More ATI KMS Improvements For Linux 2.6.32

Posted by Michael Larabel on October 08, 2009

There's already a fair amount of DRM changes in the Linux 2.6.32 kernel including ATI R600/700 KMS and 3D support, but now nearly half-way into the Linux 2.6.32 development cycle there is a huge pull request of new ATI kernel mode-setting code.

With this new code, all ATI GPUs with kernel mode-setting are using a newer and cleaner initialization path while dropping support for the current paths. Lots of this init path work was recently done by Jerome Glisse and others, which is designed to give better suspend-and-resume on most ASICs along with other advantages.

This code also has new work for kernel mode-setting with AGP-based R600 graphics cards, a multi-card memory management fix, single CRTC server GPU support, and R600 stability fixes.

This code has over 3,000 lines of new code that is landing late in the Linux 2.6.32 cycle, which will likely not please Linus. For those interested in reading the pull request along with the Git log of the changes, it can be found on dri-devel.

Discuss this article in our forums, IRC channel, or email the author. You can also follow our content via RSS and on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter (@Phoronix and @MichaelLarabel). Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and experience other benefits.
Latest Hardware Reviews
  1. Sumo Lounge Emperor
  2. Gallium3D Continues Improving OpenGL For Older Radeon GPUs
  3. 15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison
  4. Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Comparison Shows Shortcomings
Latest Software Articles
  1. Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. XFS vs. F2FS On Linux 3.10
  2. AMD Radeon R600 GPU LLVM 3.3 Back-End Testing
  3. F2FS File-System Shows Regressions On Linux 3.10
  4. Previewing The Radeon Gallium3D Shader Optimizations
Latest Linux News
  1. Mageia 3 Released, Still Using Legacy GRUB
  2. NetBSD 6.1 Brings In More Features
  3. Using Six Monitors With AMD's Open-Source Linux Driver
  4. Benchmarking The Intel P-State, CPUfreq Changes
  5. FreeBSD Still Working On Next-Gen Package Manager
  6. DNF Still Advancing As Experimental Yum For Fedora
  7. Logitech Begins Supporting Linux Users
  8. Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Still Being Toyed With
  9. Linux 3.10 Kernel Benchmarks On A Core i7 Laptop
  10. GCC 4.8.1 Compiler Due To Be Out Next Week
  11. Linux 3.10 Kernel Benchmarks For Intel Ivy Bridge
Latest Forum Talk
  1. Mageia 3 Released, Still Using Legacy GRUB
  2. Using Six Monitors With AMD's Open-Source Linux...
  3. Logitech Begins Supporting Linux Users
  4. OpenSUSE Considers Replacing LXDE With E17
  5. Sumo Lounge Emperor
  6. NetBSD 6.1 Brings In More Features
  1. Computers
  2. Display Drivers
  3. Graphics Cards
  4. Motherboards
  5. Peripherals
  6. Processors
  7. Software
  8. Operating Systems
  9. All Articles
  1. Linux Benchmarking
  2. OpenBenchmarking.org
  3. Phoronix Test Suite