I’m starting to learn a bit about Linux GPU driver development. This post collects together a few resources I’ve found useful; I hope it might provide a starting point for someone else following a similar path.
Linux GPU Driver Developers’ Guide: The Linux kernel documentation itself seems pretty comprehensive and detailed. There are a couple of gaps (“[Insert diagram of typical DRM stack here]”, for example 😊) but otherwise it seems to be easy to read through to get an overview of all the abstractions commonly used. I’m still working through reading it all.
It also provides this handy TODO List, where the “starter”-level tasks look approachable for someone new to the subsystem looking to familiarise themselves with some practical experience.
The Zephyr Project’s guide to Devicetree: I realised pretty quickly that for working on drivers for embedded devices, it was going to be necessary to understand Devicetree, which I’ve never looked at before. The guide from the Zephyr project provided a convenient tutorial introduction. I’m not yet an expert on all the details, but I know enough to make a start and understand the semantics of DTS files – enough to be dangerous, perhaps.
Navigating the Linux Graphics Stack: A talk at the Embedded Linux Conference 2022 given by Michael Tretter of Pengutronix (abstract). Watching this talk really helped to build the “block diagram” of graphics driver abstractions in the kernel, and how they fit together. The latter part of the talk also covers the userspace – Wayland, Mesa, EGL, etc., which builds up a complete picture of the Linux graphics stack.
The Linux Graphics Stack in a Nutshell: A talk at the SUSE Labs Conference 2023 given by Thomas Zimmermann of SUSE. I’ve yet to watch this, but I’ve got it on my list because a quick skim of the slides suggests it fills in a lot of background motivating why things are the way they are in the current stack. It also breaks down each layer of the stack in detail, explaining what each component does.
Further reading?
I’ll expand the list with other resources as I find them. What else should I be reading? Please do let me know of other good resources to add to my reading list.
Graham Markall 