EXA(4)

✨ NAME ✨

exa — the new 2D acceleration architecture for X.Org 💅 (and yeah bestie, you clocked it, this is section 4, the Kernel Interfaces Manual, we're in driver-land now ✨)

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

okay so. EXA hands video drivers a simple API they can implement for 2D acceleration. that's the whole gig. it is a module loaded by drivers, and it is not intended to be loaded on its own — like, do not just yolo-launch this thing solo, it's not built different like that 🙈. wanna know how to turn EXA on for your setup? go read your driver's manual page, it's all there, i promise 🫶

the EXA architecture is designed to make accelerating the Render extension simple and efficient, and it results in various performance tradeoffs compared to XAA. real talk, there's a tradeoff table in the vibes.

some xorg.conf options exist for debugging performance issues or driver rendering problems. they are not intended for general use — read that again, bestie, these are the diagnostic levers, not the everyday settings, periodt 💅

🎀 the options (yes they're all here, no cap)

• Option "EXANoComposite" "boolean" — disables acceleration of the Composite operation, which is at the heart of the Render extension 💖. and no, it's not related to the Composite extension, don't get it twisted. Default: No.
• Option "EXANoUploadToScreen" "boolean" — disables acceleration of uploading pixmap data to the framebuffer. Default: No.
• Option "EXANoDownloadFromScreen" "boolean" — disables acceleration of downloading of pixmap data from the framebuffer.

⚠️ NOTE: not usable with drivers which rely on DownloadFromScreen succeeding. like, that's the whole thing, it's giving "do not" 😭

Default: No.

• Option "MigrationHeuristic" "anystr" — chooses an alternate pixmap migration heuristic, for debugging purposes. the default is intended to be the best performing one for general use, though others may help with specific use cases 👑. available options include "always", "greedy", and "smart". Default: always.

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• Xorg(1)
• xorg.conf(5)

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

authors include: Keith Packard, Eric Anholt, Zack Rusin, and Michel Dänzer — the icons, the main characters, the ones who ate and left no crumbs 🔥

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and that's the page babes ✨ this was EXA(4) from X Version 11, xorg-server 21.1.25 — go forth, read your driver's manpage, and slay 💜🌸