An unexpected surprise today are AMD Linux software engineers announcing a new project a bit further outside the scope of their open-source graphics drivers… The AMDGPU Composition Stack “ACS” is for delivering new advanced features atop Wayland for bettering the Linux desktop display capabilities.
The AMDGPU Composition Stack is a fork of Wayland’s Weston compositor and this is where AMD engineers will be experimenting with “additional advanced features” as a staging area for their Wayland features they hope to see adopted by Weston and other Wayland compositors. ACS will also serve as “a reference compositor for AMD’s advanced graphics and display feature development.” This Wayland compositor is also designed to “extract the best out of AMD Display and Graphics [hardware].”
The AMDGPU Composition Stack isn’t just some one-off playground for AMD Linux engineers but they note that it’s to be a “full stack opensource delivery vehicle for AMDs commercial solutions and products.” Furthermore their release announcement this morning calls it “To be the space where AMD specific in-house SW tools (performance tweakers, multimedia players, 3D games, profiling tools etc) can be saved in future.“
Presumably AMD is investing in the AMDGPU Composition Stack to help further their efforts along with the Steam Deck and other AMD Linux powered handheld gaming devices, the wins that AMD has been enjoying for powering various in-vehicle infotainment systems that typically run on Linux, and other similar applications.
The ACS Wayland Compositor code is hosted on GitLab and was announced this morning on the DRI mailing list.
Here’s a screenshot from AMD showing off their initial AMDGPU Composition Stack:
It will be interesting to see what innovations AMD engineers work on driving around Wayland to complement their open-source Linux graphics/display stack.
