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Display Concepts

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First Draft (Nice and Neat)

Display Devices

Embedded Displays

  • Touchscreen Displays
  • Embedded Linux Framebuffers
  • OLED, LCD, and E-Ink Displays

Display Device Quality Control

Display Portability and Accessibility

  • Display Mirroring
  • Multi-Monitor Support
  • Accessibility Features

Display Hardware Standards

Display Interfaces & Outputs

(Hardware interfaces for outputting display signals)

  • DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort (DP), VGA
  • USB-C / Thunderbolt (Video output and data transfer)
  • Multi-Stream Transport (MST) (Daisy-chaining multiple monitors over a single cable)

Media Protection Protocols

(Content protection protocols to prevent unauthorized access to digital media)

  • HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) (Content protection for digital media)

Display Hardware Standards / Software Interface

Display Information Standards & Protocols

(Standards and protocols for defining display modes and communication)

  • EDID (Extended Display Identification Data)
  • VESA Modelines (Defines resolution timings and modes, often conveyed via EDID)

Display Hotplugging

  • EDID (Extended Display Identification Data)
  • DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling)
  • Hotplug Events

V-Sync and Frame Rate Cap

  • Tearing
  • Frame Rate Capping
  • Adaptive Sync

Software Technologies (Core OS Level)

Display Protocol Stack

  • XCB (X C Binding)
  • Wayland Protocols
  • XRender

Software Technologies

Kernel-Level Display Management

(Handles direct hardware interaction for display output)

  • Framebuffer Driver (Legacy, offloads mode setting and rendering to user-space programs)
  • KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) (Sets mode via kernel to improve early-stage graphics)
  • DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) (Handles rendering via kernel to improve latency)

Userspace-Level Components

  • Framebuffer Devices

    • /dev/fb0

  • Direct Rendering

    • Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) (Part of the X.Org X11 Server, can access DRM directly)
    • OpenGL Direct Rendering (Can access DRM via libdrm)

Graphics APIs & Stacks

(Handles rendering and graphical computation)

  • API Standards:

    • OpenGL
    • Vulkan
    • DirectX
    • Metal (Appleโ€™s proprietary graphics API)

    • API Implementations:

    • Mesa (OpenGL, Vulkan implementation)

    • LLVMpipe (Software rasterizer for OpenGL)
    • Nouveau (Open-source NVIDIA driver, the user-space component is included in Mesa)

Display Protocols

(Handles how display systems interact with graphics hardware and manage windows/screens)

General Concepts
  • Compositing
    • Compositing Effects (Shadows, transparency, animations)
    • Software vs Hardware Compositing (Performed by the CPU vs the GPU)
  • Window Management
    • Tiling Window Management (Organizing windows without overlapping)
    • Floating Window Management (Allowing windows to overlap freely)
    • Window Placement (How windows are positioned when opened)
Protocols

  • X11 (Display protocol, also known as X Window System)

    • Xorg (Compositor backend for X11)
    • XWayland (Bridge for running X11 apps on Wayland)

    • Wayland (Modern display protocol)

    • Wayland Compositors

      • Mutter
      • Weston
      • KWin
      • Sway
      • Wayfire

    • MIR (Canonical's display protocol, primarily used with Ubuntu)

    • MIR Compositors (e.g., MIR server)

Software Level (User)

Screen Rotation and Orientation

  • Landscape/Portrait Mode
  • Rotate Mode in X11/Wayland

Display Color Calibration

  • ICC Profiles
  • Color Temperature
  • Hardware Calibration

Key Visual Concepts

High Level Concepts

(High-level principles governing the user experience)

  • Resolution (The number of pixels displayed on the screen, e.g., 1920x1080)
  • Refresh Rate (How many times per second the image is updated)
  • Aspect Ratio (The proportional relationship between width and height, e.g., 16:9, 4:3)
  • Scaling
    • Integer Scaling (Scaling by whole-number factors for sharper images)
    • Display Scaling (Scaling UI elements proportionally to fit screen size or resolution)
  • Visual Aspects
    • Tearing (Visual artifact when frames are drawn out of sync with the monitorโ€™s refresh rate)
    • V-Sync (Vertical synchronization to prevent tearing)
    • VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) (A technology that syncs the display refresh rate to the GPUโ€™s frame rate)
  • Latency (Input lag, frame rendering delay)

Color & Visual Fidelity Concepts

(Concepts related to color accuracy and visual quality)

  • Color Depth (Number of bits used for color representation)
  • Color Space (e.g., sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3)
  • Gamma Correction (Adjusts brightness for non-linear perception)

Graphics Processing Hardware

(Physical components responsible for rendering and display output)

GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)

  • GPU Memory (VRAM)
  • GPU Offloading (Using the GPU to accelerate non-graphical workloads)

GPU Rendering Pipelines

  • Vertex Processing
  • Rasterization
  • Fragment Processing
  • Shader Programs
  • Ray Tracing

Display Memory Management

  • Unified Memory
  • Memory Mapping
  • Memory Leak

Tools

Remote Display & Virtualization

(Tools and protocols for accessing or virtualizing remote displays)

  • VNC (Virtual Network Computing)
  • RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)
  • SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments)
  • Texture Mapping
  • Anti-Aliasing
  • Post-Processing Effects
  • Frame Buffers and Buffers in VR
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