Enlightenment EFL Adds Atomic Modesetting, Nuclear Page-Flipping
This atomic mode-setting and nuclear page-flipping support is designed for the Linux 4.8 kernel and newer and so far has just been tested with the Intel DRM driver.
Samsung developer Chris Michael commented with the nearly thousand lines of new code that on working systems it provides "buttery smoothness."
Atomic mode-setting allows setting output modes more cleanly by either being able to succeed or fail in one-go while also being able to test a desired mode in advance of the operation, reducing possible flickering situations while also being quicker.
Nuclear page-flipping synchronizes the update of a scanout between the different planes and makes it atomic. This is more work for trying to achieve "perfect rendering" of every frame on the Linux desktop by synchronizing all the updates to the vblank.
After talking about atomic mode-setting and nuclear page-flipping for 6+ years, it's great the pieces are finally maturing and coming together in the latest Linux kernel when it comes to the DRM drivers and then in the user-space with software beginning to make use of the new ioctls.
From the Phoronix Chernobyl tour.
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