AMD Linux Graphics Driver Stack Cutting Down On PCI ID Table Duplication

Traditionally with the Linux graphics drivers there are PCI ID tables littered in multiple places throughout the driver stack from the DRM/KMS kernel drivers to the Mesa OpenGL/Vulkan drivers but also the potential for other areas like the increasingly less common DDX drivers and other components. AMD is looking to address the proliferation of PCI IDs throughout the stack and the maintenance burden of having to keep the list of IDs in sync across the different components.

AMD has been working to centralize their PCI ID list within the DRM/KMS kernel area and to then expose the needed device and description/family bits to user-space that should be the basic information needed by the likes of the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for managing the support rather than having to keep replicating these lists.

AMD developers worked out exposing the DRM device name as the kernel side change while today their user-space Mesa changes hit Mesa 19.3-devel. That Mesa work includes no longer using PCI ID lists within Mesa for the AMD graphics hardware and changing around the chip identification. So that's all getting squared away for ensuring with future GPUs only the PCI IDs will need to be added to the AMDGPU kernel driver and not throughout the stack, thereby reducing the maintenance burden and the chance for any missing IDs or mistakes. A fairly small but long overdue change.