Driver code open-sourced
Build Microsoft has followed up the crowd-pleasing announcement of GUI and GPU-enablement for Linux apps running on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 2 with details of the tweaks needed to make the magic happen.
The team has been busily developing client GPU virtualization technology over the last few Windows releases, integrating the toys into the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) from version 2.5 onward.
Referred to as WDDM GPU Paravirtualization (GPU-PV), the tech had been limited to Windows running in a VM or container, but with WDDM 2.9. the team is extending a hand to Linux guests via a new Linux kernel driver to expose GPUs to Penguistas.
It’s a neat trick. The new driver, dxgkrnl, mimics the native WDDM D3DKMT kernel service layer on Windows and uses the VM bus connection to get at the GPUs.
