1.3 KiB
1.3 KiB
Linux Kernel
- Communicates "directly" with hardware
- Provides drivers
- Initializes hardware
- Provides HAL
- Provides userspace APIs
- Provides planes for userspace to draw to
Notes: Then there's the beloved Linux kernel.
Being that it is a kernel, one of it's main jobs is to communicate with the hardware. It does this through the use of drivers, which provides the rest of the kernel with a stable interface.
Popular examples of these drivers are:
- i915 and xe, which are for Intel GPUs
- amdgpu, which is for AMD GPUs
- And nouveau, which is for NVIDIA.
There are quite a few more than this, but I'd be here all day if I talked about them.
The kernel also brings up the hardware to a usable state so that userspace can communicate with it.
Userspace can communicate with the graphics hardware using a Hardware Abstraction Layer, which in the kernel is provided by the Direct Rendering Manager and the Kernel Mode Setting interface.
[comment]: # (!!!)