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From: sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9fans@sirjofri.de>
To: 9fans <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Drawterm GPU (was: Software philosophy)
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2021 14:57:11 +0000 (UTC)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <adb1b975-dad2-4cca-b8f5-e03aee2cbe0c@sirjofri.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CA+POUViWHP3aUVi+Ji1BtFvmmzE1obaBZ0TYzSNNc6j36p=bZQ@mail.gmail.com>

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.lalonde@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-9fans@sirjofri.de[sirjofri%2Bml-9fans@sirjofri.de]> wrote:
>>
>> 22.08.2021 14:10:20 Stuart Morrow <morrow.stuart@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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  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-08-22 14:57 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-08-22 12:10 Stuart Morrow
2021-08-22 12:29 ` sirjofri
2021-08-22 13:44   ` Paul Lalonde
2021-08-22 13:53     ` Eli Cohen
2021-09-01  0:29       ` kokamoto
2021-09-01  7:35         ` sirjofri
2021-09-02  5:01           ` kokamoto
2021-09-02  5:21             ` Eli Cohen
2021-09-03 23:06               ` kokamoto
2021-08-22 14:57     ` sirjofri [this message]
2021-08-22 16:45       ` ori
2021-08-22 15:47     ` Bakul Shah
2021-08-22 16:23       ` Paul Lalonde
2021-08-22 19:04         ` Bakul Shah
2021-08-22 19:09           ` Paul Lalonde
2021-08-23  4:13             ` Bakul Shah
2021-08-23  5:23               ` sirjofri
2021-08-22 16:41     ` ori
2021-08-22 17:29       ` sirjofri
2021-08-22 18:25         ` ori
2021-08-22 18:50           ` sirjofri
2021-09-24  1:50             ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
2021-08-22 21:10           ` Philip Silva via 9fans
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-08-18 22:00 [9fans] Software philosophy Eli Cohen
2021-08-22  2:46 ` kokamoto
2021-08-22  3:16   ` Eli Cohen
2021-08-22  7:07     ` [9fans] Drawterm GPU (was: Software philosophy) sirjofri
2021-08-22 10:04       ` Frank D. Engel, Jr.
2021-08-22 11:49         ` sirjofri
2021-08-22 12:24           ` Chris McGee

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