Intel, ATI Kernel Mode-Setting Continues To Mature

There's been a whole flurry of activity going on within the kernel mode-setting world if you have looked at any of the Phoronix news entries from the past weeks. With the Linux 2.6.32 merge window opening up, activity on KMS for ATI and Intel hardware especially has increased. Just a few hours ago we talked about patches being pushed out that provide ATI power management for KMS (well, the initial bits of support) and then earlier this week confirmation of many KMS improvements in Linux 2.6.32 (including R600/700 mode-setting, 3D), but this afternoon there's new patches to talk about. One set of patches is for Intel, the other is for ATI/AMD.

The new Intel KMS patch-set this afternoon comes from Daniel Vetter and its his new version of the KMS overlay support. In early August we originally brought up Intel KMS overlay support as an alternative means used during video playback, but Daniel has since cleaned up this work to remove some visual corruption that was present in the earlier revisions. While the kernel side of this overlay support is set, there are some DDX changes required for the overlay support, which he will address following the xf86-video-intel 2.9 driver release. The start of this new patch set can be found here.

On the ATI side, Jerome Glisse continues to hack away on that chunk of mode-setting code. In his latest set of patches that were published this afternoon, there is over 1,000 lines of new code. In particular, the new code changes the initialization path for kernel mode-setting with ATI R400 graphics processors and also fixes a few bugs. AMD's Alex Deucher has separately sent along a few patches as well that bring more KMS fixes.