The First DRM Pull Request For Linux 2.6.35 Kernel

Posted by Michael Larabel on May 19, 2010

The Linux 2.6.34 kernel was released only three days ago, but David Airlie has emailed Linus Torvalds and the Linux Kernel Mailing List with the first DRM pull request for the Linux 2.6.35 kernel.

The DRM pull request for the Linux 2.6.35 kernel is once again interesting with several major improvements coming to the kernel-side of the open-source graphics scene. Touching the core DRM area is AGP scratch page support, KMS frame-buffer code cleaning, improved disconnected monitor at boot handling support via KSM, many EDID parser updates, an improved fbdev handover mechanism, and faster TTM speed with AGP.

Within the pull request for the ATI Radeon DRM driver is initial KMS power management support for all ATI ASICs. We talk about this new kernel-based ATI power management support within this article where we also monitor the power savings and thermal performance with these different power conservation options. This is just one of the first stabs at in-kernel Radeon power management but the support will continue to evolve over the coming releases.

The 2.6.35 Radeon code also has basic IRQ and acceleration hardware setup code for the ATI Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" series of graphics cards, but still there is no usable open-source 2D/3D/video acceleration yet for these AMD GPUs that launched last September. There is also a change within the Radeon code that will allow the driver to access the video RAM beyond the PCI BAR, so that the driver can finally utilize all available video memory on the ATI graphics card.

Within the Intel DRM world their AGP driver has been split into one for the actual AGP support and the other for GTT. There is also Intel Cougar Point support now within this DRM code that will land in the 2.6.35 kernel. Cougar Point is rumored to be Intel's next-generation chipset (the Intel 6 series Express chipset) that will work when combined with a 32nm "Sandy Bridge" CPU. For months now and within the Linux 2.6.34 kernel is already support for the Intel Sandy Bridge graphics on Linux.

Sadly there are no major updates in this DRM pull-request for the Nouveau driver that provides open-source NVIDIA driver support provided by the X.Org community.

The pull request along with the full list of DRM changes being called in for Linux 2.6.35-rc1 can be found on the dri-devel list.

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. GCC 4.8.0 vs. LLVM Clang 3.3 Compiler Performance
  2. Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Leading Over Apple OS X
  3. The Cost Of Ubuntu Disk Encryption
  4. Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. XFS vs. F2FS On Linux 3.10
Latest Linux News
  1. A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released
  2. Unity 8, Mir Made Progress This Week On Features
  3. LLVM Clang 3.3 RC2 Is Ready For Testing
  4. AMD RadeonSI Gallium3D Begins Simple CL Demos
  5. Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
  6. Linux Desktop Security Could Be A Whole Lot Better
  7. KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces Feature Release
  8. New NVIDIA Linux Driver Supports The GeForce GTX 780
  9. Chrome 28 To Offer More Speed Improvements
  10. Digia Announces "Boot To Qt" Project
  11. X.Org Libraries Hit By Round Of Security Issues
Latest Forum Talk
  1. A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released
  2. Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
  3. Is there anyway to improve the performance of the...
  4. KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces...
  5. Steam: No used games...
  6. New Intel X.Org Driver Supports All Of Haswell
  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