June 28, 2005

EXA: New Acceleration Architecture for X.org

剛剛在 KDE.News 上讀到 [New Acceleration Architecture for X.org] 這篇報導，提到著名的 KDE Developer -- Zack Rusin 最近整合 KAA 到 XOrg 中，並提出 Exa 這個新架構，讓 Composite manager 得以更充分發揮硬體加速能力，特別在 Xgl / Xegl 等基本建設成熟之後，正式的釋出版本預計在今年九月份，這真是令人振奮的好消息。

Exa 的設計提供許多彈性，讓開發者可以自訂加速表現，引述 Zack Rusin 在 [KDE mailing-list -- New acceleration architecture] 上的說法：
    Now if your hardware is below 1.5ghz you want to implement two more hooks:
    • DownloadFromScreen,
    • UploadToScreen,
    this should be enough to get you happy with the basic composite manager on any hardware.
    Now if the transparent windows aren't enough and you want things to be way more fancy, implement the last of Exa hooks meaning the Composite hooks.
至於 Exa 對於既有架構的衝擊，也做了以下的說明：
  • Exa can coexist with XAA. You can keep code for both in your driver.
  • Exa doesn't depend on any changes to the Xserver. Once we'll feel it served its purpose we can simply remove the exa dir and the relevant driver code and we'll be sure that no cruft has been left in the server.
  • As everyone can see adding Exa support to a driver which already has XAA support is trivial.
  • Following the 7 steps I outlined above will speed up the common desktop usage by quite a bit. Note that you don't have to be a driver developer to switch any of those drivers. Note that this also means that we can easily give the useless, but oh-so-wanted transparent windows to everyone right now. Not next year, not when library X will be ready - now, as in today.
  • Implementing the download/upload/composite hooks will give us enough power to have very fancy effects that will let us compete with Microsoft/Apple desktops while we work on Xgl.
由 jserv 發表於 June 28, 2005 07:40 PM
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