Linux 4.16 Will Be Another Big Cycle For Intel's DRM Driver

We are just through week one of two for the Linux 4.15 merge window followed by eight or so weeks after that before this next kernel is officially released. But Intel's open-source driver developers have already begun building up a growing stack of changes for Linux 4.16 when it comes to their DRM graphics driver.

Last week we covered their first batch of changes in testing for what will then go into Linux 4.16. That first stack had continued work on Cannonlake "Gen 10" graphics, more HUC'ing and GuC'ing, GEM memory management improvements, and other low-level work. This second stack of changes now in testing has a lot more low-level driver improvements, cleanups, and fixes.

Perhaps most notable with this latest batch of changes in testing is Cannonlake HDMI 2.0 display support and there is also the prep work for trying to re-enable Fastboot by default. There is also other Cannonlake fixes as Intel "Gen 10" graphics get ready to premiere in 2018. There are also context switching improvements, some power code simplification, GEM proxy support, stolen memory handling improvements, and more.

This code also has a number of GVT virtualization improvements too with those changes having missed the DRM-Next/4.15 time period.

This latest batch of early Intel i915 DRM material for Linux 4.16 can be found via intel-gfx.