Overview of a Modern DRM Driver
summary
Open source PowerVR kernel driver started from scratch to expose a Vulkan-focused UAPI, runs on AM625 dev boards, and achieves Vulkan 1.0 CTS conformance after many distributed test runs. Scheduling moves into GPU firmware for lower latency, so integration uses a pragmatic single-priority scheduler + one entity approach to let DRM enforce fence semantics while firmware makes decisions. Memory uses the new GPU VM for sparse binding and complex map/unmap ops, cutting driver code but forcing constant API churn during upstreaming.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Modern DRM driver intro
- 2:34DRM scheduler role
- 11:24GPU VM management
- 17:05Bleeding-edge code challenges
- 20:17Q&A firmware drivers
- 24:12GPU dev hardware setup
- 26:45AMD firmware docs
- 31:01Career in GPU drivers
- 32:25Vulkan compliance future
- 35:20Open-sourcing motivation
- 37:28Licensing firewall process
- 38:31Functional safety in GPUs
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