Can Epiphany write directly to graphics framebuffer?

[fredd]

Will it be possible to set up the system in a way so that the epiphany cores can write directly to framebuffer? I guess it's possible in principle, but harder, for instance, to make host side X server cooperate nicely with Epiphany.

[Gravis]

see below

[fredd]

Yes, that's the default configuration. But both memory split and HDMI controller are (to large part) implemented in FPGA, so surely it should be possible to put the framebuffer in shared RAM. Won't be useful in most cases probably, but it could be a good exercise in FPGA programming.

Another more interesting (and more hypotethical...) idea would be to implement some kind of hardware compositing in FPGA (like the hardwired one in the Raspberry Pi, that they will use to speed up the desktop), that could take buffers both from ARM and from Epiphany and compose them together directly to output. Probably requires at least the 7020 and some experience of low-level graphics programming to do it usefully tho...