Editing Openai/69676758-d944-8003-a3d4-835e33b4e372 (section)

=== Assistant: For game development, you should not go anywhere near DisplayPort, PCIe, or hardware signaling. ===
For game development, you should not go anywhere near DisplayPort, PCIe, or hardware signaling. Going that deep is neither feasible nor useful unless you are writing drivers, firmware, or silicon.

Here is the correct depth to target, from a practical and technical standpoint.

==== ### ====

This is where game developers operate.

You interact with:
* Vulkan / DirectX / OpenGL / Metal
* GPU concepts: - Command buffers - Pipelines - Shaders - Buffers, textures - Synchronization (fences, semaphores)

You output:
* Rendered frames into swapchains
* The OS + driver handles presentation

You do not control:
* Scanout timing
* Display links
* Color encoding at the wire level

===== You should understand: =====
* Window systems (Wayland/X11, Windows DWM)
* Fullscreen vs borderless
* VSync, adaptive sync
* Presentation modes (mailbox, FIFO, immediate)

But you do not write code here.

==== ### ====
* Fixed-function hardware
* No software hooks
* No benefit to gameplay or performance understanding

===== - Abstracted by drivers and DMA =====
* Only relevant for driver or kernel development

===== - Vendor-specific =====
* Closed documentation
* Irrelevant to rendering correctness

==== Understand this boundary: ====

: 

Once you submit a frame for presentation:
* The GPU display engine takes over
* Everything downstream is outside your control

This mental model prevents a lot of confusion about:
* Tearing
* Latency
* VSync behavior
* Multi-monitor issues

==== Go slightly deeper only here: ====
* GPU architecture basics: - Warps / wavefronts - Memory hierarchy - Cache behavior
* Driver interaction: - State changes cost - CPU–GPU synchronization hazards

Still:
* No need to touch hardware I/O standards

==== Only then would you go deeper, but that is no longer “game dev”: ====
* Writing a display server
* Writing a GPU driver
* Emulator / hypervisor graphics stack
* OS kernel graphics

At that point:
* DisplayPort becomes relevant
* PCIe packet formats matter

==== For game development, stop at the graphics API and GPU architecture level. ====

Anything below that:
* Is inaccessible
* Provides no leverage
* Is handled entirely by drivers and hardware

If you want, tell me what kind of game dev you mean (engine, gameplay, rendering research, indie, low-level engine), and I can give a precise learning roadmap with no wasted depth.