AMDGPU Linux Driver Seeing A Lot Of Power Saving Optimization Work

In addition to squaring away the Radeon RX 6000 series RDNA 2 support and promoting the Arcturus support for the new GPU found within the AMD MI100 accelerator, this month AMD open-source Linux driver developers have been devoting a fair amount of work towards power optimizations.

With the many different DC display core patch series this month and other patches floating around, there has been seemingly a lot of work on optimizing the graphics power usage. And in particular a lot of work on the optimizations from the DCN3 (Display Core Next 3) perspective with Van Gogh in particular being a focus.

Among the patches that have caught my attention during the passive monitoring in recent weeks has been I2C memory low power support for shutting down I2C memory blocks when not in use. There has also been stutter mode is now enabled for DCN 3.01 hardware (a power savings feature), DMCU memory low power support, BLNDGAM memory shutdown support when they are not in use, GAMCOR memory shutdown support, and enabling pipe power gating by default. Those have been the patches that caught my eye this month but quite likely even more recent power optimization work out there for AMDGPU.

Seeing all of this power optimization work for new and forthcoming hardware is exciting. It wouldn't surprise me the least if this fresh round of recent power optimizations on Linux were at least pushed along in part by more AMD-powered Chromebooks on the way. Similar to HDCP support and other features worked on for the AMDGPU Linux driver as a result of Chromebook AMD APU wins, it's quite possible gearing up for better power efficiency is also part of this effort.