DirectX is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux
Steve Pronovost *Partner Development Lead - 19/May/2020
Steve Pronovost *Partner Development Lead - 19/May/2020
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At //build 2020 we announced that GPU hardware acceleration is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2).
What is WSL? Для просмотра ссылки Войдиили Зарегистрируйся is an environment in which users can run their Linux applications from the comfort of their Windows PC. If you are a developer working on containerized workload that will be deployed in the cloud inside of Linux containers, you can develop and test these workloads locally on your Windows PC using the same native Linux tools you are accustomed to. In response to Для просмотра ссылки Войди или Зарегистрируйся Для просмотра ссылки Войди или Зарегистрируйся, these Linux applications and tools can now benefit from GPU acceleration.
The purpose of this blog is to give you a glimpse of how this support is achieved and how the various pieces fit together.
GPU Virtualization
Over the last few Windows releases, we have been busy developing client GPU virtualization technology. This technology is integrated into WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) and all WDDMv2.5 or later drivers have native support for GPU virtualization. This technology is referred to as WDDM GPU Paravirtualization, or GPU-PV for short. GPU-PV is now a foundational part of Windows and is used in scenarios like Для просмотра ссылки Войдиили Зарегистрируйся, the Для просмотра ссылки Войди или Зарегистрируйся or the Для просмотра ссылки Войди или Зарегистрируйся. Today this technology is limited to Windows guests, i.e. Windows running inside of a VM or container.
To bring support for GPU acceleration to WSL 2, WDDMv2.9 will expand the reach of GPU-PV to Linux guests. This is achieved through a new Linux kernel driver that leverages the GPU-PV protocol to expose a GPU to user mode Linux. The projected abstraction of the GPU follows closely the WDDM GPU abstraction model, allowing API and drivers built against that abstraction to be easily ported for use in a Linux environment.
Introducing dxgkrnl (Linux Edition)
Dxgkrnl is a brand-new kernel driver for Linux that exposes the /dev/dxg device to user mode Linux. /dev/dxg exposes a set of IOCTL that closely mimic the native WDDM D3DKMT kernel service layer on Windows. Dxgkrnl inside of the Linux kernel connects over the VM Bus to its big brother on the Windows host and uses this VM bus connection to communicate with the physical GPU.
Для просмотра ссылки Войдиили Зарегистрируйся
If the host has multiple GPUs, all GPUs are projected and available to the Linux environment (assuming all of these GPUs are running WDDMv2.9 drivers).
Applications running inside of the Linux environment have the same access to the GPU as native applications on Windows. There is no partitioning of resources between Linux and Windows or limit imposed on Linux applications. The sharing is completely dynamic based on who needs what. There are basically no differences between two Windows applications sharing a GPU versus a Linux and a Windows application sharing the same GPU. If a Linux application is alone on a GPU, it can consume all its resources!
Assuming you have the right GPU driver installed on the Windows host, /dev/dxg is automatically exposed and available to any WSL distro installed without having to install any additional packages. Note that the distro needs to be running in WSL version 2 mode (wsl –set-version <Distro> 2) in order to get access to the GPU.
Although they share a name, the version of dxgkrnl inside of the Linux kernel is a clean room implementation of a Linux GPU driver based on our GPU-PV protocol and doesn’t share anything else in common with its similarly named Windows counterpart. Dxgkrnl Linux edition is being made open source and shared back with the community. As we work on upstreaming this new driver, source code is available in Microsoft’s official Linux kernel branch for WSL 2.
Для просмотра ссылки Войдиили Зарегистрируйся
DxCore & D3D12 on Linux
Projecting a WDDM compatible abstraction for the GPU inside of Linux allowed us to recompile and bring our premiere graphics API to Linux when running in WSL.
This is the real and full D3D12 API, no imitations, pretender or reimplementation here… this is the real deal. libd3d12.so is compiled from the same source code as d3d12.dll on Windows but for a Linux target. It offers the same level of functionality and performance (minus virtualization overhead). The only exception is Present(). There is currently no presentation integration with WSL as WSL is a console only experience today. The D3D12 API can be used for offscreen rendering and compute, but there is no swapchain support to copy pixels directly to the screen (yet 😊
.
DxCore (libdxcore.so) is a simplified version of dxgi where legacy aspects of the API have been replaced by modern versions. DxCore is available on both Windows and Linux. DxCore is also used to host a flat version of the D3DKMT API used by a WDDM based driver on Windows to talk with the GPU. This API abstracts the differences in how the various WDDM services make their way to the kernel (service table on Windows versus IOCTL on Linux).
libd3d12.so and libdxcore.so are closed source, pre-compiled user mode binaries that ship as part of Windows. These binaries are compatible with glibc based distros and are automatically mounted under /usr/lib/wsl/lib and made visible to the loader. In other words, these APIs work right out of the box without the need to install additional packages or tweak the distro’s configuration. Support is currently limited to glibc based distros such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Centos, SUSE, etc…
D3D12 wouldn’t be able to operate without a GPU specific user mode driver (UMD) provided by our GPU manufacturer partners. The UMD is responsible for things like compiling shaders to hardware specific byte code and translating API rendering requests into actual GPU instructions in command buffers to be executed by the GPU. Working closely with our partners, they have recompiled their D3D12 UMD to a Linux target, enabling execution of these drivers in a WSL environment. This support is being integrated in upcoming WDDMv2.9 drivers such that GPU support in WSL is seamless to the end user. WDDMv2.9 drivers will carry a version of the DX12 UMD compiled for Linux. The host driver package is mounted inside of WSL at /usr/lib/wsl/drivers and directly accessible to the d3d12 API. If you have a WDDMv2.9 driver… the GPU magically shows up in WSL and becomes fully usable.
