Sun Multi-Display Utilities

The Sun Multi-Display Utilities (MDU) library is a utility library written in the C programming language on top of the OpenGL API for Solaris and X Window System APIs. The goal of MDU is to make it simple to transition single-threaded, single-screen C and C++ Sun OpenGL for Solaris programs into scalable multi-threaded, multi-screen OpenGL programs with only minor source code modifications.

Modifying the source code of an existing program so that it displays properly and scales performance in a multi-display environment can be a difficult task. The MDU library can help short circuit the effort necessary to complete this task by providing a structural framework, an API, a configuration file format, and ported examples to assist with the process.

The MDU library reads in a text description file of the local viewing environment (how many screens, placement angle, position of viewer, etc.) and automatically adapts the viewing and threading models to that viewing environment, while fully scaling performance. Once an application has been modified to use MDU, no recompilation is necessary to move the application between viewing environments.