Sent out today is likely the last batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver feature updates ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window getting underway around the start of December. And it’s an exciting one too from adding a new SMART POWER OLED feature to switching from the Radeon to AMDGPU drivers by default for aging GCN 1.0 Southern Islands and GCN 1.1 Sea Islands GPUs.
Today’s pull request does have the recently talked about patches from Valve’s Timur Kristóf for moving the Radeon HD 7000 through Rx 300 series (mostly) discrete GPUs from the legacy Radeon driver over to the AMDGPU driver. These GCN 1.0/1.1 graphics cards by default have used the Radeon DRM driver but could opt-in to using the AMDGPU driver for those wanting to adjust the module parameters. The default hadn’t happened due to the AMDGPU driver missing some features for those old GPUs that were found with the Radeon driver. But thanks to Timur those issues are resolved and AMDGPU is at feature parity to the old Radeon driver. Going for AMDGPU means better performance, RADV Vulkan driver support, and all-around being on the modern AMDGPU driver compared to the legacy Radeon driver now just used for Radeon HD 6000 series and older.
More details on this GCN 1.0/1.1 AMDGPU effort within the recent article Valve’s Open-Source Radeon Linux Driver “Love Song For Gamers With Old GPUs”.
Separately, another exciting bit with today’s pull request is adding a new “SMART POWER OLED” interface to the AMDGPU driver. SMART POWER OLED is described as a power management optimization for certain OLED LED panels by sending the MaxCLL per-frame to the TCON for reducing power consumption.
Today’s pull request also has more user queue “userq” updates, variable rate refresh (VRR) fix, DC clock-gating updates, refactoring HDCP code, SR-IOV fixes, XGMI fixes, and other general fixes / code clean-ups.
See this pull request for the AMD kernel graphics driver changes on their way to DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.19 merge window.