Для просмотра ссылки Войдиили Зарегистрируйся
[/SHOWTOGROUPS]
At //build 2020 we announced that GPU hardware acceleration is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2).
What is WSL? Для просмотра ссылки Войди
The purpose of this blog is to give you a glimpse of how this support is achieved and how the various pieces fit together.
GPU Virtualization
Over the last few Windows releases, we have been busy developing client GPU virtualization technology. This technology is integrated into WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) and all WDDMv2.5 or later drivers have native support for GPU virtualization. This technology is referred to as WDDM GPU Paravirtualization, or GPU-PV for short. GPU-PV is now a foundational part of Windows and is used in scenarios like Для просмотра ссылки Войди
To bring support for GPU acceleration to WSL 2, WDDMv2.9 will expand the reach of GPU-PV to Linux guests. This is achieved through a new Linux kernel driver that leverages the GPU-PV protocol to expose a GPU to user mode Linux. The projected abstraction of the GPU follows closely the WDDM GPU abstraction model, allowing API and drivers built against that abstraction to be easily ported for use in a Linux environment.
Introducing dxgkrnl (Linux Edition)
Dxgkrnl is a brand-new kernel driver for Linux that exposes the /dev/dxg device to user mode Linux. /dev/dxg exposes a set of IOCTL that closely mimic the native WDDM D3DKMT kernel service layer on Windows. Dxgkrnl inside of the Linux kernel connects over the VM Bus to its big brother on the Windows host and uses this VM bus connection to communicate with the physical GPU.
Для просмотра ссылки Войди
If the host has multiple GPUs, all GPUs are projected and available to the Linux environment (assuming all of these GPUs are running WDDMv2.9 drivers).
Applications running inside of the Linux environment have the same access to the GPU as native applications on Windows. There is no partitioning of resources between Linux and Windows or limit imposed on Linux applications. The sharing is completely dynamic based on who needs what. There are basically no differences between two Windows applications sharing a GPU versus a Linux and a Windows application sharing the same GPU. If a Linux application is alone on a GPU, it can consume all its resources!
Assuming you have the right GPU driver installed on the Windows host, /dev/dxg is automatically exposed and available to any WSL distro installed without having to install any additional packages. Note that the distro needs to be running in WSL version 2 mode (wsl –set-version <Distro> 2) in order to get access to the GPU.
Although they share a name, the version of dxgkrnl inside of the Linux kernel is a clean room implementation of a Linux GPU driver based on our GPU-PV protocol and doesn’t share anything else in common with its similarly named Windows counterpart. Dxgkrnl Linux edition is being made open source and shared back with the community. As we work on upstreaming this new driver, source code is available in Microsoft’s official Linux kernel branch for WSL 2.
Для просмотра ссылки Войди
DxCore & D3D12 on Linux
Projecting a WDDM compatible abstraction for the GPU inside of Linux allowed us to recompile and bring our premiere graphics API to Linux when running in WSL.
This is the real and full D3D12 API, no imitations, pretender or reimplementation here… this is the real deal. libd3d12.so is compiled from the same source code as d3d12.dll on Windows but for a Linux target. It offers the same level of functionality and performance (minus virtualization overhead). The only exception is Present(). There is currently no presentation integration with WSL as WSL is a console only experience today. The D3D12 API can be used for offscreen rendering and compute, but there is no swapchain support to copy pixels directly to the screen (yet 😊
DxCore (libdxcore.so) is a simplified version of dxgi where legacy aspects of the API have been replaced by modern versions. DxCore is available on both Windows and Linux. DxCore is also used to host a flat version of the D3DKMT API used by a WDDM based driver on Windows to talk with the GPU. This API abstracts the differences in how the various WDDM services make their way to the kernel (service table on Windows versus IOCTL on Linux).
libd3d12.so and libdxcore.so are closed source, pre-compiled user mode binaries that ship as part of Windows. These binaries are compatible with glibc based distros and are automatically mounted under /usr/lib/wsl/lib and made visible to the loader. In other words, these APIs work right out of the box without the need to install additional packages or tweak the distro’s configuration. Support is currently limited to glibc based distros such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Centos, SUSE, etc…
D3D12 wouldn’t be able to operate without a GPU specific user mode driver (UMD) provided by our GPU manufacturer partners. The UMD is responsible for things like compiling shaders to hardware specific byte code and translating API rendering requests into actual GPU instructions in command buffers to be executed by the GPU. Working closely with our partners, they have recompiled their D3D12 UMD to a Linux target, enabling execution of these drivers in a WSL environment. This support is being integrated in upcoming WDDMv2.9 drivers such that GPU support in WSL is seamless to the end user. WDDMv2.9 drivers will carry a version of the DX12 UMD compiled for Linux. The host driver package is mounted inside of WSL at /usr/lib/wsl/drivers and directly accessible to the d3d12 API. If you have a WDDMv2.9 driver… the GPU magically shows up in WSL and becomes fully usable.
Для просмотра ссылки Войди
[/SHOWTOGROUPS]
