AMD Begins Posting "Dali" APU Linux Graphics Driver Patches

In addition to AMD's open-source Linux driver developers being busy in recent weeks bringing up the Renoir APU support, today we've seen the first baby steps towards bringing up "Dali" as another upcoming AMD APU.

The Dali codename has been known for a few months now and has been expected to be a value/mobile APU to launch in 2020. Dali is expected in more budget devices while Renoir should carry better performance up the stack.

Today was the first patches to the AMDGPU Linux driver albeit volleyed so far were just the initial DC "Display Core" patches that add in the new ASIC ID and also a second patch limiting the voltage level explicitly for Dali.

Dali is being treated as just a newer revision of the AMD Picasso APU support. The patch messages also confirm that Dali is a new revision derived from Raven 2 / Picasso hardware.

While we're still waiting on more Dali patches to come out, at this stage it's looking to be a near facsimile to current AMD Vega-based Picasso APUs and not featuring any new display or video blocks like we're seeing with the beefier Vega-based Renoir.

Given the timing of these initial AMD Dali patches coming, the support will first come to the Linux 5.5 kernel cycle kicking off late in the year and reaching stable in early 2020. Linux 5.5 is also likely the kernel we'll find in use by the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS OS release in April, so hopefully the Dali (and Renoir) support will be in good shape for that kernel revision.