Linux 5.17 GPU Updates: Raptor Lake, ADL-P Stable, Raspberry Pi 4K@60, AMD Seamless Boot

While the Linux 5.17 merge window doesn't open up until next week following Sunday's Linux 5.16 stable debut, due to lead Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) subsystem maintainer David Airlie going on holiday next week he has sent out the feature pull early. Here is a look at the many GPU/display driver updates for this next kernel version.

Some of the Linux 5.17 graphics/display driver highlights in the DRM subsystem include Alder Lake P graphics being declared stable (ADL-S was marked stable in Linux 5.16), initial Intel Raptor Lake S graphics support, continued DG2/Alchemist bring-up, support for laptop privacy screens within the DRM code, the Raspberry Pi VC4 DRM driver can now drive 4K @ 60Hz, AMD Seamless Boot for new hardware, and a variety of other improvements.

The lengthier highlights for the DRM drivers in Linux 5.17 consist of:

- Intel Alder Lake P graphics are now enabled by default rather than hiding behind the force probe / early support option.

- Initial support for Raptor Lake S graphics as the next-gen successor to Alder Lake but still using Gen12 class graphics.

- Intel DG2/Alchemist page table support and other DG2 enablement work as well as Xe HPC and various dedicated vRAM work in general.

- The Intel driver now supports run-time power management auto-suspend by default.

- Intel VRR/Adaptive-Sync support for Gen11 "Ice Lake" graphics.

- AMDGPU has "Seamless Boot" support for DCN 3.01 hardware.

- AMDGPU now supports Smart Trace Buffer (STB) with newer GPUs.

- The VMware "VMWGFX" driver adds GEM memory management support and the necessary bits so its Gallium3D driver can expose OpenGL 4.3 functionality.

- Support for (eDP) privacy screens found with newer laptops.

- The SimpleDRM driver has support for virtual screen sizes.

- The SimpleDRM driver now works with Apple M1 hardware albeit unaccelerated, etc.

- The NVIDIA Tegra DRM driver now exposes NVDEC video decoding support and separately are power management improvements.

- The Etnaviv DRM driver now works with IOMMU-enabled systems.

- The Qualcomm Adreno 506 GPU is now supported by the MSM DRM driver.

- The Mediatek DRM driver adds display support for the MT8192 SoC.

- Frame-buffer console support for Intel's Keem Bay (KMB) DRM driver.

- The Raspberry Pi / Broadcom VC4 DRM driver now has support for 4K@60Hz modes.

- Reworked handling of the "nomodeset" kernel option.

See this pull request for the DRM feature changes ready for the Linux 5.17 cycle. Linux 5.17 in turn will be out as stable around the end of March.