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Wine developer Zebediah Figura has sent in a proposal to work on a new Linux Kernel interface for Wine synchronization primitives, one that gets closer to performance and behaviour of Windows NT.

The basic idea is that the Wine team are "looking to introduce a kernel API that will allow us to implement Windows NT synchronization object API with at most one syscall per operation, and without managing object state in user managed shared memory, for the sake of performance". This might sound familiar if you follow Wine and Steam Play Proton closely, as it's part of what both esync and fsync were supposed to help with.

What's the deal? As Figura explained, modern games that need high performance make heavy use of multiple threads and synchronization primitives which Wine needs to work with in a way that's accurate and performs well. Both esync and fsync can give big boosts to performance of Windows games on Linux through Wine but it's mentioned that each also has big problems of their own.

Figura goes on to give a proposal of what the interface could look like, to gather feedback. Since this is in the very early stages, we're likely some time away from seeing it come to fruition.

The full post on the mailing list which goes into the deep details can be read here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

Koopacabras Jan 18, 2021
why reinvent the wheel? Can they just improve FMUTEX/FSYNC?
3zekiel Jan 18, 2021
Quoting: The_Aquabatwhy reinvent the wheel? Can they just improve FMUTEX/FSYNC?

It is explained in the link "read here" at the end. The issue is not performance or improvement in and out of itself. But instead to implement an API that is quite different, for the case of emulating lo$edow$ system calls. It is not very pretty, but from the message does not seem like anything else works. Also, changing existing posix apis for that makes no sense. The point is not to encourage people to use these APIs, but just use them for NT syscalls emulation.
BielFPs Jan 18, 2021
Quoting: 3zekiello$edow$
This word looks like you tried to write "Windows" and had a race condition problem, which ironically is the problem wine developers have in this case.

Very well.
BlackBloodRum Jan 18, 2021
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Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: 3zekiello$edow$
This word looks like you tried to write "Windows" and had a race condition problem, which ironically is the problem wine developers have in this case.

Very well.
Had to login just to give you a like! That's hilarious.

PS:
What happened to Micro$oft and Windoze? :D
3zekiel Jan 18, 2021
Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: 3zekiello$edow$
This word looks like you tried to write "Windows" and had a race condition problem, which ironically is the problem wine developers have in this case.

Very well.
Had to login just to give you a like! That's hilarious.

PS:
What happened to Micro$oft and Windoze? :D

I used to use them, but my phobia grew, and beginning to type them caused confusion in my brain hence the "lo$edow$" which is a mix of all associations coming to my brain when thinking about them.
bingus Jan 18, 2021
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Quoting: BlackBloodRumWhat happened to Micro$oft and Windoze? :D

Let's not forget Microshaft.
3zekiel Jan 20, 2021
Quoting: bingus
Quoting: BlackBloodRumWhat happened to Micro$oft and Windoze? :D

Let's not forget Microshaft.

Indeed, one should still honour such distinguished classics :)
kneekoo Jan 25, 2021
Winblows, anyone?
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