Linux 5.14 GPU Driver Updates Come In Heavy With ~300k New Lines Of Code

The Direct Rendering Manager (kernel graphics/display driver) updates for Linux 5.14 are putting on the pounds with nearly 300k lines of new code added (312,187 insertions, 22,367 deletions). The big increase is driven by new AMD Radeon graphics support added, a new Microsoft driver added, and other changes.

As we've been accustomed to, the big increase in L.O.C. count is largely due to the new hardware support with the AMDGPU DRM driver and all the associated header files. Those register header files are automatically generated and really drive up the line count for the AMDGPU kernel driver that is already the largest driver within the Linux kernel source tree. The new AMD Radeon hardware support with Linux 5.14 is Yellow Carp and Beige Goby.

A new driver to Linux 5.14 is the Microsoft Hyper-V display driver but that is relatively small in size. Another new driver this cycle is the SimpleDRM driver.

The DRM pull request for Linux 5.14 also brings:

- Intel Alder Lake P enablement and XeLPD display enablement.

- Continued GuC/HuC enablement work within the Intel driver.

- The Intel driver adapting to use TTM memory management for discrete GPUs and getting more bits aligned for the DG1 discrete graphics card.

- AMDGPU hot unplug handling should now be in good shape.

- 16bpc display support for AMDGPU.

- Initial SR-IOV support for Aldebaran along with other updates for that new CDNA accelerator.

- PCI Express ASPM power-savings support is finally enabled by default.

- Initial support for AMD laptops with Smart Shift.

- AMDGPU throttler status reporting.

- AMDGPU/AMDKFD Heterogeneous Memory Management Shared Virtual Memory (HMM SVM) support.

- ARM64 support for the VMware VMWGFX virtual driver and initial SVGA3 support.

The full list of DRM changes for Linux 5.14 via this pull request.