Graphics

“Software” rendering (i.e. on the CPU)

For now in this manual we present a simple approach to display rendering: basically the picture to display is generated by the CPU in host memory and then transferred to the GPU memory (implicitly by using memory mapping). Most recent graphic cards propose more efficient approaches: the picture to display is generated and transformed directly by the graphic card. Instead of sending a picture, the host sends commands or programs to be executed by the GPU.

Currently Linux doesn’t propose a unified interface to advanced graphic card capabilities from different vendors (these are usually handled by MESA in user-space and accessed through the OpenGL interface). haskus-system doesn’t provide support for them yet.

Proprietary drivers

haskus-system uses the Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) and the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) interfaces. In usual Linux distributions, some graphic card manufacturers provide closed-source proprietary drivers that do not support theses interfaces: they use a kernel module and user-space libraries that communicate together by using a private protocol. The user-space libraries provide implementations of standard high-level interfaces such as OpenGL and can be used by rendering managers such as X.org. haskus-system doesn’t offer a way to use these drivers.

Further reading

The two main acronyms for Linux’s display model are KMS (standing for “kernel mode-setting”) and DRM (standing for “direct rendering manager”).

As explained in the Manage devices section, device drivers can support the ioctl system call to handle device specific commands from the user-space. The display interface is almost entirely based on it. Additionally, mmap is used to map graphic card memory in user-space and read is used to read events (V-Blank and page-flip asynchronous completion).

In usual Linux distributions, the libdrm library provides an interface over these system calls. You can learn about the low-level interface by reading the drm manual (man drm, man drm-kms, etc.) or its source code.

David Herrmann has written a good tutorial explaining how to use the legacy low-level display interface in the form of C source files with detailed comments. While some details of the interface have changed since he wrote it (e.g., the way to flip frame buffers and the atomic interface), it is still a valuable source of information.

The newer atomic interface is described in an article series on LWN called “Atomic mode setting design overview” (August 2015) by Daniel Vetter.

Wayland is the new display system for usual Linux based distributions. It can be a great source of inspiration and of information.

You can also read the Linux kernel code located in drivers/gpu/drm in the kernel sources.

Multi-GPU is supported by Linux. In particular:

https://www.elinux.org/images/4/45/Atomic_kms_driver_pinchart.pdf

KMS/DRM history: