High Performance X Servers in the Kdrive Architecture

The common usage patterns of 2D drivers for the X Window System have changed over time. New extensions such as Render and Composite are creating new demands for 2D rendering which do not match those for previous architectures tailored to the core protocol. This paper describes changes made to the Kdrive X server implementation to implement new 2D acceleration, improve management of offscreen memory, implement OpenGL, and implement XVideo in a manner compatible with the Composite extension. With these changes, Kdrive is far better suited as a desktop X server than before and may serve as an example for desktop X server implementations. Simple benchmarks are presented.