Two companion research snapshots on what a minimal display-only native driver
(EDID + mode-set + framebuffer scanout, no acceleration) would take as a danos
.scanout backend, and how the two vendors compare.
- nvidia-gpus.md — RTX 3060 (Ampere GA106). Display is not GSP-gated: nouveau's
ga102.c has a direct register path, and danos's GOP boot lets a driver attach to
a live, already-devinit'd display. Tier-4 effort; the register-level display code
lives in GPL nouveau while the permissive OGKM reference is the hard GSP path.
GA10x is the last NVIDIA family that keeps a register-level display path.
- intel-igpu.md — the companion, and a materially easier, lower-tier target. Intel
publishes register-level Display Engine PRMs, so a clean-room permissive driver
is viable; the DMC microcontroller is optional (power states only), scanout comes
from system RAM via the GGTT (no VRAM manager), and coreboot's libgfxinit is a
compact native reference. The catch is hardware: an iGPU may not drive the
monitor on a discrete-GPU desktop.
Sourced, cited snapshots — not implementations; each ends with a "first light"
milestone ladder framed as a danos .scanout service. Not yet linked from
docs/README.md.
Daniel Samson