gbm
also: Generic Buffer Management
GBM (Generic Buffer Management) is a Mesa library that provides a generic interface for allocating and managing graphics buffers across different GPU drivers and display systems.
GBM abstracts the complexity of allocating memory for graphics rendering by offering a unified API that works with various GPU drivers (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA via Nouveau, etc.) and display servers. Instead of each application needing to know driver-specific buffer allocation details, they use GBM's standardized functions.
GBM is particularly important for headless rendering, embedded systems, and Wayland compositors that need direct GPU access without a traditional X11 server. For example, a game engine can call GBM functions to allocate a graphics buffer for rendering, and GBM handles the complexity of communicating with the underlying GPU driver to create that buffer in the most efficient way.
It's part of the Mesa 3D graphics library ecosystem and works closely with DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) and other graphics infrastructure to enable efficient GPU memory management in modern Linux graphics stacks.