Linux 5.18 Will Speed Up Some FBDEV Operations By 6x, ASpeed AST2600 DRM Code Added

Another round of drm-misc-next changes has been sent in to squeeze into DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 5.18 merge window opening later this month.

DRM-Misc-Next for this cycle has already submitted the Intel buddy allocator code, better handling for Microsoft AR/VR head-mounted displays (HMDs), improved EDID parsing for deep color handling, VKMS now supports multiple overlay planes, and the ChromeOS privacy screen driver is introduced. Another round brought TTM improvements, expanded "nomodeset" handling by the drivers, improved AMDGPU reset handling, Nouveau backlight fixes, and other changes. Now there is one more round of feature changes from drm-misc-next intended for Linux 5.18.

Notable with today's pull request is bringing FBDEV performance optimizations. These FBDEV performance optimizations should really help cases around software-based clearing and image blitting. Printing a directory listing was around 25% faster on the console after these patches. Some individual FBDEV operations can be as much as six times faster with this work.

In addition to optimizing some FBDEV operations, this pull also has some DisplayPort fixes, a MIPI DBI-compatible SPI driver is added, AST2600 support is ironed out in the ASpeed DRM display driver, and a variety of other changes.

More details on these drm-misc-next changes sent in to DRM-Next for Linux 5.18 can be found via the PR.