• Stephen Warren's avatar
    drivers/video: implement a simple framebuffer driver · 26549c8d
    Stephen Warren authored
    A simple frame-buffer describes a raw memory region that may be rendered
    to, with the assumption that the display hardware has already been set
    up to scan out from that buffer.
    
    This is useful in cases where a bootloader exists and has set up the
    display hardware, but a Linux driver doesn't yet exist for the display
    hardware.
    
    Examples use-cases include:
    
    * The built-in LCD panels on the Samsung ARM chromebook, and Tegra
      devices, and likely many other ARM or embedded systems.  These cannot
      yet be supported using a full graphics driver, since the panel control
      should be provided by the CDF (Common Display Framework), which has been
      stuck in design/review for quite some time.  One could support these
      panels using custom SoC-specific code, but there is a desire to use
      common infra-structure rather than having each SoC vendor invent their
      own code, hence the desire to wait for CDF.
    
    * Hardware for which a full graphics driver is not yet available, and
      the path to obtain one upstream isn't yet clear.  For example, the
      Raspberry Pi.
    
    * Any hardware in early stages of upstreaming, before a full graphics
      driver has been tackled.  This driver can provide a graphical boot
      console (even full X support) much earlier in the upstreaming process,
      thus making new SoC or board support more generally useful earlier.
    
    [akpm@linux-foundation.org: make simplefb_formats[] static]
    Signed-off-by: default avatarStephen Warren <swarren@wwwdotorg.org>
    Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
    Acked-by: default avatarOlof Johansson <olof@lixom.net>
    Cc: Rob Clark <robclark@gmail.com>
    Cc: Florian Tobias Schandinat <FlorianSchandinat@gmx.de>
    Cc: Tomasz Figa <tomasz.figa@gmail.com>
    Cc: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    26549c8d
simple-framebuffer.txt 806 Bytes