Updated AMD Linux Graphics Driver Patches For Color Management

Melissa Wen of Igalia along with developers from AMD and Valve have been working on improved AMD color management support with a particular focus on the Steam Deck but will also benefit other AMD Radeon Linux users as well.

Last month I wrote about Melissa's request for comments (RFC) patch series providing the AMD specific color management properties for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver. This includes exposing various pre- and post-blending color properties, and various color management . display manager changes. Again the immediate focus is on handling the Van Gogh APU's display hardware found within the Steam Deck but ultimately will be beneficial to other AMD Radeon GPUs with Display Core Next (DCN).

On the user-space side, Valve's Gamescope compositor that is used by default on SteamOS and can also be manually installed on a traditional Linux desktop supports making use of these color management properties. This ultimately will be used for gamut mapping, HDR, SDR on HDR, HDR on SDR, and other AMD Linux graphics color features.

Following the success of the RFC patch series, Melissa on Tuesday sent out the post-RFC patch series. In its current form the work is down to 36 patches and for the initial roll-out is now hidden behind the "AMD_PRIVATE_COLOR" guard.

Those interested in this AMD color management work for the Steam Deck and other AMD Radeon graphics hardware can find the new patches on dri-devel.