State of Linux graphics

[Eric Anholt]

On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 14:23 +0200, Matthias Hopf wrote:
> > > We already had a new drawing API for X, the X Render extension. Xgl is
> > > the first server to fully accelerate X Render.
> > 
> > I think the EXA people will say they have the first server in
> > distribution that fully accelerates X Render.
> 
> I doubt. AFAIK EXA does *not* accelerate XRender. It provides the
> framework for efficient use of XRender, but everything is rendered in
> software.
> That's the key point of EXA, the driver is simple, stupid, thus it can
> be made fast, and it is pretty easy to implement.

EXA is an acceleration architecture.  Just like XAA doesn't accelerate
core operations alone, EXA doesn't accelerate anything alone either.
When you connect up your driver hooks (such as Composite, the general
Render extension hook) that implement the acceleration, then it's done
in hardware.  Leave out the hooks, and you get software.

-- 
Eric Anholt                                     eta at lclark.edu
http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/              anholt at FreeBSD.org
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