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Merge branch 'jorth/buffer-exchange' into 'main'

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doc: update GPU buffer exchange section

Closes #551

See merge request wayland/wayland!490
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Julian Orth 2026-01-29 14:20:06 +01:00
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148
doc/publican/Architecture.xml
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@ -280,65 +280,113 @@
</para>
</section>
<section id="sect-Wayland-Architecture-wayland_hw_enabling">
<title>Hardware Enabling for Wayland</title>
<title>Accelerated GPU Buffer Exchange</title>
<para>
Typically, hardware enabling includes modesetting/display
and EGL/GLES2. On top of that Wayland needs a way to share
buffers efficiently between processes. There are two sides
to that, the client side and the server side.
Clients
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/dma-buf-alloc-exchange.html">exchange</ulink>
GPU buffers with the compositor as dma-buf file descriptors, which are universal handles
that are independent of any particular rendering API or memory allocator. The
<ulink url="https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/blob/main/stable/linux-dmabuf/linux-dmabuf-v1.xml">linux-dmabuf-v1</ulink>
protocol is used to turn one or more dma-buf FDs into a
<link linkend="protocol-spec-wl_buffer">wl_buffer</link>.
</para>
<para>
On the client side we've defined a Wayland EGL platform. In
the EGL model, that consists of the native types
(EGLNativeDisplayType, EGLNativeWindowType and
EGLNativePixmapType) and a way to create those types. In
other words, it's the glue code that binds the EGL stack and
its buffer sharing mechanism to the generic Wayland API. The
EGL stack is expected to provide an implementation of the
Wayland EGL platform. The full API is in the wayland-egl.h
header. The open source implementation in the mesa EGL stack
is in wayland-egl.c and platform_wayland.c.
If the client uses the
<ulink url="https://docs.vulkan.org/spec/latest/chapters/VK_KHR_surface/wsi.html">Vulkan</ulink>
or
<ulink url="https://registry.khronos.org/EGL/extensions/EXT/EGL_EXT_platform_wayland.txt">EGL</ulink>
(via
<ulink url="https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/tree/main/egl">wayland-egl</ulink>)
window-system integration
(WSI), this is done transparently by the WSI.
</para>
<para>
Under the hood, the EGL stack is expected to define a
vendor-specific protocol extension that lets the client side
EGL stack communicate buffer details with the compositor in
order to share buffers. The point of the wayland-egl.h API
is to abstract that away and just let the client create an
EGLSurface for a Wayland surface and start rendering. The
open source stack uses the drm Wayland extension, which lets
the client discover the drm device to use and authenticate
and then share drm (GEM) buffers with the compositor.
Clients can alternatively allocate and import dma-bufs themselves
using the GBM library, Vulkan, udmabuf, or dma-buf heaps.
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Using GBM, the client can allocate a gbm_bo and export one or more
dma-buf FDs from it.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Using Vulkan, the client can create a VkDeviceMemory object and use
<ulink url="https://docs.vulkan.org/refpages/latest/refpages/source/VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf.html">VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf</ulink>
and
<ulink url="https://docs.vulkan.org/refpages/latest/refpages/source/VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier.html">VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier</ulink>
to export a dma-buf FD from it.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://lwn.net/Articles/749206/">udmabuf</ulink>
can be used to create dma-buf FDs from linear host memory.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/dma-buf-heaps.html">Dma-buf heaps</ulink>
can be used by privileged applications to create dma-buf FDs on embedded
devices.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>
Compositors use
<ulink url="https://docs.vulkan.org/refpages/latest/refpages/source/VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf.html">VK_EXT_external_memory_dma_buf</ulink>
and
