Re: [PATH 0/4] [RFC] Support virtual DRM

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 13:02:59 +0900
Esaki Tomohito <etom@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi, Thomas
> Thank you for reply.
> 
> On 2021/06/21 16:10, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > Am 21.06.21 um 08:27 schrieb Tomohito Esaki:  
> >> Virtual DRM splits the overlay planes of a display controller into
> >> multiple
> >> virtual devices to allow each plane to be accessed by each process.
> >>
> >> This makes it possible to overlay images output from multiple
> >> processes on a
> >> display. For example, one process displays the camera image without
> >> compositor
> >> while another process overlays the UI.  
> > 
> > I briefly looked over your patches. I didn't understand how this is
> > different to the functionality of a compositor? Shouldn't this be solved
> > in userspace?  
> 
> I think when latency is important (e.g., AR, VR, for displaying camera
> images in IVI systems), there may be use cases where the compositor
> cannot be used.

Hi,

> Normally, when the image is passed through the compositor, it is
> displayed after 2 VSYNC at most, because the compositor combines the
> image with VSYNC synchronization.

This is not a universal fact. You can write a Wayland compositor that
consistently reaches app-to-screen latency of less than one monitor
refresh cycle, while also using KMS planes.

I believe Weston succeeds in this already if you write the Wayland
application accordingly.


Thanks,
pq

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