AMDGPU DC Code Lands For Linux 4.15 Kernel

Linus Torvalds has accepted the AMDGPU DC display code pull request for the Linux 4.15 kernel. AMD Linux users can now rejoice!

Overnight David Airlie sent in the AMDGPU DC pull request for Linux 4.15 and since then Linus Torvalds was active on the kernel mailing list ranting about AMD header files and other unrelated to DC code. He was also pulling in other PRs... It was getting a bit worrisome, given the DC code not being in pristine shape, but it was exciting as heck to see this evening that he did go ahead and pull in the 132 thousand lines of new kernel code to land this AMDGPU DC. Linus hasn't provided any commentary about DC on the kernel mailing list as of writing.

AMDGPU DC as a quick refresher is the new display code stack for the AMDGPU DRM driver. DC allows for atomic mode-setting, Radeon RX Vega display support out-of-the-box, Raven Ridge support, HDMI/DP audio for the past few generations of Radeon hardware, the prep work for open-source FreeSync support, and other modern display features with this code largely being shared with other Radeon drivers on other operating systems.

With Linux 4.15, AMDGPU DC is just enabled by default for Vega hardware. If you are on GCN 1.1 or newer with AMDGPU and want to use DC, you need to use the amdgpu.dc=1 kernel module parameter for activation.

Quite happy this evening finally having RX Vega display support off a mainline kernel build without needing AMDGPU-PRO or a branched kernel build... And finally HDMI/DP audio! Some fresh Linux 4.15 Radeon graphics card benchmarks coming up shortly on Phoronix.

Kudos to AMD and all those involved for whipping DC/DAL into shape over the past nearly two years and finally reaching this exciting milestone to put open-source Radeon Linux display support better on par with Windows.