drm/dumb-buffers: Provide helper to set pitch and size

Add drm_modes_size_dumb(), a helper to calculate the dumb-buffer
scanline pitch and allocation size. Implementations of struct
drm_driver.dumb_create can call the new helper for their size
computations.

There is currently quite a bit of code duplication among DRM's
memory managers. Each calculates scanline pitch and buffer size
from the given arguments, but the implementations are inconsistent
in how they treat alignment and format support. Later patches will
unify this code on top of drm_mode_size_dumb() as much as possible.

drm_mode_size_dumb() uses existing 4CC format helpers to interpret
the given color mode. This makes the dumb-buffer interface behave
similar the kernel's video= parameter. Current per-driver implementations
again likely have subtle differences or bugs in how they support color
modes.

The dumb-buffer UAPI is only specified for known color modes. These
values describe linear, single-plane RGB color formats or legacy index
formats. Other values should not be specified. But some user space
still does. So for unknown color modes, there are a number of known
exceptions for which drm_mode_size_dumb() calculates the pitch from
the bpp value, as before. All other values work the same but print
an error.

v6:
- document additional use cases for DUMB_CREATE2 in TODO list (Tomi)
- fix typos in documentation (Tomi)
v5:
- check for overflows with check_mul_overflow() (Tomi)
v4:
- use %u conversion specifier (Geert)
- list DRM_FORMAT_Dn in UAPI docs (Geert)
- avoid dmesg spamming with drm_warn_once() (Sima)
- add more information about bpp special case (Sima)
- clarify parameters for hardware alignment
- add a TODO item for DUMB_CREATE2
v3:
- document the UAPI semantics
- compute scanline pitch from for unknown color modes (Andy, Tomi)

Signed-off-by: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen@ideasonboard.com>
Reviewed-by: Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen@ideasonboard.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250821081918.79786-3-tzimmermann@suse.de

1 files changed, 37 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst b/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst
index 92db80793bba..98ed38241dc6 100644
--- a/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst
+++ b/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst
@@ -648,6 +648,43 @@ Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>, Simona Vetter
 
 Level: Advanced
 
+Implement a new DUMB_CREATE2 ioctl
+----------------------------------
+
+The current DUMB_CREATE ioctl is not well defined. Instead of a pixel and
+framebuffer format, it only accepts a color mode of vague semantics. Assuming
+a linear framebuffer, the color mode gives an idea of the supported pixel
+format. But userspace effectively has to guess the correct values. It really
+only works reliably with framebuffers in XRGB8888. Userspace has begun to
+workaround these limitations by computing arbitrary format's buffer sizes and
+calculating their sizes in terms of XRGB8888 pixels.
+
+One possible solution is a new ioctl DUMB_CREATE2. It should accept a DRM
+format and a format modifier to resolve the color mode's ambiguity. As
+framebuffers can be multi-planar, the new ioctl has to return the buffer size,
+pitch and GEM handle for each individual color plane.
+
+In the first step, the new ioctl can be limited to the current features of
+the existing DUMB_CREATE. Individual drivers can then be extended to support
+multi-planar formats. Rockchip might require this and would be a good candidate.
+
+It might also be helpful to userspace to query information about the size of
+a potential buffer, if allocated. Userspace would supply geometry and format;
+the kernel would return minimal allocation sizes and scanline pitch. There is
+interest to allocate that memory from another device and provide it to the
+DRM driver (say via dma-buf).
+
+Another requested feature is the ability to allocate a buffer by size, without
+format. Accelators use this for their buffer allocation and it could likely be
+generalized.
+
+In addition to the kernel implementation, there must be user-space support
+for the new ioctl. There's code in Mesa that might be able to use the new
+call.
+
+Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
+
+Level: Advanced
 
 Better Testing
 ==============