Intel DRM Begins Queuing For Linux 3.6 Kernel

While the Linux 3.5 kernel is still weeks away from being released (we're not even at 3.5-rc3 yet!), the Intel DRM graphics driver changes have already begun to queue up for the Linux 3.6 kernel.

Intel's Daniel Vetter e-mailed in the first pull request for David Airlie to take in the first set of non-bug-fix driver changes into his tree for what will then eventually be pulled for Linux 3.6.

The changes at this point though don't appear particularly exciting:

- new wait_rendring_timeout interface (Ben)
- l3 cache remapping and error uevent support (Ben)
- even more infoframes work from Paulo
- gen4 hotplug rework from Chris
- prep work to make Laurent Pincharts original mode constification for connector->mode_fixup possible

While not too exciting, there isn't too much to fundamentally ask for at the moment out of Intel's DRM driver. The Intel Sandy/Ivy Bridge graphics support is already great, Haswell is already coming along nicely for 2013, and Valleyview is also taking shape for Ivy Bridge graphics on a low-power Atom SoC.

Of course, as always, we still would like to see performance improvements. The Intel Windows driver is faster than the Linux driver for at least Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge now, which is something that's changed in the past year. The Windows driver also supports OpenGL 4.0 while the Mesa Linux driver is at OpenGL 3.0. And there's also no Intel OpenCL support for GPGPU/compute on Ivy Bridge graphics under open-source Linux. However, these other missing features aren't strictly DRM driver work but requires most of the changes on the user-space Mesa side.

The first drm-intel-next pull request for the Linux 3.6 kernel can be found on the DRI development mailing list.