Speakers
Description
The Linux kernel is responsible for managing the dependency graph of userspace's compute and graphics shaders. Moreover, it handles the GPU load balancing and tries to guarantee forward progress and deadlock resistance.
Historically, most graphics drivers have used drm_sched, a problematic legacy code base, for these tasks. More recently, Rust drivers are ramping up their own infrastructure to achieve the same, while trying to learn from the mistakes of the past and to leverage the features of the Rust programming language for robustness and reliability. Notably, engineers at Collabora and Red Hat collaboratively develop a successor in Rust for drm_sched, drm::JobQueue.
This talk briefly informs about the aforementioned developments and then opens room for discussions which may help the developers (who are – in part – concerned with the compute aspect of GPUs) understand the wider community's pains and requirements, such as from the graphics and video game parties. Topics that could be discussed are, for example:
- Future of GPU scheduling: more control is handed over to the GPU's firmware, making it difficult or impossible for the kernel to prioritize real time applications such as games.
- What are the major issues in the Linux kernel regarding stability, e.g., crashing video games?
- One reason why drm_sched is in bad shape is that super-priority was given to performance, for example by omitting locks. Fixing some of these missing locks has been rejected, due to reported massive performance regressions. Would video game developers argue that ~100% reliability is worth significant sacrifices with frames per second?
- Used hardware: Which GPUs and drivers are most important for gaming on Linux, and which would the community desire to be supported better the most?