Request to facilitate: Magma as an open-source GPU standard

[Gurchetan Singh]

Hello Fuchsia Eng. Council,

Problem statement: 

GPUs are among the most complex IPs that a general-purpose OS must support.

Almost all major vendors increasingly support open-source Mesa3D drivers (examples: ARM, Qualcomm, AMD, Imagination).  

However, microkernel-like designs have significantly fewer developers than monolithic-kernel GPU designs (like Linux and Windows).  Each microkernel-like system reinvents the wheel for each GPU, when a large potential for reuse exists.  No open-source collaboration structure exists to enable coordination. 

Proposed solution: 

Based on RFC #198, the Fuchsia GPU and Android GPU virtualization teams have been collaborating to integrate Magma-GPU into the open-source Mesa3D ecosystem.  Developers of microkernel-like systems are most excited about these proposals.  

We want to create a formal collaboration structure to grow an open-source ecosystem around the Magma GPU driver model.  

This proposal targets Mesa3D drivers + Magma, not closed-source drivers + Magma, since the latter effort may require different trade-offs than the former (though eventual convergence is a goal).    

Stakeholders identified and already in-the-loop:

cstout@: Fuchsia Magma GPU team

msandy@: Fuchsia Magma GPU team

dgilhooley@: Fuchsia Magma GPU team

  

Next Steps: 

We think the next step is a formal RFC that extends RFC #198.  In line with step #2 of the RFC process, we request a facilitator to potentially identify more Fuchsia stakeholders and act as a RFC adviser.  

Thank you!

[Will Drewry™]

Hi Gurchetan,

This sounds pretty great -- I'm happy to help facilitate throughout the process! (Moving eng-council to bcc) Would you like to dig into the details some before you write up the RFC (to help shake out stakeholders)? If not, I'm happy to take a peek at a rough draft and/or just list off teams/people who might be worth roping in based on what I've already read.

Thanks for kicking this process off!

will

--
All posts must follow the Fuchsia Code of Conduct https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/CODE_OF_CONDUCT or may be removed.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "eng-council" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to eng-council...@fuchsia.dev.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/fuchsia.dev/d/msgid/eng-council/CAAfnVBmM3DuS0hfk7-y0oYC3gqYSYsSYQz2WGM5J0aRSyzXRqw%40mail.gmail.com.