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Hector Martin

@karolherbst Ah, but who says I consider Nvidia hardware "modern"? 🙃

15 May 2023 at 10:07 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
3 comments
karolherbst 🐧 🦀

@marcan yeah.. though I kinda see their point using the 2D stuff to do large buffer copies instead of running a shader just copying bytes :D

I have no idea if they actually have a 2D block or if it's emulated in shaders on the hardware.

Anyway, the advantage is: implementing a driver is simpler (and has less CPU overhead). And I wouldn't be surprised it's the reason they kept it as it's still useful within writing a Vulkan (or whatever API) driver.

15 May 2023 at 10:10 | Open on chaos.social
Hector Martin

@karolherbst Apple has a blitter too, but that isn't really a 2D engine (it's meant more for copies and mipmapping). Though they still use just shaders copying bits in some cases I think.

15 May 2023 at 10:12 | Open on social.treehouse.systems
karolherbst 🐧 🦀

@marcan yeah I know, the 2D stuff in Nvidia still is able to draw primitives and stuff, so a buffer copy is two lines and one rect 🙃.

They even have polylines. Anyway, in case you are interested, it's all defined here: github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc

But in the end it doesn't matter, because modern GUI won't use the X API to accelerate drawing their primitives anymore anyway. But it's still there if one wants to use it! :D

No idea if they plan to remove it though.

@marcan yeah I know, the 2D stuff in Nvidia still is able to draw primitives and stuff, so a buffer copy is two lines and one rect 🙃.

They even have polylines. Anyway, in case you are interested, it's all defined here: github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc

But in the end it doesn't matter, because modern GUI won't use the X API to accelerate drawing their primitives anymore anyway. But it's still there if one wants to use it! :D

15 May 2023 at 10:16 | Open on chaos.social
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