<ulink url="https://docs.vulkan.org/refpages/latest/refpages/source/VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier.html">VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier</ulink>
or
<ulink url="https://registry.khronos.org/EGL/extensions/EXT/EGL_EXT_image_dma_buf_import.txt">EGL_EXT_image_dma_buf_import</ulink>
and
<ulink url="https://registry.khronos.org/EGL/extensions/EXT/EGL_EXT_image_dma_buf_import_modifiers.txt">EGL_EXT_image_dma_buf_import_modifiers</ulink>
to import the dma-bufs provided by the client into their own Vulkan or
EGL renderers.
</para>
<para>
The server side of Wayland is the compositor and core UX for
the vertical, typically integrating task switcher, app
launcher, lock screen in one monolithic application. The
server runs on top of a modesetting API (kernel modesetting,
OpenWF Display or similar) and composites the final UI using
a mix of EGL/GLES2 compositor and hardware overlays if
available. Enabling modesetting, EGL/GLES2 and overlays is
something that should be part of standard hardware bringup.
The extra requirement for Wayland enabling is the
EGL_WL_bind_wayland_display extension that lets the
compositor create an EGLImage from a generic Wayland shared
buffer. It's similar to the EGL_KHR_image_pixmap extension
to create an EGLImage from an X pixmap.
Clients do not need to wait for the GPU to finish rendering before submitting
dma-bufs to the compositor. Clients can use the
<ulink url="https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/blob/main/staging/linux-drm-syncobj/linux-drm-syncobj-v1.xml">linux-drm-syncobj-v1</ulink>
protocol to exchange DRM synchronization objects with the compositor. These objects
are used to asynchronously signal ownership transfer of buffers from clients to the
compositor and vice versa. The WSIs do this transparently.
</para>
<para>
The extension has a setup step where you have to bind the
EGL display to a Wayland display. Then as the compositor
receives generic Wayland buffers from the clients (typically
when the client calls eglSwapBuffers), it will be able to
pass the struct wl_buffer pointer to eglCreateImageKHR as
the EGLClientBuffer argument and with EGL_WAYLAND_BUFFER_WL
as the target. This will create an EGLImage, which can then
be used by the compositor as a texture or passed to the
modesetting code to use as an overlay plane. Again, this is
implemented by the vendor specific protocol extension, which
on the server side will receive the driver specific details
about the shared buffer and turn that into an EGL image when
the user calls eglCreateImageKHR.
If the linux-drm-syncobj-v1 protocol is not supported by the compositor, clients
and compositors can use the
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/dma-buf.html#c.dma_buf_export_sync_file">DMA_BUF_IOCTL_EXPORT_SYNC_FILE</ulink>
and
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/dma-buf.html#c.dma_buf_import_sync_file">DMA_BUF_IOCTL_IMPORT_SYNC_FILE</ulink>
ioctls to access and create implicit synchronization barriers.
</para>
</section>
<section id="sect-Wayland-Architecture-kms">
<title>Display Programming</title>
<para>
Compositors enumerate DRM KMS devices using
<ulink url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev">udev</ulink>.
Udev also notifies compositors of KMS device and display hotplug events.
</para>
<para>
Access to DRM KMS device ioctls is privileged. Since compositors usually run as
unprivileged applications, they typically gain access to a privileged file
descriptor using the
<ulink url="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/org.freedesktop.login1.html#Session%20Objects">TakeDevice</ulink>
method provided by logind.
</para>
<para>
Using the file descriptor, compositors use KMS
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/gpu/drm-kms.html">ioctls</ulink>
to enumerate the available displays.
</para>
<para>
Compositors use
<ulink url="https://docs.kernel.org/gpu/drm-kms.html#atomic-mode-setting">atomic mode setting</ulink>
to change the buffer shown by the display, to change the display's resolution, to
enable or disable HDR, and so on.
</para>
</section>
</chapter>

1
doc/publican/meson.build
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@ -98,6 +98,7 @@ custom_target(
'Wayland-docbook-html',
command: [
xmlto,
'--skip-validation',
'--stringparam', 'chunker.output.encoding=UTF-8',
'--stringparam', 'chunk.section.depth=0',
'--stringparam', 'toc.section.depth=1',