NVIDIA Presents Over GBM vs. EGLStreams, The Big Wayland Support Debate Continues

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Presents Over GBM vs. EGLStreams, The Big Wayland Support Debate Continues

James Jones of NVIDIA just finished taking the stage at XDC2016 where he was talking about Unix device memory allocation, which comes down to the big EGLStreams vs. GBM debate... A.k.a. NVIDIA pushing a different approach for their Wayland support from the Wayland compositors currently focusing around GBM for buffers. This debate is leading towards the development of a new API...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XDC2016-Device-Memory-API

[SaucyJack]

How the hell is eglstreams "proven" when only nvidia wants to use it? Has even been used anywhere else?

[profoundWHALE]

From that list, either Vulkan or something new.

[Delgarde]

From that list, either Vulkan or something new.

Possibly both, since it sounds like Vulcan would not be a complete solution on it's own. Vulcan plus some new specs to address the gaps might be the best option, standards-wise.

Regardless, some compromise is needed. It's a pain that Nvidia won't provide a conventional Linux driver that uses the same Mesa-based infrastructure other hardware does. But you can also appreciate from their point of view that cross-platform is a big deal... their own existing infrastructure is what's allowed them to provide high-quality Linux support for so many years.

Oh, and that's not speaking as a fan-boy... I stick to AMD hardware, because I prefer good open drivers that actually work with things like Wayland. But I do appreciate the problems Nvidia are having to balance here...

[microcode]

...But you can also appreciate from their point of view that cross-platform is a big deal...

Note that none of their other platforms use EGLStreams...

[bug77]

Delgarde Even adding that to Vulkan is debatable. Vulkan is to be an API to squeeze max performance for 3D apps. Adding desktop related convenience APIs on top may be considered bloatware by some.
That's why it's important to talk things through (10x if needed), before implementing.

[chimpy]

It would be great if you could just use the nouveau driver for the desktop and switch on the fly to the nVidia driver for gaming.

[davidbepo]

this is what i dislike about wayland, every compositor must implement EVERYTHING(now libweston and wayland protocols should help)
mir even if less developed/supported does not have this problem

[Delgarde]

Delgarde Even adding that to Vulkan is debatable. Vulkan is to be an API to squeeze max performance for 3D apps. Adding desktop related convenience APIs on top may be considered bloatware by some.
That's why it's important to talk things through (10x if needed), before implementing.

That's why I said "Vulcan + some new specs". I don't know specifics, but yeah... I assume that if these things are not in Vulcan already, they may not belong there, and will need to be something on the side.

[Ancurio]

this is what i dislike about wayland, every compositor must implement EVERYTHING(now libweston and wayland protocols should help)
mir even if less developed/supported does not have this problem

And how many compositors are there which speak the Mir protocol?