Today, NVIDIA’s year-long plea to incorporate explicit GPU synchronization support into the DRI3 and Present extensions, as well as the Xwayland implementation, has been granted, significantly advancing explicit GPU synchronization efforts.
In an interview we conducted last week, KDE Developer Xaver Hugl explained why explicit sync is such a crucial development. He detailed how it will conclusively resolve certain issues that Linux users encounter when utilizing proprietary graphics drivers on an NVIDIA graphics card with Wayland during gaming or other dedicated GPU activities.
Even though the explicit sync protocol has already been integrated into Wayland protocols, its successful execution still requires implementation into a few other components, such as the Wayland compositors and the proprietary NVIDIA driver, for NVIDIA GPUs to operate seamlessly on Linux.
Today, NVIDIA’s proposition to incorporate explicit GPU synchronization into the DRI3 and Present extensions, along with the Xwayland execution, was ultimately merged into the XOrg Server after a year of anticipation. If you’re curious why this is significant, Xwayland is still in use for backward compatibility with X11 apps on Wayland sessions.
“While we at NVIDIA may be particularly keen to have this in place, since our driver lacks implicit sync support, a general consensus seems to be forming around the idea that explicit sync is the best path forward for the Linux graphics stack,” said Erik Kurzinger. “Having both X11 and Wayland use a similar mechanism for explicit sync will simplify development for client-side drivers.”
Now, all that remains is for NVIDIA to release a new version of their proprietary graphics driver that finally supports the explicit sync protocol. As you can expect, this would open the door for more users, especially gamers, to switch to Linux, as graphical glitches will be a thing of the past.
The latest GNOME 46 desktop environment already ships with explicit sync support, which should also be implemented in the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.1 desktop environment release, due out in mid-June 2024.
Last updated 9 hours ago