Intel Driver Gets DRI2, KMS Approaching

Times are already exciting within the X.Org development community thanks to the Graphics Execution Manager entering Linux 2.6.28 and the release of X Server 1.6 quickly approaching, but still there's more good news to report this week. The Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2 support has entered the mainline xf86-video-intel driver and DRM mode-setting (commonly referred to as kernel mode-setting) has appeared in the drm-intel-next branch.

Intel's driver has worked with DRI2 already, but now it's finally entering their mainline tree to appear in Intel's next driver release (xf86-video-intel 2.6). This support isn't yet perfect (DRI2 vBlank-synced swaps are still lacking), but it's a sign that the Intel DRI2 implementation is now ready for adoption. DRI2 was dropped from X.Org 7.4 but will appear in X Server 1.6 after its October revision. ATI support for DRI2 can be found in an experimental driver.

Kernel-based mode-setting support has been planned to enter the Linux 2.6.29 kernel and the Intel support for it appearing in drm-intel-next (Intel's staging area for code that soon will go mainline) confirms this will take place. To use KMS, you'll also need to use the GEM mode-setting branch of libdrm.

Additional commentary on these two events can be found on Eric Anholt's blog.