[radarsat1]

Doesn't the CPU/GPU bottleneck which is already assumed to be slow actually provide the perfect opportunity for abstraction over a network protocol? Sending "what to draw" and "how" (shaders) over the wire infrequently and issuing cheap draw commands on demand? I think GPUs provide a better situation for a network first model than was available when X was designed.

[kllrnohj]

Only if everyone agrees on a central rendering model & feature set, which simply isn't the case. 2D rendering is not a solved problem, there are many different takes on it. Insisting all GUIs on a given device use a single system is simply not realistic, which is why nobody actually uses any of the X rendering commands other than "draw pixmap" (aka, just be a dumb compositor)

[TylerE]

You can send draw commands without making that the fundamental underlying operating model.

GPUs are highly complex and performance under generic wrappers.

[uecker]

No, he is correct. The GPU on the other side of the PCI is a remote computer.

[TylerE]

Huge difference over operating over a PCI bus with gargantuan bandwidth and near zero latency, and working over random network connections.

[uecker]

Certainly a huge difference, but if you want good performance you need to treat this as a remote buffer management problem in both cases.

[TylerE]

Sorry, but I can’t take the suggestion that the PCI bus and the internet should be treated the same seriously. You’re telling 4 or 5 orders of magnitude difference. Maybe more on some specs.

It’s like saying you should use the same file access algorithms for a RAM disk and punch cards. No you shouldn’t!

[uecker]

You need to compare to memory on the main board.