The benefit of a drawterm GPU implementation is that you can basically
use the whole driver pipeline of the underlying host OS. Eg for the
windows version you can just write the software that uses the GPU driver.
All programming effort will just be writing a graphics implementation and
a proper 9p interface. Basically just a driver bridge between 9p and
OpenGL for example.
sirjofri
22.08.2021 15:44:45 Paul Lalonde <paul.a.lalo...@gmail.com>:
I'd love to see GPU support for Plan9. This discussion falls right
into my professional capacity. I'll say that people generally
*grossly* underestimate the complexity of a modern GPU and of its
supporting software stack. The GPU driver is effectively a second
operating system with shared memory and DMA interfaces to the host.
Even bringing up a modern GPU for just compute tasks is a very large
endeavour.
That being said, if you want real hardware support, the best place to
start is currently AMD's open-source stack. Ignoring the Vulkan bit,
understanding their platform abstraction layer (PAL) and shader ISA
(https://developer.amd.com/wp-content/resources/Vega_Shader_ISA_28July2017.pdf)
is the base. The lower hardware levels are reasonably
well-described in linux's libdrm and its AMD support in amdgpu.
Opinions on how to bring this to Plan9? I don't really have any - it's
a huge pile of work with minimal benefit. If you're looking for
lightweight graphics, WebGL is a doable path, and almost certainly the
right way to experiment with Plan9-like interfaces to graphics
hardware.
Paul
On Sun, Aug 22, 2021 at 5:30 AM sirjofri
<sirjofri+ml-9f...@sirjofri.de[sirjofri%2bml-9f...@sirjofri.de]> wrote:
22.08.2021 14:10:20 Stuart Morrow <morrow.stu...@gmail.com>:
Also:
people have discussed that for years
They have? I mean I might have seen occasionally someone vaguely
going "some sort of GPU support would be cool to have". That isn't
discussion.
I've even heard of someone actually making GPU stuff work on plan 9.
I've
only heard from their partner, who made a cute glenda thing on a piece
of
cloth. I chatted with her a little and told her she should encourage
her
partner for some discussion about this in our channels. It looked like
it's some academic work, but I don't know any details about it.
Worst case, someone already has a proper and good GPU implementation
for
Plan 9 and nobody knows about it.
sirjofri
Btw if the said person reads this: it would be nice to learn some
details.
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