On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 09:18 -0600, Brian Paul wrote:
> Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-08-24 at 00:40 +0200, Stephane Marchesin wrote:
> > 
> >>Alan Cox wrote:
> >>
> >>>Other stuff like textures is merely annoyance value. Knowing who owned a
> >>>block for cleanup matters and the DRI lock/mem handling on some chips
> >>>already handles it. Its also cheap because you only have to track some
> >>>kind of texture handles not pages for cleanup.
> >>
> >>Actually, the long term idea is to have both dri and ddx allocate from 
> >>the same memory pool. So we can't rely on texture handles for that.
> > 
> > 
> > May I ask why we can't, assuming this is done via EXA callbacks into the
> > DDX driver that use the shared memory manager?
> 
> When thinking about the memory manager, there's far more uses for 
> graphics memory than just textures:
> 
> The framebuffer (including color, Z, stencil, etc)
> Pbuffers
> Renderbuffer/Framebuffer objects
> Pixel/Vertex buffer objects
> Texture images
> OpenGL miscellaneous (e.g. vertex/fragment programs)
> X server miscellaneous (pixmap cache, etc)
> 
> So, just constructing a memory manager around texture handles seems 
> short-sighted.

Indeed, I think Alan probably meant the opaque handle for memory objects
you mention below, at least that's how I read it.

> Furthermore, different memory objects may have different 
> requirements/properties:
> 
> 1. The location of the object in memory (perhaps the framebuffer has
>     to be at the start of memory).
> 2. Particular byte/word alignments
> 3. Can we use VRAM and/or AGP memory for the object?
> 4. Can the object can be lost asynchronously (Pbuffers)?
> ... plus others I'm surely forgetting or not aware of.

Yes, I think these and maybe more should be handled via parameters when
allocating a memory object. What I'm not sure is whether it's better to
specify these specific but HW-dependent attributes or maybe some kind of
abstract attributes (can be rendered to/from / scanned out / ...) which
are then translated into specific constraints by a HW specific part of
the memory manager. I'm leaning towards the latter.


> Bearing in mind that I'm probably among the least knowledgeable of the 
> Linux kernel among those here, here are my thoughts on the subject.

[...]

I agree with all your requirements.


> I think it would be worthwhile to start a specification document for 
> this project (or perhaps a wiki page) where the requirements, issues 
> and proposed interface could be recorded.

Indeed, thanks for such a nice summary!


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer      |     Debian (powerpc), X and DRI developer
Libre software enthusiast    |   http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer



-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO
September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices
Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA
Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf
--
_______________________________________________
Dri-devel mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel

Reply via email to