Ubuntu - GPU - DRM and DRI
DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards.
- DRM exposes an API (libdrm) that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations such as configuring the mode setting of the display.
- libdrm makes it easy to access the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) on the operating system.
DRM uses a set of generic system ioctls to allocate memory for the graphical objects and stuffs the commands and texture it needs.
- The ioctl system is a special type of system call that deals with device-specific input and output operations.
- In this case, it deals with the input and output operations of a video card.
So, when we a graphical application is run, it loads the OpenGL driver, such as Mesa; which in turn, loads libdrm, which enables talking directly to the kernel through ioctl.
The window system, such as X Server or Wayland, needs to know what is happening, so it can synchronize and update itself.
- This synchronization process is known as DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure).
