Google would be paying a student developer to work on PRIME. Other Summer of Code projects for X.Org include Gallium3D H.264 and OpenGL 3.2 support, among other subjects.

David Airlie has agreed to be a mentor for this GPU offloading work for Albert Vilella, but they currently lack the supported NVIDIA laptops to continue on with this work. They are hoping ASUS or another company will step up and provide hardware sponsorship. It looks like this work will be sharing a project page with Hybrid Graphics Linux at Launchpad. Hopefully this project can move along.