Bill Studenmund wrote:

>On Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 05:56:43PM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
>  
>
>>Perhaps we need to invent some alternative form of syscall trap?  Maybe
>>a magic address that's never mapped, with the kernel foo done inside
>>the page fault handler?  Page faults are usually relatively cheap as
>>far as the hardware is concerned....
>>
>>    
>>
>>>As I said, this is future work.  Right now I just want to get the
>>>linear framebuffer working, which won't have these problems.
>>>      
>>>
>>Right.  I've been considering doing something vaguely similar myself,
>>but so far it hasn't got past the "pipe dream" stage; I'm definitely
>>going to be watching your progress, since you will almost certainly get
>>something working sooner than I will.
>>    
>>
>
>I think it'd be simpler to copy existing art. We aren't the only OS which 
>has to worry about graphics performance. Windows and MacOS X have to have 
>addressed this problem already, and from looking at the performance of 
>games on either platform, they have done it well.
>  
>
I agree.  I don't have experience with the details of graphics on these
OS' though, so I'd appreciate any advice from any one who does. 
(Looking at the docs on Apple's Darwin site, it looks like they just
duplicate functionality in userspace, so don't actually have much of the
real framebuffer in the kernel.)

I don't know how Windows does it.

    -- Garrett

>Take care,
>
>Bill
>  
>


-- 
Garrett D'Amore                          http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Sr. Staff Engineer          Extending the Power of 64-bit UNIX Computing
Tadpole Computer, Inc.                             Phone: (951) 325-2134