NVIDIA's Server-Side GLVND Implementation

Earlier this week I wrote about Adam Jackson's work at Red Hat on a prototype of an X.Org server-side GLVND implementation. NVIDIA has also now announced their coincidentally similar work.

The "server-side GLVND" goal is about allowing multiple OpenGL driver stacks to co-exist within the X.Org Server space, similar to how by clients via the OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch Library (GLVND) allow multiple OpenGL drivers to co-exist fine on the same Linux system. In the long-run, server-side GLVND could help in seeing better multi-GPU PRIME support, better multi-monitor across different OpenGL drivers, and possible improvements for XWayland support.

NVIDIA developers who originally spearheaded GLVND are also working on server-side support. Following Adam Jackson's announcement, Kyle Brenneman of NVIDIA has now announced their work on a server-side implementation. So far they have an experimental GLX server module that allows dispatching to multiple vendor OpenGL libraries depending upon the screen. With that they have the NVIDIA binary driver working alongside a X.Org dummy video driver screen.

Those wishing to read about NVIDIA's technical details can do so via this mailing list post. Like Jackson's work, NVIDIA's code is still proof-of-concept so it could still end up being months before seeing a mainline server-side GLVND implementation within the xorg-server code.