AMDGPU Gets Its Last Feature Updates For Linux 4.16

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDGPU Gets Its Last Feature Updates For Linux 4.16

Alex Deucher of AMD has sent in the last feature updates to DRM-Next of new AMDGPU material to be queued for the Linux 4.16 kernel cycle that will begin later in January...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDGPU-Last-For-Linux-4.16

[direx]

Still no proper HDMI audio support. This was promised for 4.15 and still HDMI audio support is rather rudimentary: only legacy audio formats are kind of working. There is still no sign of HBR audio support (required for TrueHD/DTS-HD MA/Atmos/DTS:X and the like). Even multichannel PCM is still broken with the current git tree.

[Kavalor]

Hmm I don't remember AMD promising full HDMI Audiosupport for 4.15 . As far as I can remember it was said that DC is the precondition for having HDMI Audio support. And that certainly will be delivered with 4.15

[direx]

How much properly mixed multi channel material you have, a couple of Start Wars DVDs. Rest of movies have only background music mixed to back speakers. HDMI stereo audio works, that is proper support.

LOL @stereo audio.

Sorry, but the DVD era is over for many years. On BluRay discs lossless HD audio (7.1 DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD) has been the defacto-standard for many years now, which is slowly being replaced now by object-based sound (Atmos/DTS:X/Auro). All of these audio formats are supported by all HDMI-GPUs which have been sold in the last 5+ years. In fact, other GPU manufacturers also support these audio formats on Linux.

Since storage is very afordable these days people tend to archive their discs on hard drive accesing them through Kodi (or a comparable software). I do it and almost everyone I know does that, so we don't have to fiddle around with discs any more. That's why proper audio support is not limited to stereo audio or some legacy surround formats. The current state of Polaris+ hardware makes it still a big no-go area for all HTPC users and sound enthusiasts.

And I can assure you that there is much more legit multi-channel and HighRes material out there, it's not just Star Wars or other Hollywood movies. Think about live concerts and BD audio

[GruenSein]

LOL @stereo audio.

Sorry, but the DVD era is over for many years. On BluRay discs lossless HD audio (7.1 DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD) has been the defacto-standard for many years now, which is slowly being replaced now by object-based sound (Atmos/DTS:X/Auro). All of these audio formats are supported by all HDMI-GPUs which have been sold in the last 5+ years. In fact, other GPU manufacturers also support these audio formats on Linux.

Since storage is very afordable these days people tend to archive their discs on hard drive accesing them through Kodi (or a comparable software). I do it and almost everyone I know does that, so we don't have to fiddle around with discs any more. That's why proper audio support is not limited to stereo audio or some legacy surround formats. The current state of Polaris+ hardware makes it still a big no-go area for all HTPC users and sound enthusiasts.

And I can assure you that there is much more legit multi-channel and HighRes material out there, it's not just Star Wars or other Hollywood movies. Think about live concerts and BD audio

You have managed to find a niche (Surround Audiophiles) within a niche (Linux HTPC users). Congratulations

[dwagner]

Resuming from S3 still does not work with the latest patches, rendering all other potential improvements mute for me. I still have to run a version of amd-staging-drm-next that was somewhere in between 4.13 and 4.14 in order to have working S3 support.

Ah, and btw.: Meanwhile others have experienced the same weird unwillingness of amdgpu to support 4k@60Hz via HDMI that had been introduced with the "drm/amd/display: Block 6Ghz timing if SBIOS set HDMI_6G_en to 0" patch that was included some time ago. But at least this problem can still be fixed easily by reverting that detrimental patch, without any adverse side effects. (See
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104412 for more on this.)

It kind of concerns me that above two regressions have persisted in amdgpu now for several months.

[starshipeleven]

You have managed to find a niche (Surround Audiophiles) within a niche (Linux HTPC users). Congratulations

*within another niche (HTPC users).

[direx]

You have managed to find a niche (Surround Audiophiles) within a niche (Linux HTPC users). Congratulations

What I was saying actually applies to pretty much all Linux HTPC users. Of course not all of them are audiophile users, but I'd assume that people running an HTPC do care about surround sound. Maybe not about Atmos so much, but at least about the formats that current movies use.

And I would also assume that it's the HTPC users who actually need HDMI audio the most, that's why I find it so disappointing that AMD does not care about them and forces them to go Intel for their setups. For legacy audio we don't need HDMI, we can use Toslink for this.

[dwagner]

What I was saying actually applies to pretty much all Linux HTPC users. Of course not all of them are audiophile users, but I'd assume that people running an HTPC do care about surround sound.

I do use amdgpu on a system for "HTPC" use, and I do care about surround sound, but I emit the surround sound from the PC to my amplifier not via HDMI, but independent from the video signal via TOSlink. Thus I don't mind at the moment that amdgpu's HDMI support does not include all kinds of surround signals.

[gurv]

Thanks to all the AMD devs, whish you a happy new year
I'm really looking forward to Freesync in 2018