AMD Delivers Many Fixes For Polaris GPUs On Linux - Finally Enables ZeroRPM Fan Mode

It seems AMD's Linux graphics driver team is firing with precision on all cylinders these days. Not only have they been working on timely support for the Radeon RX 6000 "RDNA 2" / "Big Navi" Linux driver support ahead of the official launch and have the initial code already upstreamed in Linux 5.9, but they've even been going back with a number of fixes for older graphics processors.

In recent months they have been making a number of improvements for older GPUs including the likes of improving the GCN 1.0/1.1 state on the AMDGPU DRM driver and new back-end LLVM targets for older GPUs stemming from some sort of internal code audit, among other fixes. The latest now to mark this work on their older hardware is a set of forty patches to start the day for Polaris GPUs.

A batch of 40 patches were sent out in the early hours of the day with quite a number of fixes and many commits citing outright corrections to the existing code. With these 40 Linux kernel driver patches there is a fix for screen flickering experienced under some multi-display setups, a memory clock switch is enabled for multi-synced displays, there is a reduction in idle power for multi-display setups, and other code alignments with Windows.

Oh yeah, the code also finally enables the ZeroRPM fan feature on Linux for Polaris graphics cards. The ZeroRPM mode supported by some AMD Radeon graphics cards allows a quieter mode of operation and shutting off the graphics card fan under some conditions namely under idle or light load. Now this feature should be working under Linux for Polaris GPUs on capable graphics cards.

All of these corrections and many multiple display minded improvements are available for testing via the mailing list. Assuming no issues come up, this will likely be material for the Linux 5.11 kernel in early 2021.